Lindsay Clancy Trial: Are Women 'Children of a Larger Growth'?

The specter of Lindsay Clancy's trial defenders is a reminder that harridans, termagants, and gorgons are nothing new.

Selwyn Duke | September 15, 2026

“How do you write women so well?” novelist Melvin Udall was asked in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets. “I think of a man,” he replied, “and I take away reason and accountability.” This comes to mind while pondering the Lindsay Clancy situation.

Oh, I’m not currently editorializing on whether she had a psychotic break when brutally killing her three little ones.

What I find more interesting, as I often do, is a bigger picture. It relates to a line from a letter Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, wrote to his son in 1748. To wit:

Women … are only children of a larger growth …

Women … are only children of a larger growth …

I know, he was a “dead white male” opining when America was still a colony. But here’s the thing:

This is precisely how many men and women treat females today: as “children of a larger growth.”

The Clancy drama is illustrative. The default assumption when a man kills his kids is that he’s just evil. No “My hormones made me do it” defense need apply (even though we always hear about the testosterone-aggression link). Fry ’im. But a woman?

Well, she’d ne-e-e-ver do such a thing if in her right mind. Something just must have been wrong with her. In fact, she might’ve even crumbled under the stress a man, or this Patriarchal Society™, put on her! She needs help and compassion — not punishment.

This is why, as research has shown, women get more lenient punishment than men do for the same crimes.

In other words, we explicitly and understandably state, and codify in law, that children won’t criminally be held to an adult standard. What isn’t explicitly stated or codified in law, but is just as real, is that we don’t hold women to an adult male standard.

Perhaps there’s a congruence, though, since so many women today behave utterly childishly. Most recently there were multitudinous female groupies who, despite knowing little about Clancy’s case, nonetheless passionately took the killer’s side. They’re likely, too, the type of women we’ve seen before.

the “Kavanope harpies” who hysterically misbehaved during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018. They “set women back 100 years,” lamented PJMedia commentator Megan Fox at the time (oh,........

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