DEAR FELLOW MEN: You’re making us all look like emotionally-stunted meatheads over this Lindsay Clancy thing

Lindsay Clancy

If you only watch or listen to one thing from the ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial, which has now enraptured the entire internet, I strongly recommend making it this:

Dr. Phillip Resnick is probably the nation’s leading forensic psychiatrist expert on “filicide” — the killing of a child by their own parent. It’s an extremely rare phenomenon, but one that does occur often enough that somebody’s gotta be an expert on it. (I don’t use the term “expert” flippantly, either. Modern society is replete with obnoxiously fake “experts.” But if Resnick is not a legitimate “expert” on this topic, we might as well say no one can ever be an expert on anything.)

Now in his late 80s and still quite lucid, Resnick has been a witness for both the prosecution AND defense in many high-profile cases over the years. He’s helped the government convict Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, and James Holmes. He’s also worked for the DEFENSE of numerous MALE defendants whom he assessed to be psychotic when they committed heinous crimes — such as John du Pont, who killed Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz in 1996, and John Salvi, who opened fire on two abortion clinics in 1994. On account of their psychosis, Resnick argued, these men bore diminished criminal culpability for the acts they concededly took.

Resnick was also once a consultant for the defense of Andrea Yates, the woman whom a Texas jury found “not guilty by reason of insanity” in 2002. Yates had come to believe she was possessed by Satan, and that she’d been commanded to drown her five young children in a bathtub, so as to spare them from eternal hellfire and damnation.

If you’re around the same age as me, you’re probably at least vaguely familiar with the outlines of the Andrea Yates case. I still remember it dominating cable news and tabloid magazines 25 years ago — and provoking an unhinged national “conversation” that was eerily similar to the one raging now with Lindsay Clancy. Although the current iteration is of course wildly magnified by the TikTok’d, tweetified, podtarded-ization of everything. Whatever recollections of Andrea Yates you may or may not have, I’d recommend taking a few minutes to read this 2007 journal article authored by Resnick, in which he provides a concise summary of all that transpired — it’s full of astonishing and, yes, highly disturbing detail, much of which I know I’d personally forgotten, if I’d ever known at all. (Even better to read if you were too young to be cognizant of the associated media frenzy.)

Andrea Yates with husband and children

Andrea Yates was by all accounts an intelligent, well-adjusted woman throughout the duration of her life. She’d been valedictorian of her high school class, president of the National Honor Society, and captain of her swim team. “Upon completion of her B.A. in nursing, she became a highly regarded nurse at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston.” At age 29, she married a NASA engineer, and soon had her first child. Then another, and then another. After child number four, she began to develop disturbing psychiatric symptoms. Namely, she started to believe her body was being infiltrated by Satan, who was trying to goad her into killing her children. So in order to save them, she reasoned it was necessary for her to kill herself instead. She made two attempts — first by overdosing on medication, then by slitting her own throat. Neither attempt was fatal; she was hospitalized after each. For reasons that are not exactly clear, she was discharged relatively quickly to outpatient treatment, which she then ceased when it was decided she was “feeling better.”

Apparently, this was right around the time her husband decided he wanted a fifth child, despite warnings that Andrea’s “postpartum” psychosis was very likely to recur. After the fifth child was born, their only girl, Andrea started to descend into full-blown catatonia. She was hospitalized two more times. The psychosis manifested with more alarming, overt paranoia than the first round; she became convinced that TV commercials for candy were directly addressed to her, and condemning her for feeding the children too much candy. She thought her house was bugged with hidden cameras to monitor what a horrible mother she was. She thought her mother-in-law had cameras installed in her eyeglasses, to keep her under additional surveillance. And then, perhaps most critically, she came to believe she was now fully and irredeemably possessed by the one true Satan, and that she alone had been chosen — out of every other human on Earth — as his singular earthly vessel for doing evil. Resolved to spare the children from Satan’s wrath, which she inferred they’d be inevitably stricken with by virtue of their wicked maternal connection, Andrea decided she had no other choice but to send them all to heaven.

