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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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I realize this isn’t a top quality post, so I accept the judgement of the mods, but a mistrial has been declared in the case of Lindsay Clancy. Shes the woman in Massachusetts who admitted to killing her kids, but claims she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

The jury deliberated for seven days. Apparently, it came down to one male juror holding out against the other (nine female, two male) jurors. The belief is that he wanted to vote guilty. The jury reported to the judge that the holdout refused to follow the law regarding reasonable doubt, and the defense tried to have him removed. The judge refused. This morning, the judge declared a mistrial but gave defense one hour to get a stay from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Predictably, the online discourse is off the walls. X lifts the holdout up as a hero, while Reddit believes he (we know it’s a male because the defense said so) is an MRA/red piller and needs to have his phone searched.

Personally, I think she’s guilty of premeditated, cold blooded murder. That said, I get the postpartum argument, but am horrified by the defense of her and holding her up as some kind of hero.

I predict that the story’s popularity will lead to a measurable increase in filicide incidents. I don’t actually know enough about MA’s law to opine beyond that. The only novel thought I will add to the discussion is that IMO we should do more to make motherhood easy / comfortable / valued. There are evidently a lot of Clancyites in America who identify with her stresses and tribulations, signifying that there are many women who find motherhood too stressful, and the stress of motherhood is a simple equation: Skill + Purpose + Support.

Women want more status as mothers (which I’m all for) but are trying to get it by climbing on the graves of dead kids (which is despicable).

Women want more status as mothers

No, they want more privilege. "Status as mothers" is a strange excuse considering most of them aren't, but it fools people who think women are acting in good faith here (or "conservatives" for short).

In this case, we see they want the privilege to back out of being a mother at any time, not just before birth.

It's literally just the abortion debate, but post-partum this time. The male analog here is "I could never be a deadbeat dad, so I'll just kill everyone here because [insert Clancy's defenses here]".