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DEAR FELLOW MEN: You’re making us all look like emotionally-stunted meatheads over this Lindsay Clancy thing
Tracey's takes are always interesting to me, and I enjoy his writing because I often find myself on either side of his opinions on a case by case basis. This time, I'm somewhat against him.
I don't doubt that plenty of men have had less than respectable takes on this case, but the far-and-away more interesting story surrounding this case is the social media response from women at large.
Tracey seems particularly focused on the first-degree conviction that the state is trying to prove, but that's not so interesting to me. Whether she spends 50 years behind bars or 50 years in a mental institute doesn't make a difference to me, really.
I guess my contribution to this is just the observation that what you think is worth talking about and what you think can be ignored is the essence of culture war. Or, put more simply, the culture war is the debate over our unstated and unexamined assumptions about right and wrong, and its hard for us to even realize this is what we're doing in the moment because we're blinded by the emotional flares of the object-level debate.
lulz. Without even opening the article - what a soy, white knighty headline. I basically agree with your point - Anyone lokoing at any of the discourse around this case, and coming away with the hot take that this is a good opprotunity to lecture men, needs to get their head out of their ass out of 2016 tumber.
At least, with that sort of tone. The hectoring holier-than-though approach with the smattering of profanity is only slightly less condescending than the "silence you whippersnapper your wiser elder is speaking, sit and absorb the lecture" stance that certain boomers take.
What I've noticed on twitter that its largely men having a dialogue amongst each other and FOR ONCE forming a coordinated response that is directly oppositional to the female demands and tearful entreaties, and the actual conflict is occurring where females of various ideological stripes are slamming into a wall of indifference when they try and pry some men to admit sympathy for their position.
And in that light, Mr. Tracey here is creating an opening in the shield wall and basically trying to convince men to grant the requested concessions... under the guise of a cry for civility/respectability. Or so I read it.
Maybe that is uncharitable.
Apparently the discussion around the trial prevented at least one marriage from occurring. I am fairly credulous that this is a real story. And if so, you can extrapolate to more relationships ending because of the situation. The story is not solely about what Clancey did and her motives (or lack thereof) anymore. It is exposing information that men, both individually and collectively, have to decide how to respond.
Anyhow, while we're on the topic of female homicide suspects, here's a breaking story about a (legally adult) daughter taking out a hit on her own mother. There's far more to unpack in there than I am willing to touch right now... but I just ask are 'we' dudes allowed to discuss how psychotic this is:
and perhaps discuss ways that we might curb the urge to such incidents in the future, Michael? How much respect are we to have for the actions of this young woman who was simply trying to avoid getting kicked out of the house? The mother was allegedly racist, too!
Old enough to vote, old enough to swing. Some cases are easy and, assuming that she was indeed a co-conspirator, the Dutcher case is one of them. I don't see why you are comparing it to an infanticide.
Mothers who kill their children is one of the absolutely classic hard cases - not because it isn't heinous, but because anyone who has been a mother, or even an involved father, bellyfeels that
In England, a separate crime of infanticide (with the same range of sentences as manslaughter) was carved out of murder in 1922 because all murders were capital back then and nobody wanted to hang women for it. It is possibly significant that the law passes just after women got the vote and started serving on juries, but probably not given:
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