As she drowned each of the five children in the bathtub, her oldest, a seven-year-old boy named Noah, was the only one who managed to put up a bit of a struggle. Nearing death, he was able to briefly lift his head out of the water, and cried out: “I’m sorry Mommy.” After Andrea drowned the six-month-old baby girl, named Mary, she nestled her tiny dead body into the arms of her five-year-old son, John — by then also dead — because he’d been such a good big brother to Mary. Andrea believed John would protect his baby sister in heaven. So she lay the two beside one another in bed, to await the afterlife together. Also on the bed were their dead brothers Paul, age four, and Luke, age two. The oldest boy, Noah, was left floating in the bathtub.

After drowning her children Mrs. Yates called 911 and requested that a police officer be sent to her home. She then called her husband, Rusty, and said, “It’s time,” referring to the biblical prophecy in Revelations about Armageddon. When the police arrived, Mrs. Yates told them, “I killed my kids,” and led them to the room with her four dead children.

Mrs. Yates believed that Satan was within her and tormented her and the children. She thought that after she drowned her children, she would be arrested and executed. She indicated that Satan would be executed along with her. She believed it was right to drown her children because she wanted to save their souls and didn’t want them to be “in Satan's hands.”

If you must, at least try to suspend disbelief for a moment, and stipulate that Andrea Yates really did believe these delusional things: that she was genuinely in the throes of an extreme psychiatric episode, and was emphatically convinced that the only way she could perform her sacred motherly duty was to kill the children. Is this really the sort of tragedy we should want to flippantly conflate — legally, ethically, politically, and otherwise — with a prototypical cold-blooded first-degree murder, like, say, Bryan Kohberger’s notorious alleged slayings of the four college students in Idaho? (I only say “alleged” because he recently moved to rescind his guilty plea.) Those killings, whoever did them, plainly required a premeditated and morally depraved intent, along with calculated planning, and had to be executed by someone with enough soundness of mind that they could sneak into the college kids’ house undetected, escape, and then flee the area. Conversely, it should go without saying that no sophisticated planning is required to drown a baby in a bathtub. Dr. Resnick says that in his clinical judgment, Andrea Yates had become engulfed by a full-blown psychosis, and in such an extreme delusional state, had reasoned herself into the fervent conviction that if she didn’t kill her children, they’d be destined to “burn in hell” for the rest of time. Therefore, as a loving mother, it was her profound obligation to do whatever was necessary to rescue them from this fate.

Resnick further opined that Andrea “did not conceal her homicidal plan because she knew what she was doing was wrong” — meaning she thought it was RIGHT, contrary to what the prosecution’s expert witness had sought to argue, as the government was attempting to convict Andrea of capital murder, which carries the death penalty, and requires that certain elements of criminal intent be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But because “Mrs. Yates believed that she was defeating Satan by taking her children’s lives,” Resnick writes, “and saving their souls while they were still innocent,” the homicidal acts she committed could not be said to legally comport with first-degree murder. In other words, while young children may sometimes be killed under the most tragic of circumstances, including by their own mother, society rightfully does not treat the offending acts as qualitatively identical to other forms of homicide. Even so, the government tried to argue that Andrea’s concealment of her plans served to demonstrate the requisite criminal intent. Resnick countered that Andrea concealing the plans had an explicable logic within the parameters of the psychosis: she thought if she revealed these plans, it would tip Satan off, and her goal would be thwarted, because Satan would then make her kill the children of his own volition, and she needed to kill them so they would be sent to Heaven rather than Hell.

While a bit more theologically florid than any comparable beliefs ascribed to Lindsay Clancy, a similar theme has emerged in her case — Lindsay also did not go around openly announcing plans to kill her children, and the government is alleging this proves the malicious forethought of first-degree murder. But like Andrea, according to Resnick, Lindsay’s reasons for this intent-concealment were explicable per the internal logic of her psychosis. She did not want to trigger a situation whereby police, social services, or some other agency/individual would have cause to intervene and take the children away, because she believed it was her own solemn duty to protect them. And protecting them required that they be strangled to death with exercise bands. Delusional as it may be, the logic is internally consistent within her extreme psychotic state. Resnick also added that far from faking, exaggerating, or “malingering” any symptoms, Lindsay sought to downplay and minimize the severity of her condition, so as not to create alarm, because she did not want to be separated from the children. Bear in mind: “psychosis” need not mean that someone loses all executive function, or collapses into a total babbling stupor. Lindsay was still able to reason, carry out some routine tasks, and even plan future acts — such as the homicides — notwithstanding her worsening state of psychosis. Same with Andrea.

