Traumatic events can shatter the boundaries of acceptable discourse, forcing conversations once considered unthinkable into the open. We’re living through one of those moments now. Viral videos show large crowds of women rallying for Lindsay Clancy, with more than 31,000 now contributing more than $1 million to support a woman who methodically researched, planned, and then murdered her three children. Social media posts have gone viral with women identifying with the killer writing the phrase: “Same, Lindsay.” Until now, the feminist worldview has enjoyed universal protection and celebration, going unchallenged in elite and polite society. This event could change the prior consensus. At war with physiology, feminism teaches women to recoil from seeing motherhood as part of a woman’s identity. At best, it’s an optional life accessory. At worst, it’s received with resentment — an obstacle to self-actualization.
Clancy’s defense and defenders have focused on psychosis in an insanity defense. It should be asked whether any serial killer has not suffered from some amount of mental illness? We have to face the reality that the TikTok mob of women defending her is animated by something more dangerous in the cultural air. Feminism has long had an outright hostility to motherhood. It recoils from the notion that women should see being a mother as a core part of their identity. It’s this hostility toward biology that animates and justifies the wider empathy tantrum occurring in plain sight on social media, on GoFundMe, and in front of that courthouse. If motherhood and children are a burden, why isn’t any mother justified, with the right amount of emotional distress, to free herself of that burden? Certainly, this is part of the intellectual justification for abortion. Feminism is a core part of today’s liberalism. Polling now shows unhappiness among liberal women is endemic. Conservative women are, according to the 2024 American Family Survey, three times as likely to say they are completely satisfied with life. It’s not masculinity, but instead feminist ideation, that is toxic. Lindsay Clancy listens to testimony during her murder trial in Plymouth Superior Court, on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026 in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr /The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
