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Notes -
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.
I like your thesis but I would like to quibble with something else.
Maybe I live under a rock, but I've only seen TheMotte and X (because that's where I hang out) claim women are excusing this. Does excusing mean they buy the postpartum psychosis story? Is this that widespread? Where? I worry we're reacting to especially crazy online women and fairly normal women are like "LC be guilty".
(I do think MA law is peculiar enough that if you apply it strictly enough Clancy had a strong case, and that's probably more MA's fault than women in the jury, but I don't expect most supporters to argue these points)
If you look at the poll below, more women would convict Clancy than exonerate her, and of those would would exonerate her not all are necessarily just using arguments as soldiers to get a sister off.
The above being said, I suspect there is a big gap cohort wise. Given republicans support her being guilty more than democrats, I suspect the numbers for democratic women are more pro-Clancy. Similarly, I bet older women due to being more conservative probably are also more anti-Clancy than younger women.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you add everything up, the younger, and especially single, PMC women who make up so much of the filter bubbles of the people here may be very pro-Clancy and give people the false impression that “women support Clancy”.
Interestingly, I saw a lot of suggestions from the right (clearly influenced by the juror interviews) that the main pro-Clancy constituency is older leftist women. If true, I can think of a lot of reasons this might be so: more time since they've been children themselves, sour grapes about not having had children, in the generation most influenced by Ehrlichian antinatalism, uh, "witch archetype"...
Older women do not have a partisan fertility gap.
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