Another parallel between the two episodes:

Mrs. Yates made no effort to hide her crime. Her delusional belief that TV cameras were monitoring her did not stop her from killing her children in her home. Immediately after the killings, she called the police, remained at the crime scene, and requested to be punished.

Mrs. Yates had no alternative motive to take the lives of her children other than the psychotic belief that she was saving their souls. She was a devoted mother. She stated in her audiotaped confession on June 20, 2001, that her children were not developing correctly. She added that she was not mad at her children because they had not done anything wrong.

Likewise, I don’t understand what alternate motive all these ragefully embittered guys online are trying to impute to Lindsay. Why exactly do you figure she would’ve killed her three children, if not out of a genuinely “psychotic” belief that she too was actually saving them? What else could she have possibly gotten from this? Fame? Fortune? Freedom? Please. Her life is effectively over at age 36 — whatever verdict in the trial is ultimately rendered. (It could come within days, so buckle up for an even bigger nuclear-explosion of poorly-informed vitriol.) Zero evidence has been presented for anything other than her dire mental condition as the proximate cause of the tragedy. Lindsay does differ from Andrea in that instead of immediately calling the police to confess, and requesting to be punished, as Andrea did, Lindsay attempted to kill herself afterwards. (In accordance with what the voice inside her head had instructed her to do, as expert witnesses for both the prosecution and defense have testified.) This sequence of events does not suggest any willful scheme to cover up the crimes, or to conceal her own culpability for committing them. Hence, her lawyer is seeking a verdict of “Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity,” or as it’s technically called in Massachusetts, “LACK OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY.” The criteria for which are:

If the Commonwealth has proved the elements of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, the Commonwealth must also prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was criminally responsible at the time of the alleged offense. Under the law, a person is not guilty if they lacked criminal responsibility when they committed the offense. This is sometimes referred to as not guilty by reason of insanity. There is no burden on the defendant to prove that they lacked criminal responsibility.

This really shouldn’t be that difficult to grasp: you can rationally conclude Lindsay “lacked criminal responsibility” under this framework, without somehow “defending” or “excusing” the homicide of three little children. Which is so maddeningly obvious, it shouldn’t even need to be said. Claiming that anyone who points out the mountain of mitigating evidence as to Lindsay’s criminal culpability must be Defending/Excusing child homicide is just the cheap deflection of a scoundrel — typically someone, I’ve found, who for some reason really aggressively does not want to know, much less seriously grapple with, the actual facts of this extremely sad situation. Which is… the whole point of having a trial in the first place. Plugging your fingers in your ears, and declaring the only thing you need to know is the thing anyone can learn in half a second — that she killed the children — is so puerile. It’s the kind of thing little kids do when they don’t want to hear any uncomfortable or disconcerting information that might challenge their unexamined assumptions. Little kids have a perfectly valid excuse, though: they lack the maturity and cognitive capacity for multi-dimensional adult reasoning. But on this matter in particular, it’s striking how many ostensible adults — overwhelmingly men, I can’t help but notice — just revert to a kind of childlike emotional obstinacy. And they’re somehow really proud of themselves for this, like it proves their innate superiority, rather than their crude and lazy infantilism.

I had no desire to get especially engaged in this Lindsay Clancy issue. I’d found it peripherally interesting, and would occasionally listen to some trial excerpts, but it’s ultimately just one criminal trial in Massachusetts. However, the public response has gotten so twisted and disturbing over the past week, I’ve found it difficult not to engage. And I have to say: I can’t remember any issue in the past ever compelling me to do what I’m about to do: make sweeping categorical statements addressed to one specific sex. I usually hate those kinds of pompous generalizations.

