Bethany Miller has an interesting view about the Lindsay Clancy case, and she claims that women’s reactions to it are like those of the Luigi Mangione case. She told Glenn Beck that the “reactions aren’t a sudden collapse” but “the fruit of a long insidious project.”
The Blaze TV Staff reported on a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program” where Miller joined Beck to discuss one question: “What is the state of American women today?” They discussed how “thousands of women continue their support of Lindsay Clancy” and how women failed to stop romanticizing Luigi Mangione even after his pleaded guilty. Why are women responding as they do? Why do women continue their “disturbing advocacy surrounding people who have admitted to killing innocents?” You can listen to the discussion here.
In her recent
article titled “Lindsay Clancy, Luigi Mangione, and the State of American
Women,” Miller explained her theory about what is happening among American
women.
In
431 B.C., the Greek playwright Euripides staged Medea, a tragedy about a
woman betrayed by her husband who ultimately murders their children in revenge.
The chorus of Corinthian women initially sympathizes with Medea’s suffering and
Jason’s betrayal, but recoils when her grievance turns toward innocent
children. Their empathy had a boundary. They could understand her pain without
excusing what she did.
Twenty-four
centuries later, that boundary appears considerably less visible. Lindsay
Clancy admitted to strangling her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old
Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan. Her defense contends that postpartum psychosis
rendered her legally incapable of criminal responsibility, while prosecutors
argue that she understood what she was doing and acted deliberately.
Outside
the courthouse, however, another trial of sorts has unfolded. Hundreds of supporters,
overwhelmingly women, have appeared in pink carrying messages that Clancy “needed
help.” Women online have filtered her story through their own experiences with
postpartum depression, psychiatric medication, sleeplessness, exhaustion, and
physicians who failed to listen. Women have utilized Lindsay Clancy as a mirror
for their own experiences of motherhood and mental illness. The refrain is
intensely autobiographical: I see her. I understand her. That could have
been me. Lindsay Clancy has become more than a defendant. She has become a
Rorschach test for modern womanhood.
The
trouble with mirrors is that they show us ourselves. They do not necessarily
show us the truth about someone else. A state medical examiner testified that
complete oxygen deprivation can cause unconsciousness within roughly 10 to 30
seconds, while prosecutors argued that Clancy continued strangling the children
after they went limp. Whatever the jury determines about her mental state,
these were not abstractions called “a postpartum tragedy.” They were three
small children whose mother placed exercise bands around their necks. Cora.
Dawson. Callan. If our modern empathy is really as expansive as we congratulate
ourselves for believing, surely it should extend first to the children who
could not defend themselves.
There is much more to Miller’s article, and you can read it all on this site.
The
bottom line is: It is not acceptable for a mother to kill her own children, whether
she is mentally ill or not.
