The Female Social Contagion Is Upon Us

Progressive feminist ideology necessitates that women place their own feelings, autonomy, and personal fulfillment above all else. Taken to its logical conclusion, this elevation of self easily turns into narcissism. A constant opposition to the "patriarchy" entails that women remain victims, since an oppressor narrative naturally calls for an oppressed class. Pair this progressive feminism with a true crime obsession, social media groupthink, and women's tendency toward self-destructive empathy, and a group of Lindsay Clancy defenders is born. Hordes of women on the internet have taken matters into their own hands. As the trial of Lindsay Clancy works to determine her level of culpability in brutally strangling her three children to death in 2023, hordes of women on the internet have taken matters into their own hands. The central question of the trial is not whether Lindsay committed the killings; her own defense acknowledges that she did. The trial is instead to determine if she was legally insane at the time and therefore not criminally responsible. Despite the facts, a disturbing online movement has emerged of women playing detective, claiming that Patrick Clancy, Lindsay's ex-husband, is the real culprit. These women claim to have suspicions about his demeanor, his current wife, even his zodiac sign. Women have hung themselves out of second-story windows to "prove" what really happened before Lindsay hit the ground. The latest "evidence" presented by these TikTok sleuths is a reenactment using Bratz dolls, complete with "blood" spatter. According to a 2022 survey , women were almost twice as likely to regularly listen to true crime podcasts: 44% of women vs. 23% of men. Thriller novels are second in popularity for women after romance and are twice as popular with women as they are with men. This genre trains its audience to wait for the twist: a hidden motive or a suspicious husband who was overlooked. Every detail matters, and part of the fun is figuring out the truth before it is revealed. This is the melodrama that the women of TikTok seem to expect from real life. In many of these true crime plots, women are the victim at the hands of a manipulative, egocentric man. These stories pair well with the fantasy that feminism relies on: men are the evil oppressors and women are the innocent, suffering oppressed. Within a worldview that habitually paints women as victims, there is an inherent bias that exists when interpreting women's wrongdoings. When women commit evil, it is then more reasonable to look for blame: hormones, psychosis, or even another person entirely, preferably a man. Logic has been completely replaced with emotion. The "sisterhood" mentality has taken over social media, and logic has been completely replaced with emotion. These women have already decided that Lindsay is the true victim; everyone who claims otherwise just isn't "seeing the truth." The women who support Lindsay push their misplaced empathy not only in moral support but in financial support as well. A crowdfunding page has raised nearly $1 million for Lindsay's parents; the comments and donations on the page are almost exclusively from women, all professing support for Lindsay and disappointment in a "system that failed her." This sort of sentiment is something rarely, if ever, given to men who commit such atrocities, even though many men cite mental health issues or even psychosis as reasons for committing violence. If mental health can make victims out of killers, it's a wonder that no such funding pages exist for the families of men who commit violence due to PTSD or alcoholism. This case has also allowed women to freely express their own dissatisfaction with their roles as mothers. Women have been told for years by feminists that being a mother is a prison sentence. Betty Friedan infamously called motherhood a "comfortable concentration camp" in her book "The Feminine Mystique," claiming that domestic roles cause a "slow death of mind and spirit." This notion has bled into the discourse around motherhood for the past 60 years, creating the false narrative that women cannot be happy within motherhood alone. Women online are now using the Clancy trial as an opportunity to publicly confess their own misery in motherhood. Countless women have used the audio of Clancy's diary, where she describes her distress as a mother, as the background for videos of them crying, oftentimes holding young children, with captions such as " Same, Lindsay. " Disdain toward children was always an undercurrent of feminism, and now it has fully surfaced. These women have uncovered the true nature of feminism: utter narcissism. In a world where women are told they have no duties to anyone but themselves , motherhood will inevitably feel like the highest form of oppression. The reactions to this tragedy have revealed the consequences of a feminist movement that excuses women from accountability and duty. A movement that encourages women to reject their maternal instincts in exchange for self-indulgence can easily feed into a selfish resentment of one's own children. Instead of embracing radical independence, resentment, and a sort of "main-character syndrome," women and mothers need to instead embrace gratitude, higher purpose, and sacrifice for those who need them the most: their children. Women online are now using the Clancy trial as an opportunity to publicly confess their own misery in motherhood. We can acknowledge that Lindsay Clancy was severely mentally ill without making her children secondary victims to her violence. Compassion without clarity and truth easily becomes self-indulgent. There is a crucial distinction between advocating for better mental health care for women and excusing a triple homicide of three innocent children. Lindsay's supporters who claim empathy as their motive push theory after theory, putting a man on trial on TikTok because they "feel" he's guilty. They defend, sympathize with, and sometimes even identify with a woman who strangled her three children to death. They pore through the evidence and watch the trial day after day. They wear pink in honor of Lindsay and protest outside the courthouse. In all their efforts, research, and emotional pleas, there are three names they seem to leave out, the victims who have been forgotten: Cora, Dawson, and Callan.