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Many in anti-feminist and anti-social-justice twitter are making fun of this tweet of Jill's, with the implication (or outright statement) that Jill and others are trying to change history because of the Biden accusation. https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/1262405610861137920

And if we're being literal, "never" is dubious - there are, after all, millions of feminists. Some of them have actually said the phrase "believe all women."

But it's unlikely Jill meant "never" literally, since that claim is contradicted by the same article her tweet endorses!

Still, if that's all the criticism of Jill amounts to - that she wrote "feminists never said" where she should have written "most feminists never said" - then that's an unbelievably trivial criticism, based in refusing to give reasonable doubt, and shouldn't be taken seriously.

I think the objection is more to Jill's claim that "believe women" has meant "start with the assumption that women are telling the truth instead of reflexively doubting them."

But that's true - and it's what feminists have been saying for years, long before the Biden accusation.

For instance, in 2018, @ElleBeau wrote on Medium, "Believing women means taking their claims just as seriously as any other kinds of reported crime," and explicitly said that this didn't mean that women never lie or that we should get rid of due process.

In 2017, @kmcdonovgh pointed out that the phrase feminists typically use is "believe women," not "believe all women," and wrote "'believe women' ... is another way of saying 'don’t reflexively disbelieve women.'" https://splinternews.com/believe-all-women-isnt-a-thing-1820799914

Susan Faludi, in the NY Times this week, made the same point - that "believe women" and "believe all women" aren't the same, and the latter is a phrase mainly used by anti-feminists to criticize feminists, not by feminists.

I've seen a bunch of people say or imply that Faludi is just saying that because of the accusation against Biden, and no one ever said that before a couple of weeks ago.'

And yet there's Katie McDonough saying the exact same thing in 2017.

An article on Vox, published on February 22nd of this year, quoted @sannewman saying that "Believe Women" doesn't mean getting rid of the presumption of innocence. It means "foreground the vast majority of cases where women are telling the truth."

https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/2/21/18232219/jussie-smollett-believe-survivors-me-too-empire

Back to 2017, when @sadydoyle , in Elle, wrote that "believe women" doesn't conflict with fact-checking, or with identifying false accusations. It's about "engaging with sexual assault claims in good faith."

https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a13977980/me-too-movement-false-accusations-believe-women/

In 2018, Cornell Law Professor @SherryColb wrote an article entitled "What Does #BelieveWomen Mean?" The article focuses on police work; Colb says it means initially accepting reports of rape as made in good faith, rather than reflexively doubting then.
https://verdict.justia.com/2018/11/07/what-does-believewomen-mean

There are many more examples, but I think I've made my point. When Jill says "Believe Women" means "start with the assumption that women are telling the truth instead of reflexively doubting them," she's accurately describing what it's meant to most feminists for years.

The claim that no feminist believed this until the last few weeks is ridiculous and wrong. And it shows that many of feminism's critics simply don't ever listen to what feminists say; instead, they listen to what their own made-up feminist boogieman (boogiewoman?) says.

Or they find an edge case and treat it as central and representative.

"Believe women" versus "Believe all women" is a pretty good illustration of this process. The slogan actually used by feminists has generally been "believe women."

But the narrative of anti-social-justice is that feminists have been saying women never, ever lie, and all accused men are always guilty, so feminists want to get rid of due process.

So in their minds, the slogan warped to "believe all women."