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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2478 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 23, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Can someone give me a steelman of the popular pro-Lindsay Clancey argument? I’m not really talking about the defense, whose argument is a complex justification for why she medically and legally qualifies for the insanity defense. I’m more asking about the people online arguing that she is a victim and her being prosecuted/this situation is an example of sexism. My wife told me about the case and is very anti Clancey. ChatGPT also gave what I felt is an unsatisfactory steelman. I don’t have a theory of mind for her supporters, and wish to rectify that.

Not a steelman and my reply time is limited so this may be more disjointed than usual, but I consider this more of a social phenomena than any mindfulness.

  • True Crime as entertainment is as popular as ever. It is female coded entertainment. Women being interested in people is not new but we should still #bantruecrime.
  • Thanks to the popularity of therapy, mental illness as an acceptable explanation for bad behaviors has become more popular than ever. Trauma, neurodivergent, mental health, etc. Not bad ideas, per se. But all complex concepts become bastardized by the public to some extent. This phenomena may be a cost to the spread of these ideas.
  • Female perps are extraordinary and draw attention.

I did not think much of Clancy mentions in proximity until I connected it to a response to another horror story from this Summer. At Electric Forest, an EDM music festival, a newborn was found dead in one of the portopotties. Last I heard, they are still looking for the mother. Anyway, the response to that story has some similarities to Clancy. Here is a reddit thread where by far the most popular comments are to rationalize or sympathize with the mother who had just days before left her baby to drown in filth.

It is a motivated explanation.

  • How/why could a mother do such a thing?
  • Maybe it was a crypto pregnancy. Maybe she was on drugs and didn't notice. Maybe she thought the baby was dead. Maybe the husband abused her, maybe he did it. Poor thing.

Uncertainty is replaced by a moral position that pushes away any uncomfortable possibility that a woman might just be fucked up, irresponsible, and decided to not deal with an inconvenient "problem." The Clancy case and this festival case are very different, but the social dynamics pushing a generous consensus towards the accused are not. Might also be worth stating that attitudes towards neonaticide vary between cultures and across time.

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