Part of my job here at World-Weary involves keeping a finger on the pulse of the public discourse.
Gotta keep watch on the Overton Window, y’know? Go on, I said the thing, take a shot.
For those who don’t know, the Overton Window is basically a fancy term for ‘what it’s okay to say in public.’ Things outside the Window are not okay. Things within the Window can be said out loud without the ladies at the local knitting circle clutching their pearls and fainting dead away.
It used to be that gay marriage was outside the Window. Now, it’s solidly centred inside the Overton Window, and there’s very little public stigma around being openly gay.
Apart from a few scattered assholes on the internet, but who cares about them? The MAGA cult can fuck off.
Then there came a new trendy topic that has everybody’s tongue wagging on the internet. A woman claiming serious psychiatric distress was left alone with her three kids. The unthinkable happened, and she allegedly took their lives before attempting to take her own.
Needless to say, this is a horrific crime. Needless to say, the murder of three little children is completely inexcusable.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Until mental healthcare catches up, it won’t be the last.
Many people with uteruses, especially people who have given birth, who have experienced the many outrageously catastrophic things that can go wrong with hormone imbalances, are expressing empathy and sadness over this.
Empathy for a person in the throes of intense mental illness who, at least going by the information we have right now, was not in her right state of mind. She did something utterly horrific and indefensible, but at a time when her brain was literally broken.
I want to be clear, I am not here to litigate guilt. I’m not on the jury, I’m not a judge, I have no part in this trial. Rather, I’d like to discuss the issues cropping up around this case.
The discussion of women’s rights and whether this single case, and the public response to it, is evidence that those rights should be taken away.
Since the Clancy trial started, I haven’t gone a single day without seeing some asshole claiming that women are all ‘defending child killers,’ that we have the intellectual level of children, and that we shouldn’t be trusted with responsibilities of any kind.
The discussion around women’s rights hasn’t been great lately, but even I was surprised by the level of misogynistic vitriol I’ve been seeing in right-wing spaces.
One woman is being used as a scapegoat to make all women out to be evil monsters. Anyone expressing sympathy for her illness is being painted as if they, too, pose a threat to children and show you ‘the state of women these days.’
I gotta say, guys. When’s the last time you got this up in arms over a male family annihilator? I’ll bet never, because it doesn’t fit your narrative.
The narrative that women are lesser, inferior beings who need to be controlled.
This is one of those subjects that a lot of people are going to be afraid to touch.
I’m not going to back down from it just because it’s a little controversial right now. Challenging these narratives and pushing back is how we shift the Overton Window back into line — there are people actively advocating for change in the wrong direction, and someone needs to be a door stopper.
When narratives are being constructed to normalize bigotry and misogyny, we can’t afford to ignore it. The consequences for those of us in the crosshairs can be severe.
Even just this morning I ran face first into several posts, ostensibly made by both men and women, stating that they support repealing the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution based on women’s reaction to this case.
Basically, they say that women expressing their concerns about the mental health aspect of this case and wondering if she was appropriately cared for means that women don’t have the emotional or mental maturity to vote.
There are people — and bots — on the internet saying that if men hear their wives or girlfriends expressing these concerns or their empathy for mental health struggles, that those men should leave or seek divorce because ‘their children aren’t safe.’
It mirrors the discussions of women and LGBTQ+ people early on in Trump’s term where people debated leaving their husbands if they voted for Trump.
Because a vote for Trump indicated a lack of respect for human rights and a serious difference in morality, not to mention the clear indication that misogyny was, at the very least, not a deal breaker for a President.
From that perspective, I see where this talking point is coming from.
But let’s be clear, this is not the same thing. A vote for the actual President of the United States is very, very different from an opinion around one woman’s criminal trial.
One impacts everything from the law to the price of groceries to human rights and human lives in and outside of the United States, and the other is just one criminal trial.
One criminal murder trial does not start wars with Iran or obliterate the economy.
And yet, the refrain is constant. If women can’t be logical about this one case, then they can’t be logical at all and they shouldn’t get to vote in elections moving forward.
They aren’t responsible enough.
That’s rich, lads. Extremely rich. Once again, I could point to millions of cases of male perpetrators found guilty of killing their entire families. I could point to cases of male rapists going to prison and being defended by millions of men online.
In the case of violent domestic abusers, they even find a way to blame women for that — they say she should have chosen better, or she should have left. Being beaten up, raped, or murdered is her own fault for being stupid.
But nobody ever talks about the percentages of violent crimes perpetrated by cisgender men and claims that men shouldn’t get the right to vote.
Because men are above that kind of deliberation. It’s only we lesser, feminine creatures who need to prove we deserve suffrage.
This is just one of many things being used to justify this potential stripping of the right to vote.
The discourse on women’s intellect has gotten vicious.
Everything from extolling the virtue of man as leader and woman as submissive helpmate, the stupidity of women ‘fighting nature’ by trying to break out of the patriarchal mode, the supposed ‘lack of accountability’ and so forth.
If patriarchy was ‘natural’ and women were naturally obedient and submissive, if that lifestyle supposedly makes us happy, then why did feminism crop up as a movement at all?
Why do you have to fight so hard to keep us in line if it’s ‘natural?’
Women are being hated on publicly for everything from single motherhood — how dare she seek divorce when unhappy in a marriage — to how we dress. Modesty is becoming a byword again, and is being painted as self-respect.
The tradwife is becoming the ideal in some circles and bleeding out into the wider cultural view. I have my thoughts about that, as I’ve expressed in the past.
The Tradwife Trend: The Far-Right Standard for the Ideal Woman
It turns out that wedding planning is a pretty complicated affair.
