The Big “Believe All Women” Lie That Sits Atop All the Little Lies

If cognitive dissonance made a person’s face turn purple, there would be a lot of faces matching their hair these days. Now that Tara Reade has put the question to Joe Biden, one of the primary perpetrators of the “Believe All Women” delusion, the newly nuanced “explanation” of what they meant all along is we don’t mean believe all women, but take all women’s accusations seriously and then investigate.

It’s a good spin, and while there may be some who are sincere in their post hoc rationalization that the words “Believe All Women” don’t mean what the words say, but what they now say they mean, it’s a lie.

“Not true,” you exclaim in exhaustion? But it was, and still is. At the same time the spinners are spinning, the Title IX outrage machine is fighting for exactly that, to deny the opportunity to challenge women’s accusations because they must be believed. And as the entirety of the MeToo movement shows, it was only about accusations, and it was designed that way, so there was neither opportunity nor mechanism to “investigate” anything. And any poor “rape apologist” who questioned an accusation was assured to be canceled for “blaming the survivor.” Seriously but investigate? Seriously bullshit.

This woke lie didn’t arise in a vacuum, but was the product of very artful crafting. Getting a significant portion of the public to accept a mass delusion isn’t easy, you know. It was created by a series of smaller lies to diffuse the loose ends that would have revealed the big lie.

  • There is a rape epidemic.
  • Rape is whatever the survivor believes it to be.
  • There are very few false rape accusations.
  • Raped women are traumatized, which means their inability to provide basic information, their inconsistent stories, their provably false assertions of fact, their years of delay in making the accusation, are all entirely excusable and, in fact, proof of their traumatization and, thus, proof of rape.
  • Because of historic reluctance to believe a woman’s accusation of rape, both by police and society in general, they are entitled to a special accommodation in reparations.
  • There are empirical studies proving these things.

For reasons explained here before, none of these arguments hold up to scrutiny, and particularly unfortunate is how essentially every “empirical study” is so fundamentally flawed as to prove nothing more than its proponents got the results they sought. But this isn’t about the false and illogical arguments behind the big lie, but how the birth of the big lie was artfully created on the back of a series of smaller lies.

The “Believe All Woman” spin of the moment is about as valid as “we were always at war with Eastasia,” but those insisting that it never meant what it said are unlikely to admit it. And while they persist in their original belief when it comes to Title IX and MeToo, they manage to spew the “Biden rationalization” without noticing how their face turns purple.

Sure, when it comes to Biden, they readily acknowledge that believing is crazy and irrational, while simultaneously throwing the smaller lies against the wall when you raise the unpleasant analogy of Title IX and MeToo ideology that flies in the face of the Biden ideology.

On the twitters, a prof called the whole scenario “messy.” And indeed, it’s impossibly messy when one adheres to a belief system founded on lies because the lies eventually come back to bite you in the butt. But it’s not at all messy if one does less believing and more thinking, if one puts the challenges of ideology through the rigors of scrutiny, if one stops creating small lies to bolster the big lie.

At this stage, there are a great many lies to undo and challenge, and far too many otherwise “smart” people who bought them because they wanted to believe. They are beginning to unravel, at least when it comes to Joe Biden, but there appears to be little interest in doing more than manufacturing more lies to cover the failing of the big lie. No, “Believe All Women” was never meant to mean “take them seriously but investigate,” and even that rationalization fails to survive scrutiny. Investigate what? Who investigates? By what standards, and even if we had standards, who would be the person to decide whether the standards were met?

And what of the people who raised the alarm as these lies were promulgated, dismissed and attacked as enemies to the cause, because only bad people wouldn’t believe. And that is how big lies survive and prosper, and why we find ourselves in this “messy” situation at the moment surrounded by a lot of people with purple faces to match their hair.

13 thoughts on “The Big “Believe All Women” Lie That Sits Atop All the Little Lies

  1. Hunting Guy

    Malcolm X.

    “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.“

    Joseph Goebbels.

    “Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated
    are confident they are acting on their own free will.“

    Eric Hoffer.

    “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”

    And finally, the quote everyone was waiting for.

    Adolf Hitler

    If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.

      1. Hunting Guy

        James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck. (To save time, they were screenwriters for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.)

        “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

  2. B. McLeod

    So, in the nuanced revision, where is the investigation? Where is the gaggle of fervent, leftist morons and the odd ABA president calling for the FBI investigation of Biden?

    The actual premise is not “nuanced” and involves on “investigation” nor any pretense of an “investigation.” Biden’s uncorroborated denial has simply been declared “sufficient.”

      1. B. McLeod

        In Biden’s case, we revert to the Clinton rule. He says he didn’t, so that is good enough. He says the records he is protecting won’t be probative, so that is good enough too.

        It comes down to a Democratty “rape privilege”. While the candidate is seen as needed, he gets a “pass.” Later, when he has become the new Bill Clinton, his conduct can then be condemned in retrospect. But not not, Cato. Now is not the time.

        1. SHG Post author

          So as much as I try to bring this to the bigger issue, you’re going to keep harping on the Dems? Do I need to tell people that you’re really Barleycorn?

  3. borktron

    As I nitpicked on the bird box: “Believe All Women” is something of a straw-man. The dominant version of the slogan was, as I recall, “Believe Women”. The “all” formulation either ignores a significant range of more nuanced, comparatively reasonable takes, or unfairly lumps them in with the hair-on-fire, shrieking, absolutists.

    1. SHG Post author

      I’ve seen it as “Believe Women,” “Believe the Woman,” “Believe All Women” used interchangeably over the past few years. I’m neutral on the term and don’t think it makes as much of a difference as others. The concept remains the same.

      That said, I will be sensitive to your point, as there’s no need to gild the lily.

Comments are closed.