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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6205 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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The subjective experience of infanticide

I am not American, but I couldn't help but hear about the Lindsay Clancy trial and the subsequent controversy about the jurors.

What I personally found interesting was not necessarily the case itself; as others have pointed out, LC is not a particularly novel case and women getting kid gloves treatment for infanticide is nothing new and literally enshrined in the law of several Anglosphere countries; but rather the reactions of different parties and of the jurors.

Violence against children has, understandably, a massive cultural taboo attached to it. It's de facto banned in entertainment unless portrayed as tragic and child killers are said to get particularly bad treatment in prisons. In the ubiquitous cultural environment of society, one is implicitly taught that it is a moral abhorrence of the highest order to harm or even kill a child. At least that was my experience.

So I think for many it is shocking to see that both the legal system and a decently large group of women seem to be able to excuse this. I think what many people, particularly men are experiencing is a state of misalignment, where a system that is built to enact, at least in principle, justice seems to be fine with something that we all thought to understand as a moral abhorrence of the highest order.

I personally thought it was insightful to think about both the difference in moral values of those that would excuse child killing women and what their subjective experience of violence would be.

I believe for the now known to be black hold-out juror, violence is an immediate and known quantity. When hearing about the killings, he envisioned what it would take to brutally murder 3 children, how much force it would take, the anger one would feel. Hence the reenactment with the water bottle. The world of that juror is probably a physical one and as a male one is quite well acquainted to violence, even if in a minor form. So the heinousness and violence of the act takes on an immediate form. Also as a man societal rules seem unbending and strict; one does not get away with murder generally, though there are notable restrictions here too.

For the female juror and LC supporters, the world seems to take shape more in a form of social relations, of saying the right thing, of empathising and to be less charitable, of "luxury beliefs". The concept of a sociopathic or evil woman does not exist; society or her spouse must have done her wrong. The act of violence is far removed from subjective experience, at least physical violence. Indeed, the case is a way to advocate for the never-achieved and never-achievable emancipation of women. The law need not be unbending and strict, as we need to take the rights of the victim into account. The children are not perceived to be people deprived brutally of their right to life, but have been likened to "vases" being smashed during a tantrum.

I think what makes this such an incendiary case is that inferential gap between the two camps; for one, life is lived in the physical realm and the violence takes the forefront; for the other, life is lived in the realm of social relations and violence is not thought of. I personally find it repugnant that a legal system would find it hard to convince a person like LC, but apparently a decent chunk of the American people support her and child-killing is not such a taboo after all. Or maybe we have finally killed god enough that the sanctity of human life is being thrown to the wolves.

Violence against children has, understandably, a massive cultural taboo attached to it.

This seems like a case of an accidental alliance among different factions who often don't even realize that they're different factions except when things like abortion come up.

The pro-child, pro-life side people think that life is valuable and worth protecting for its own sake. Children are especially worth protecting because they are vulnerable. A child dying is bad because that child loses their ability to be alive in the future and do things and live a life. The terminal utility being lost from murder was the child's utility.

The pro-choice, pro adult-human-female, feminist, female-supremecist etc side thinks that women are valuable. Every child has a mother, most mothers love their children and experience deep suffering and loss, therefore killing a child usually causes lots of harm to a woman. Killing someone else's child is bad because it causes a woman to suffer. The terminal utility being lost is from women (because adult women are what they care about)

So the taboo "killing children is bad" is generally supported by both sides and the taboo is upheld for completely different reasons. When some serial killer or rapist goes around harming children they both rise up and say "this is bad". They both care, because they both perceive harm being done to someone they care about. But one faction's care is conditional on that child having a mother who loves them and is harmed, therefore when that no longer applies they flip. From the perspective of a pro-life person, this seems like a complete 180 that came out of nowhere, but the feminist is being consistent according to her own logic and sees attempts to condemn child-killing mothers as the 180 flip that came out of nowhere. You used to be on her side protecting mothers, but now suddenly you're trying to suppress women's rights.

The taboo seems so strong because both sides have very strong feelings, but the edge cases are different and so when it frays it frays hard.

The pro-choice, pro adult-human-female, feminist, female-supremecist etc side thinks that women are valuable. Every child has a mother, most mothers love their children and experience deep suffering and loss, therefore killing a child usually causes lots of harm to a woman

Yeah, part of me wants to see this as a caricature of feminist thought, but I am reminded of Hillary Clinton's famous claim which was something along the lines of women being the primary victims of war because they lose the men in their lives. It seems that there really is this attitude out there that men have no value except insofar as they offer value to women.

The quote:

Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children. Women are again the victims in crime and domestic violence as well. Throughout our hemisphere we have an epidemic of violence against women, even though there is no longer any organized warfare that puts women in the direct line of combat. But domestic violence is now recognized as being the most pervasive human rights violation in the world.

All she had to do was drop "the primary" and, motivated nitpicking aside, it would have been uncontroversial and at a minimum defensible. As a speech (presumably aimed at women) she could have used emphasis to convey that her focus was on women without explicitly disregarding men. Incredible lack of judgement.

Or if she had said "the primary victims of the aftermath of war" which seems to be what she is trying to say in the following sentences.

She's had plenty of time to say "that isn't what I meant", if that isn't what she meant.

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