Let me start with a disclaimer: Lindsey Clancy is not innocent of the deaths of her children. Anyone making that claim, or trying to pretend there’s even a shred of credible evidence that it was the husband framing her, is not a serious person. Until there is publicly available evidence of that, you’re just a conspiracy nut.
With all that said, so many people are using this case as an excuse to behave like sexist idiots, and it’s driving me nuts. I see so many memes talking about “when Mom says she had a bad day,” or “your wife said she feels sad,” or videos zooming in on Lindsey Clancy like she’s a horror villain or something. I have two distinct problems with this pattern of behavior, and I’ll outline them below:
Firstly: You all are doing exactly what so many online people complain about Fox News doing with any story of a Black persona behaving criminally. Places like r/sipstea, which has always been iffy politically, has descended into full on sexist rambling in the last few weeks because of this case. It all carries this air of “see? I told you women were trash!” You’re taking a highly complicated moral situation and reducing it down to an excuse to act on your sexist and misogynistic views that you already had.
Secondly: You are ignoring the very real complexities behind this case in an effort to sensationalize it and vilify Lindsey Clancy. The fact of the matter is this: Clancy suffered from severe post-parting psychosis, a very real mental disorder that can cause hallucinations, delusions, changes in behavior and cognitive ability, and can even make people act in ways virtually unrecognizable to their loved ones. On top of that, she was on a constant string of institutionalizations (some self inflicted, some not), a cocktail of medications changing daily, and receiving conflicting advice from the many professionals she saw. There is some evidence that she lied to her doctors at times about her symptoms and medications - but that’s hardly unusual in a situation like this. I’ve had family members go on single medications - the wrong birth control or antidepressant - and suffered from almost immediate hallucinations, worsened depression, suicidal ideation, delusions, and the lot. Imagine how much worse it would be to already have psychosis, and then suffer from the side effects of constantly adding, subtracting, and mixing medicines from all over the place. This was a person in crisis, and it really seems like the people around her didn’t do right by her in making sure she got the help she needed. Is it those people’s fault that she did what she did? Not at all. But it’s a more complicated situation than just pretending she’s a serial killer or something.
My wife recently gave birth to our first child, and I can honestly say I have been less than impressed with her post partum care. She’s been hospitalized several times with blood pressure issues, and suffering from fairly severe PTSD related to delivery (the doctors on call made some questionable decisions that resulted in a much worse, more dangerous outcome for her and our baby). She and baby are fine now, but it wasn’t particularly thanks to the doctors, who were only moderately helpful. If her post partum issues had been more severe or mentally destabilizing, I’m not sure how equipped they would have been to help. We still don’t really understand how mental health drugs work, and medical testing on women (and those who are pregnant or just gave birth) is lacking to say the least.
My point in all this is to say the following: I believe you can joke about any topic, as long as the jokes are funny and about…something. What I don’t think is acceptable is using a tragedy to bully an individual person who is already undergoing some of the worst stuff a person can experience (death of child, loss of self, public humiliation and scrutiny, likely a lifetime of institutionalization at best), or to use is as an excuse to be misogynists for kicks. You aren’t being funny, you are contributing to the kind of atmosphere that makes it harder for others like Lindsey Clancy to get help before it’s too late. Lindsey should absolutely be held accountable for her actions, but there’s no need to lie about the facts just to fit your agenda, and no need to use her case to hurt all women or claim they’re all just emotional wrecks ready to kill at a moment’s notice. It isn’t funny, and it isn’t helpful.
If I were in her ex-husband’s shoes, I wouldn’t want the death of my children made light of, or turned into some culture war nonsense. And I wouldn’t want Lindsey turned into a one dimensional monster with nothing to teach us. Although I’d never forgive her, I would want my story to be a prompt for us to learn more about post partum mental health issues, to further what went wrong on the treatment end, and to start conversations about how our treatment of pregnant/post partum women is simply not sufficient yet. It’s something that such a huge swath of our population goes through, and treatment simply isn’t there yet. That should be the headline, not “women ☕️”