The criminal trial of Lindsay Clancy, who killed her three children in 2023, has exposed some dark phenomena, further irritating an already raw and gaping battle-of-the-sexes wound in the American psyche and culture. After the case was declared a mistrial on Sept. 4, when a lone juror refused to budge and agree that she was not guilty by reason of insanity, it is now yielding widespread scapegoating of women as a whole.
This is a foolish, oversimplified misfire leading nowhere good, even as emerging realities on the ground and in cyberspace are indeed disturbing. First, it cuts against the psychological grain for many people to admit, but it is true, alas, that women are capable of both sympathizing with and doing acts of grave evil.
And like many, I found myself viscerally horrified seeing the outpouring of performative theatrics and hordes of delusional conspiracy theories emanating from women on social media related to the Clancy trial.
Second, seeing some women, who exuded smarminess, use their own children as props with #samelindsay hashtags in TikTok videos, or others who asserted without evidence that Clancy’s husband, Patrick, was the real killer based on his zodiac sign, sent many men over the edge. Something truly ominous and terrible has boiled over here.
But for some reason, while processing all I was seeing, I randomly recalled a harrowing anecdote — entirely unrelated to the Clancy case — that I’ve never forgotten and has haunted me for years and still does. I heard it from a victim's advocate, someone I completely trust, and it got me thinking about the 21st-Century battle-of-the-sexes relational wasteland we now inhabit that the Clancy case made painfully clear.
A Christian woman whose husband was watching extremely violent pornography demanded she reenact the degradation in the bedroom. This violated her conscience,