“Lindsay Clancy... you are a f****** hero, you are divine feminine rising… you are goddess incarnate woman... You are an inspiration... f*** patriarchy"
[Asterisks not in the original.]
This whole case has been reminding me of Medea ever since it first came to our collective attention. The invocation of divinity and goddesses reinforces that; Medea was a descendant of Helios and various Oceanids, and in the famous play by Euripides her child-murders were explicitly endorsed by Helios who sent a fiery chariot to escort her away from any mortal punishments.
Several of Clancy's jurors have expressed sentiments placing themselves in the divine position of endorsing her action and insulating her from any mortal punishments. It is worth recognizing that this is an ancient instinct that has persisted throughout the history of Western civilization rather than a contemporary moral panic.
I do not understand the internal chain of thought that brings people to the conclusion that what Clancy (and perhaps others who kill their children) did was a positive good and a way to "stand up" to some social force. A form of revenge, momentary frustration ("he would not stop crying! I didn't mean to shake him that hard"), true permanent insanity, those make sense of a sort. What is being reported in the various media? I truly do not follow the internal logic or rationalizing chain, nor do I care to.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
I don't know any of the people involved; my sense of the argument from divine justice (especially 'the divine feminine') is that the gods have given women special power over the children they mother, and they can give and take away with equal justice provided they are adequately provoked. Medea's provocation was, for Euripides, that Jason forsake her and married another after she had given him half-divine children, which she then revoked (after murdering his wife with poison); what the provocation here was has been the subject of a great deal of Tik Tok commentary, but many of them seem convinced that there was a sufficient one.
DeleteI don't know. My dad always told us...Boys, I brought you into this world, I can take you out.
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