But really, FELLOW MALES — at least those of you bloviating the loudest on the internet — you’ve really gone out of your way to earn “our” stereotypical reputation on this one. Like you enjoy exhibiting a painful lack of basic conscientiousness, or yeah, “empathy” — which I’m told is now some kind of cuss word among a certain online set. Don’t worry though; civilization is not going to collapse under the hormonally feminized weight of “suicidal empathy” just because mitigating details about a defendant’s criminal liability are recognized. I find it amazing how many males are so angrily unwilling to look at this case with any degree of impartiality; they’ve somehow come to think that it’s a referendum on “women” in general, or how women are “never held responsible” for anything. What? If that’s what you’re really set on extrapolating here, it’s your own bizarre problem — it’s got nothing to do with the actual facts and evidence of the case, which overwhelmingly show Lindsay Clancy lacks criminal culpability for first-degree murder, under the laws duly enacted by the state of Massachusetts. Why does this make you so mad? Figure out some other venue to resolve your pent-up emotional issues; I’ve never seen “men” as a class react more crudely and “emotionally” to anything.

Did you ever think that humanity evolved with two sexes for a reason? And maybe there are certain classically “feminine” traits like “emotional awareness” and [shudder] “empathy” that can provide some useful insights into the human condition? Just as the more “male-coded” traits can do, like “dispassionate logic,” “facts over emotion” and so on? (YES, PEOPLE, I’M NECESSARILY MAKING POPULATION-WIDE GENERALIZATIONS, AND AS SUCH, THEY MAY NOT STRICTLY APPLY TO YOU PERSONALLY, OR YOUR OVERLY EMOTIONAL MALE FRIEND, YOUR COLDLY LOGICAL FEMALE NEIGHBOR, ETC.) Maybe these sex-associated traits can even nicely balance each other out, at least if you’re not obsessed with waging some stupidly vindictive Culture War against half the human race?

Don’t worry ladies: I definitely have some critical observations I could share about your collective reasoning tendencies as well, but that can wait for another time, because it’s the guys who are really beclowning themselves on this one. And I’m only making these categorical statements about “guys” vs. “ladies” because I’ve genuinely never seen any other issue line up so uniformly along a sex-based binary. Which unto itself is kind of disconcerting, as there’s no particular reason why a person’s inborn sex ought to be so determinative in shaping popular attitudes around this thing. But here we are.

“SMITE THAT DASTARDLY WOMAN AND HER ANNOYING TIKTOK DEFENDERS” is not impressive reasoning, fellas. If your only reaction to the harrowing outlier tragedy of Lindsay Clancy is to just snarl with animalistic fury at this beleaguered woman, and demand — countervailing evidence be damned — that she be locked up for life in prison, or as many men (but almost zero women) seem to crave, executed on the spot — that’s not an impulse borne of any considered moral judgment. No, sorry, you don’t get the moral highground because you’re willing to declare it’s bad for mothers to kill their babies and toddlers. Yeah, we know. Thanks. Literally no one who’s sane disagrees with that; it’s barely even worth saying. It’s not some brilliant insight you attained by any faculties of higher reasoning. You’re simply taking your base visceral disgust — already shared by the entire non-insane human population — and then letting the rage flow into dictating every subsequent legal, ethical, and political consideration that is attendant to this matter. Which is not some impressively defiant moral stand — it’s just a tantrum. Maybe it feels cathartic on some level, especially when layered onto some weird psychosexual resentments you’re vicariously wanting to satisfy, to stomp around thundering that the only acceptable outcome here is for the tragedy to be compounded even further, and for the punitive power of the state to be enlisted to carry out your gorilla-brained retribution fantasies. Thankfully, humans have evolved such that (in theory) they can activate modes of reasoning to transcend these instinctive, guttural urges of disgust, rage, bloodlust, etc. — and our brains allow us to achieve understandings not strictly aroused by our unreasoned emotional sensations. Because really, bro? Does it make you feel good to aggressively avoid developing any more complicated thoughts on the subject, because you’d rather just fulminate KILLING CHILDREN BAD — as if that’s some brave insight. Congratulations, you’ve bloviated a truism that literally no one (who’s un-psychotic) could possibly disagree with. Where can we subscribe to your newsletter?

