The unhinged fandom of Lindsay Clancy

Article here. Excerpt:

'In January 2023, five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan Clancy were strangled with exercise bands by their mother Lindsay, in their family home in Massachusetts. Lindsay then attempted to slash her throat and wrists and jumped out a second-floor window. Her husband, Patrick, found her when he returned from picking up a takeaway dinner and medicine for their daughter. He then found the bodies of his children in the basement.

Lindsay is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is currently on trial. Prosecutors say she planned the killings in advance and had sent her husband out on errands so she would have time to do so. Her defence team is arguing that she was not of sane mind, that she was in the grip of bipolar disorder and postpartum psychosis, and should not be held criminally responsible.

Surely the most terrible thing that could possibly happen has happened to this family. And yet somehow, ladies, we have managed to make it worse. I say ‘we’. I’m being imprecise. A particular group of women, spurred on by social media and what looks like a bottomless need for validation, has decided to make a saint out of Lindsay Clancy – of all people. And an even more deranged subgroup has decided that, actually, it was Patrick, the devastated father, who murdered the children and framed his wife.

Last week, a group of them even held a rally in support of Lindsay. Judging by their comments, the women interviewed by CNN at the supporters’ rally seemed to think that we have all been living in some kind of harsh, spartan, frontier world where it is demanded by patriarchy that women birth children in fields, alone, then pick up the still-wet sprog and hike across mountains while also making their husbands dinner.'