In effect, the idea of women having the agency to determine for ourselves how we want to live is being painted as a bad thing.
That if we can’t make good decisions, then we need to outsource our lives to the people who can. Namely, the men in our lives. Assuming there are any — these guys don’t think lesbians or aces are real, apparently.
Or they think their magic penises can ‘fix’ them.
These guys also have a lot in common with the whole ‘passport bro’ movement. Once again, we’ve talked about them. It’s toxic as hell, extremely predatory, and just another outgrowth of the manosphere that took on a life of its own.
It’s the idea that ‘western’ women are broken, no longer appropriately feminine and that in order to find a ‘good wife’, young men need to travel to more traditional and conservative countries.
They advocate going abroad to find a girl that they can marry, then take back to their home country and force to assimilate to the man’s culture. Apparently they have entire chat rooms and Reddit threads online dedicated to discussing where to go for submissive, traditional wives.
They also rate the hotness of various ethnic groups.
It’s exactly as gross as you think.
Passport Bros: Misogyny on a World Tour
Returning home from a long vacation can create a little bit of culture shock.
In short, there are several subcultures on the internet these days that are linked to the current American government, who wield substantial influence over the people in positions of power, and who spread those ideals online.
And when something is memed to death online, it spreads far and away outside of the country of its origin.
Social media does not respect boundaries on a map. Like a virus, posts jump from person to person based on shares, restacks, links and engagement.
Online, we have no nations. The internet has an Overton Window of its own that slides wildly based on the attention-grabbing headline of the day.
The cultural shifts follow.
Among those things being demonized right now by the American right-wing are no fault divorce, and of course, abortion.
Yes, we’re going there. We have to; these two arguments are heavily based on controlling women and the narratives being pushed right now will absolutely be used to push these cases.
In fact, they already are.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen abortion be brought up in connection to the Lindsay Clancy case, with people talking about how ‘Liberal women’ are defending a child killer because they want the right to kill their children, too.
How abortion is murder, and how we should have known this is where it would go.
They’re trying very hard to build a connection, and unfortunately, it’s gaining traction.
Likewise, this is coming at a time when many right-wing men are fighting hard to get the idea of no-fault divorce into the spotlight. They post memes and lengthy rants about how men sacrifice their happiness to provide for their families, but women will sacrifice their families to gain happiness for themselves.
As in, if your wife leaves you, it’s because she’s shallow and can’t see your true worth as a provider.
Fellas, listen — no-fault divorce is a literal life saver. Nobody should want it to go away. In the days before it was signed into law, the only way people had to escape an unhappy marriage was if the other person died.
We already have far too many cases of spousal murder, do we want to make that worse?
But to them, that doesn’t even enter the conversation. Because the reason they want to block no-fault divorce is the same reason they want to end reproductive rights. They want to be able to control their wives.
They want the power. They want to have authority over her, to dictate what she does with her body, where she can live, what her name is — oh, they hate that women don’t need to change our names anymore.
I didn’t change mine when I married, I kept my family name. I’ll bet somebody will be triggered by that.
They equate total submission with respect, and a woman’s agency as a refusal to ‘take accountability.’
As far as I can tell, they mean that a woman should accept the negative consequences of her choices, such as abuse or an unhappy life, rather than trying to better her situation.
She shouldn’t seek to end an unwanted pregnancy, nor seek life-saving abortions when she’s in medical distress. If she didn’t want to get pregnant, she shouldn’t have had sex.
Take accountability and be a mother.
She shouldn’t seek to divorce her husband, even if he turned into a different person once he had a ring on her finger. She should have chosen better in the first place and never married him.
Take accountability and be a good wife.
They conflate a woman’s quiet obedience in the face of suffering with purity and goodness, and her desire to live well on her own terms as being overly independent and bad.
She’s not feminine if she isn’t willing to struggle to make things work.
I’m sorry, but as a cisgender woman, I do not accept their view.
I am an equal human being, and I rule my own life.
And I’m not alone — there’s a reason feminism exists, why women literally fought for the right to vote, the right to divorce, the right to abortion, the right to have our own bank and credit accounts, to own property and to not be property.
We are human, and we deserve that basic right to determine our own lives.
In closing, I want to take a moment to pay my respects for the dead.
We began this piece by talking about the discourse surrounding a murder trial, and in this case, the victims were three tiny children who died horribly, suffering strangulation, allegedly at the hands of their own mother.
Again, I am not here to litigate the case or discuss guilt or have a debate about criminal justice.
I am however going to say that nothing we discussed here takes away from the horror of what was done to these little ones, and my heart is broken for them and for their loved ones.
This is something that cannot be taken back, nor undone, nor is it a wound that will ever heal in the hearts of those left behind. Three lives ended in tragedy, without the chance to experience the wider world nor reach those achievements that so many of us dream up for ourselves.
Who knows what they would have gone on to do with their lives? We will never find out, and that’s heartbreaking.
I sincerely hope that their loved ones left behind can live long, happy lives and cherish their memories as they deserve.
In this storm of using her case to build this narrative against women as a whole, the lives of Cora, Dawson and Callan are being used as tokens. “Say their names,” the bots say, while they use their murder as a cudgel to try and strip the rights away from all women.
You don’t get to claim empathy for murdered children and then use their case for your political gain.
You don’t get to use their murder as a token to claim all women are evil, that we don’t deserve rights, and then turn around and say that our lack of love for these babies is the reason why.
If you want to respect them, then respect them. Don’t weaponize their suffering to win your screwed up battle.
They have suffered enough. And frankly, so have we all.
Solidarity wins.
As a former social worker for the adult mental health service (Not US) it breaks my heart that a woman was left in such a state of distress that she believed that the only solution she had was to strangle her own children.