Dr. Resnick wrote in his article: “No crime evokes more intense feelings than a mother killing her own children.” Hard to argue with that — especially looking at how the entire internet has exploded over Lindsay Clancy, and in such depressingly blithering fashion. I knew something unique was going on when my extremely normie sister, who follows little or no news, announced last weekend that she was voraciously following each day’s developments in the trial. Given these unusual levels of normie interest, of course the typical bozo pundits will waste no time reducing it to another dumb Culture War slugfest. Good for “engagement” I guess, but bad for collective sanity. And it’s funny, because unlike so many other high-profile “cultural” issues in recent memory, this one definitely does NOT fit into any kind of standard Culture War template. By any stretch of the imagination. I know I am personally getting tons of thankful messages from women of virtually EVERY political persuasion — including plenty of RIGHT-WING women — as well as totally apolitical women. And sure, yeah, lib women too. These women have all united to praise me for appearing to be one of the vanishingly few males out there with any appreciable public profile who seems to “get it”? Which is nice, I guess, but also pretty sad? It wasn’t some conscious goal of mine, at all. As best I can access my own mind, I’ve used the same basic method to evaluate this issue that I would for anything else. Lindsay’s the defendant here, in case you forgot, and the government is the one claiming it has the necessary evidence to convict her of a particular grievous crime. My general disposition to sympathize with “the accused” remains unchanged. But apparently this is seen as revolutionary now — especially in contrast with all the tough-guy online blowhards who can barely rub two brain cells together, and think anyone who disagrees on Lindsay being a sadistic murderous maniac must either be a hormonal female hysteric, or a pathetic male “simp.” In other words, they can only think in terms of moronic internet cliches. So, since I’m not parroting the awfully-argued theories of the Plymouth County, MA District Attorney’s office as to Lindsay’s purported criminal culpability, I must only be doing this because I suddenly want to pander to stereotypically female sensibilities. Like it’s some some sudden calculated self-promotional gambit of mine — and for what purpose, exactly? To what end? Who the hell knows anymore. (The most common answer, I gather, is that I’m a “hope she sees this” guy — meaning I want to date Lindsay or something.) Gentlemen, you’re so right: I’m sure the same women who happen to temporarily appreciate my refreshing-for-a-male takes on Lindsay C. will be thrilled to learn my views on Jeffrey Epstein, politically-contrived “rape” scandals, “sex trafficking” scams, and so on. (Views which of course I have zero plans to arbitrarily revise.) I know this is hard to wrap your shriveled little heads around, but maybe, just maybe, all I’m doing here is once again seeking to engage in honest reasoning, to the best of my ability, grounded in a maximally rational assessment of the available facts and evidence. Maybe… that’s it? And there isn’t some devious ulterior motive to divine?

Amusingly enough, I posted the below tweet while heading out to another “anti-trafficking” symposium last week — an event at which I subsequently spent the entire time marveling and snickering, per usual, at the latest absurd frontiers in the collossal “anti-trafficking” racket. (More on that later…)

I truly thought this was a fairly innocuous observation, but people went berserk. It really does just strike me as straight-forwardly sensible, though? Retaining some humility as to the physical and mental impacts of pregnancy, which only one sex in the human species (not mine, by chance) is able to undergo? What’s the problem, bros? It would probably also be a good idea to retain some humility about what it’s like to live in rural China, or what it was like to live in the 15th century, or various other life experiences to which we cannot personally relate. So too with phenomena you are biologically precluded from ever undergoing? And no, this doesn’t mean you are forbidden to have an opinion on how child homicide should be penalized in the United States. It doesn’t mean you need a uterus to comment on the Lindsay Clancy trial. Don’t be stupid, please.

