Episode 548
there is a lot to say about true crime coverage of this case but from a feminist lens and a disability lens, this shit is rough. i think it depends on your perspective? "the commonwealth is doing the defense's job" is heavy here.
this feels like a larger conversation about how a system can fail a person based on the shuffling around of patients and medicines.
My first reaction to this was to blame Lindsay. My next reaction is to blame the doctors. My final reaction is to blame both the medical system AND the judicial system. Why is a jury deciding whether or not this woman is guilty? But further, why does any jury get a say in any person's guilt when it comes to misdiagnosis of mental illness? Is somebody truly guilty or innocent if a system fails them?
this leads me to this horrific piece written by Chris Bray called "The Story About Lindsay Clancy Being A Victim Comes From Deeper Roots Than 1960s Feminism" which is honestly a disgusting read tbh, it reeks with a hatred of women that makes my skin crawl. Bray's main argument (which I am not linking, sue me) discusses that feminism's impacts on our perception of motherhood is, and that there is a history of, women being made "victims and weak."
Bray writes: "Two historical moments defined women as weak, given to emotional collapse, and in need of benevolent intervention"
Here Bray is referring to 'historical moments' being moments in which similiar things have happened with women and their children. He discusses how this pairs in time with feminist movements, and discusses how feminism enables women to be seen as "weak."
Really this man is super creepy and makes my skin CRAWL
But I think this article (a) highlights comparable literary and historical perceptions of women's mental health (as i note earlier) and (b) calls women who have mental illness weak instead of strong. His articulations are one that highlight that a woman who is empowered is allowed to be lazy or a murderer under the guise of equality, which can be and is being applied to Clancy. This misogyny highlights a conservative attitude that has been brought to this case. The only reason it is getting as much attention as it is is because of the political climate and rise in conservative beliefs that are undermining women.
This "opinion piece" acts more as a horribly written literary criticism written by a devils advocate white boy in English 802 than a piece of journalism. He cites Charlotte Perkins Gilman's paper "Women and Economics" in relationship with her piece "The Yellow Wallpaper" which has drawn me to discussing this case at all. I remember reading The Yellow Wallpaper in high school and feeling frustration. I was an incredibly anxious and depressed high schooler, and this reflection of post-menopausal depression did not match my understanding of mental illness. It has been a while since I read this story, and this may be something I come back to and elaborate on later, but the experiences of the main character always mirrored psychosis symptoms AND depression, not just depression. My frustration spawns from a lack of discussion of psychosis symptoms at all in context to this text and real life.
Where Chris Bray's article fails is in its ability to truly explore the examples it has brought up. While the evidence it proposes is useful for me personally, the article simply shows you evidence and expects you to make your own connections between the examples while screaming at you that our family values are under attack. sigh.
By pairing the Lindsay Clancy case with The Yellow Wallpaper, it is not my intention to take all of Gilman's beliefs at face value, wherein Bray does. I do not think either that Gilman would agree with his perspectives on womanhood either. Although I disagree with Gilman that men are necessary to do work-- "The male human being is thousands of years in advance of the female in economic status. Speaking collectively, men produce and distribute wealth; and women receive it at their hands. As men hunt, fish, keep cattle, or raise corn, so do women eat game, fish, beef, or corn. As men go down to the sea in ships, and bring coffee and spices and silks and gems from far away, so do women partake of the coffee and spices and silks and gems the men bring," I think that going so far as to discredit Clancy's mental health struggles is a red herring.
Who is to say, Lindsey Clancy herself, is not a young woman who believes in the traditional family that Chris Bray emphasizes? Is Lindsey Clancy not a wife who was eager to bare three children and take care of them? Why would anybody put themselves through child birth three whole times if they did not believe in their role as a mother?
Does Gilman herself not articulate "The ground that women earn their living by domestic labor is instantly forsaken, and we are told that they obtain their livelihood as mothers. This is a peculiar position. We speak of it commonly enough, and often with deep feeling, but without due analysis."
I think that it is not anyone's role to say (other than a doctor) whether or not Clancy is innocent of her crimes. Someone who understands bipolar disorder intimately or knows how hormones change in the brain after child birth is way more qualified than you or me or Chris Bray or Charlotte Perkins Gilman. As someone who loves somebody who has bipolar disorder, and as somebody who has had to see this loved one go through psychosis, it took me a while to figure out that psychosis was occurring at all, and even after this was discerned, I felt myself in disbelief around it, because there is such intense stigma surrounding discussing of psychosis and psychopathy.
made a connection with The Conjuring in a funny way
status: 3. sprout