But... I have to say, it does seem like there’s a big signal in the noise to be gleaned here when like >95% of humans who have child-bearing capacities are utterly mortified by the brutish and dismissive reactions to the Lindsay trial, which so many gung-ho male persons have made sure to showcase lately. Perhaps because the child-bearers among us believe, justifiably, that these dumb-dumb male reactions reflect a really crass and off-putting arrogance about the legitimate turmoils that pregnancy can unleash on women’s minds and bodies? Notwithstanding that it’s still a necessary process for species propagation? I don’t know why any male would somehow take offense to giving this mysterious (to us) domain of human biology some measure of reasonable deference/accommodation. After all, fellas, you were also born via pregnancy! As will any offspring you may care to breed. So it might be worth taking seriously when near-unanimous groundswells of women, including MANY with no discernible reason to embellish, are vehemently trying to convey that they see in Lindsay someone who could very conceivably have been them — or their sister / friend / whomever — and not because they’re all homicidal freaks who want to kill their three-year-olds, for Christ’s sake. But because it’s scarily easy to imagine a scenario where their pregnancy-induced chemicals start misfiring, and they’re having these intrusive thoughts of harming their children, and they’re begging for help, and they’re trying to get treatment, and it’s not working, it’s only making things worse, and they don’t know what to do, and they’re terrified, and they literally try to institutionalize themselves, but they’re also embarrassed, because they don’t want everyone to think they’re a bad mother, but they also REALLY don’t want social services or police to come and take their young dependent children away, so they just kind of try to compartmentalize for awhile, and say they’re starting to “feel a little better,” when they know it’s actually the opposite. And they deteriorate further and further, until the unthinkable happens. What makes it so scarily relatable is precisely that Lindsay was NOT some open homicidal lunatic. What’s scary is how thoroughly normal she was. (Her whole family/friend network, too.) She had no dark secrets, no crazy drama, no conflict with her husband/mother/colleagues — nothing. And yet, she still found herself beset with this sudden-onset spell of an extreme aberrant psychosis that culminated in the most horrifying of all possible outcomes.

I don’t feel like I’m sharing any profoundly incisive intellectual discoveries here. I’m mostly just reciting the basic facts and evidence established by the trial. So while it’s nice to have all this newfound support from all you lovely ladies, I also find it moronic that the following should even be regarded as any sort of inherently woman-exclusive point:

DEAR FELLOW MALES! As you know, I’ve never felt the need to address you all collectively before, because to do so would usually imply a kind of sneering self-importance. (Who would purport to be addressing half of the entire human population, as though they somehow have unified group-wide interests by way of their genitalia?) You’ve forced me to make a one-time Substack exception, though, because the night-and-day contrast between the male/female reactions to this whole Lindsay thing is about as extreme (and almost entirely uniform) as any I’ve ever seen. SNAP OUT OF IT, DAMMIT!

Like it or not, there’s only one half of the species that incubates the baby in her body for nine months. You fellas just inseminate. I don’t see this as a “battle of the sexes” issue? Why are the sexes even “battling” at all? How foolish! Males and females can have distinct biological needs, wants, and impulses by nature of their intrinsic physical features, without that needing to pit male and female against each other in some tedious unwinnable “battle.”

I’ll also just note that despite “women” in general tending to have a less favorable view of my reporting/commentary on other hot-button issues as of late, the people whom I most frequently consult with in private about all this stuff are… WOMEN! That’s right! Probably like 8 times out of 10, it’s women who I am chatting with behind the scenes about the latest goofy “rape” fiasco or whatever. I really do feel bad for all you bitter guys out there who genuinely seem to have never had an interesting/edifying relationship — or even conversation?!?! — with an intelligent and well-grounded female, so you’ve been led to believe they’re all just nightmarish hormonal basket-cases who can’t ever be reasoned with about anything. It’s nice to have platonic female friends and advisors! You just get a different dynamic with ‘em than you do with fellow males. I’d probably never give a male friend a gift, for instance, but I’ve given female friends gifts. Because it’s nice. (“MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT!”) And who wants to talk to other dopey men about “emotional” or “relationship” issues, if ever a need to discuss such things may arise? Women are way better for that!

Anyway, back to Lindsay Clancy — she was forensically evaluated by Dr. Resnick for many hours, after which he concluded that she was “frankly psychotic” at the time she killed her children. Having developed five descriptive categories for “filicide,” Resnick concluded that Lindsay committed what he calls “altruistic filicide” — that is, she sincerely believed, in her delusional state, that she was compelled to kill her children out of love, not animus. “She was obsessional about caring for her children,” Resnick says. It’s eerily reminiscent of Andrea Yates, even if their respective psychoses had different expressive features. Yates didn’t try to kill herself after the drownings, perhaps believing she had accomplished her principal task of delivering the children from Satan’s eternal torment. Her psychosis was also more outwardly infused with the grandiose religious themes, although a witness who testified at the Lindsay trial on Friday did report that when she took Dawson, her three-year-old boy, down to the basement, wrapped an exercise band around his neck, and then strangled him to death, she vocalized the words “Go with God.” This same incantation was repeated as she went on to asphyxiate Cora, her five-year-old girl, and then Callan, her eight-month-old baby boy, whose birth is what appears to have been the catalyst for Lindsay’s ultimate psychotic descent.

Call me a “simp,” call me a pussy, call me whatever — I’m just not going to concede that it’s remotely rational to want to punish this poor, broken woman any more than she already has been. Because the punishment’s going to continue for the rest of her life, regardless of whether she ends up in a state-controlled psychiatric facility or a state-controlled prison. (Or even if she’s eventually granted some kind of release down the line.) I guess I’ll have to join up with her “simp” former husband, whose own children she killed, and her heroic male defense lawyer, and agree that as to her criminal culpability, the elements for “first-degree murder” are nowhere near satisfied. According to Dr. Resnick, who I can’t fathom had any reason to lie on the stand for the first time in his life at age 88, Lindsay committed the homicides while in a literal “dream state,” and she believed she was following the commands of the voice inside her head, which had told her this was her last chance to save the children, by killing them and then herself. To end their suffering, as a result of her purported motherly failures — a marginally more secular version of what Andrea Yates had also delusionally envisioned.

“Men and women are different!” we are often cantankerously told. And OK, sure, fine! That’s true as far as it goes! In light of this, here’s one notable “difference” I’d like to propose: in these extremely rare instances where a mother kills her own young children — the very organisms she spent nine months carrying inside her own body — the sensible default assumption is that she must have been in a state of genuine delusion. Like, that is something I am comfortable just presuming, if only from a pure evolutionary standpoint. Because when a mother-on-child homicide happens, particularly with very young children who are still physically dependent on the mother, something has gone so gravely, anomalously wrong with the natural order of things, it seems like the absolute least plausible explanation is that the woman made a sane, considered decision to strangle or drown her own babies. Maybe there are some even more freakishly rare cases where this has in fact happened, but in the main, I’m OK just assuming the woman must have been genuinely psychotic. Of course, verifying it would require gathering the requisite evidence, which has been more than satisfactorily done in Lindsay’s case. But as to that baseline assumption: I’m only applying it to women. “BECAUSE MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT.” And it’s just not an assumption that can be made anywhere near as intuitively about men who kill their children. Sorry, fellow fellas — we didn’t grow the organisms in our bodies for nine months. So we’re not entitled to the same presumption women get on this one. Don’t get upset though, it’s just another straightforward commonsense “difference” between men and women. No?

All you macho men out there who just want to taunt “Lindsay defenders” on the internet are, as usual, unwittingly defending the government, because that’s who is currently trying to throw her in prison for the rest of her life. As if any public interest is somehow advanced by that outcome. Or as though keeping her confined to a state psychiatric facility, likely in perpetuity, is some abominable miscarriage of “justice.” Frankly, I don’t believe this prosecution ever should have been brought at all. The vastly more merciful course of action would’ve been to simply take whatever money was spent on this travesty and pave a road, plant a tree, fly a kite — anything. Because holy shit.

The trial has been truly horrible. Not “horrible” in a way that might be unfortunately necessary, and we all just have to grit our teeth and get through it, because some higher civic purpose is being served. Much to the contrary: Massachusetts taxpayers are no better off for these baby/toddler slayings being recounted over and over by the weeping emergency responders, or the bereaved former husband, or the anguished grandparents. No societal good has been gained from the gruesome images of the children’s strangled corpses being displayed to the now emotionally-ravaged jurors. What’s the point of all this? The DAs have probably botched the case anyway, rendering the whole spectacle even more gratuitously unnecessary. If some guys on the internet get to experience some exhilarating vicarious bloodlust, I’m not sure that’s an adequate public interest. “Deterrence,” you say? Give me a friggin’ break. You can’t seriously think any government entity needs to “deter” the mothers of America from killing their own children, by stressing to them that this is really bad, and really strongly against the law? What world do you live in? Do you suppose that Lindsay would have been “deterred,” if only she had learned the legal lessons of some televised court proceedings? Maybe the whole point of “not guilty by reason of mental illness or mental defect” is that she was in no state to be “deterred” by anything tethered to reality?

Lindsay, (former) husband Patrick, and children

Vague aspirations of “deterrence” are likely no match for the “command hallucinations” Dr. Resnick said Lindsay was experiencing, whereby she believed that her motherly obligation was to kill the children, to save them from suffering, and then kill herself. By all the evidence that’s been presented — including from the apparently “simp” former husband, who’s been her most consistent “defender” since the day the tragedy occurred in January 2023 — Lindsay was a completely normal, loving mother. There’s no reason whatsoever to think this wouldn’t have continued, but for her cognition going into free-fall. She literally thought her brain was being physically destroyed — a perception almost certainly exacerbated by the ridiculous cocktail of heavy-duty medications she was prescribed. Not a shred of evidence suggests that she ever exhibited any signs in her entire life that could’ve been seen as leading indicators that she had any predilection to carry out a child homicide coverup scheme. Her husband 100% refutes that notion, her husband’s parents refute it — every friend, acquaintance, family member, and medical provider has refuted it. None of them say anything other than that Lindsay cared deeply for the children, and would have never dreamed of harming them. Indeed, she never did harm them prior to the killings. No abuse, no spanking, no nothing. She had no conflict with the husband, whom she loved and admired.

It’s really weird, and even depraved, that so many people out there apparently feel a need to believe Lindsay was a vicious pre-meditated murderer who secretly hated her own children, and wanted them dead for some selfishly malignant reason that’s never been articulated. So what, she could be “child free” again? And then do what, exactly? Sit in a room, staring at the wall, paralyzed from the waist down, and spend the rest of her life haunted by the knowledge of what she did? Yeah, sounds like a great time.

“She’s a cold-blooded killer” makes zero sense. You’d kind of have to be r*tarded, or perhaps unable to regulate your own emotions, to believe it. I realize guys on the internet think they know better than everyone who has ever known or evaluated Lindsay, but I’m still not sure on what grounds they base this smug certainty — other than some warped desire to win a moronic Gender Battle online. Yeah, I’m aware there are some women on TikTok who have made some dumb claims about the case, which is not surprising; anything that gets popular in that demographic always gets sucked into their True Crime Podcast Netflix Soap Opera fandom vortex. So some of them have apparently speculated that the former husband was secretly responsible for the killings, because he was having an affair, or whatever. Sure, fine, who’s ever making those trashy videos is obnoxious. But why are you orienting your own view of the case in opposition to some gossipy nonsense on TikTok? That’s really the paramount principle at stake here for you? So incensed are you by this stupid short-form video content, you’re going to snidely declare that Lindsay must have faked her suicide attempt — even though Dr. Resnick, et al., have uniformly assessed it as genuine? (It’s amazing how cavalierly some people can spout that they just know, with total unwavering certainty, that this woman who slit her own neck and wrists, then jumped out a window and paralyzed herself, was diabolically “faking” it. Sure thing, tough guy.)

Lindsay after the “fake” suicide attempt

In sum, no, Lindsay Clancy is not someone the government ought to be making a whole self-righteous show of condemning as a first-degree murderer — a specific crime for which specific elements must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors have woefully failed to do so, despite the three and a half years they’ve had to investigate this case. If and when a “Not Guilty” verdict comes down, expect the boneheaded male rage-baiters to go even more nuts, because it’s never really been about the facts or evidence. Just the surrogate Culture War fight that everyone’s always looking for some excuse to open another front in. For my part, I’d rather stick to the Constitution, which you may have heard affords due process to all citizens, even alleged perpetrators of the most tragic acts — including those who concede they committed the acts, but nevertheless maintain they are not guilty by reason of insanity. Because they were in the depths of a medically demonstrable psychosis. Hauling this woman off to a prison cell, rather than a psychiatric ward, accomplishes precisely nothing except additional sorrow, in a saga that could not possibly need any less of that. Maybe a certain segment of men would find this outcome to be sadistically pleasing, but that empty hit of euphoria will last about five minutes, and they’ll swiftly move on to the next emotionally stunted fixation. The three children will still be dead.

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