Article and sub comments gush over a poor female doctor who murdered her baby and committed suicide. Would male murderers of babies who commit suicide receive the same treatment - or is it that depressed women are considered weaker minded and unaccountable?

Lasttoflinch · 2023-08-07T08:43:30+00:00

It is interesting how many commenters automactically assumed she was experiencing post-partum depression, despite the fact that it wasn't even mentioned in the article, and tried to justify her actions. While psychological issues can be mitigating factors, they do not absolve liability entirely unless there are exceptional circumstances. Some claimed that she was suffering from post-partum psychosis, which may result in her having no control over her killing. The article made no mention of this.

It's also interesting how people often sympathise with child killers with mental issues, but this sympathy is not extended to child sexual abusers who suffer from pedophilic disorder. I'm not sure about other places but in my country, if someone is convicted of child sexual abuse and this person suffers from pedophilic disorder, that is seen as an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one. This person would probably be sentenced more harshly because of it.

Cheesy_toe · 2023-08-07T08:45:22+00:00

The media and people always try to explain why mothers do this in the best possible light. Here’s a post from the uk subreddit with similar comments.

https://np.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/yydrpf/young_mother_27_behind_on_bills_and_rent_took/

I don’t have the link but I remember a father who killed himself and his child in a similar way but he was seen as a narcissist who viewed his child as an extension of himself. When a mother does this it’s because she thinks nobody will look after her child as well as herself.

Tardigrade_Disco · 2023-08-07T10:29:24+00:00

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. This is really standard behavior whenever a woman commits an absolute brutal crime. People some how victimize the offender. Always a lot of comments saying things like "if only they had gotten the help they needed." It's really disturbing. None of these people deserve our sympathy. This women is a disgusting child murdered. She's no better than any other family annihilator.

triple_skyfall · 2023-08-07T11:37:12+00:00

Wow! That thread you linked is insane! People are willing to justify literal infanticide as long as it's an attractive woman who did it. So disgusting.

Tardigrade_Disco · 2023-08-07T10:45:35+00:00

A post on r/conspiracy has a mix of unsubstantiated postpartum whatever claims and "the husband looks psycho, I bet he did it actually" claims.

PossumPalZoidberg · 2023-08-07T13:43:04+00:00

I have seen this before in the aloe mist comments section.

Rich woman drowned her two kids. Suffered no consequences beyond her own mental health. Treated as victim. Had sympathy of like 90 percent of top comments.

Weird and freaky

OddSeraph · 2023-08-07T14:36:16+00:00

Whoever wrote the article wrote made it seem like she went down in the line of duty.

Enzi42 · 2023-08-07T19:49:38+00:00

So I'm going to say something that might anger men and women both, but I think it's quite true and needs to be talked about in these cases.

It's something I've been thinking about for a few weeks now due to recent events and I guess this is good a place as any to say it.

Something I've noticed is that men and women seem to feel more "empathy" for the perpetrators of crimes that fall heavily along gender lines. To elaborate:

No man apart from the denizens of the darkest incel forums will defend stereotypical stranger-drags-woman-into-bushes assault. But many men will make excuses or try to at least add nuance to cases of sexual misconduct where the lines are blurred, where someone misinterpreted cues and overstepped boundaries, where there was a power imbalance that enabled coercion, etc.

The reason for that, in my opinion, is because we can put ourselves in the place of the man who is now the target of one of the worst accusations you can find yourself smeared with. We think of the times we as men, due to our role as the initiator, were placed in situations that could have gone badly.

And thus we give the benefit of the doubt or at least try to see things from that perspective. It's not blind tribalism as much as it is empathy. Women interpret this as defending rape, but it's much more complicated.

It's why cases like that of Aziz Ansari were so convoluted and part of why MeToo brought such a defensive reaction from men.

On the other hand...

Female circle-the-wagons in group bias is almost absolute and ironclad....except in a few select areas and sexual crimes are one of them.

I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with the scandal around the disgraced comedienne Colleen Ballinger and her inappropriate and borderline pedophilic behavior, but a lot of people leading the charge in exposing her are women who are disgusted by her actions.

Women are taught their entire lives about the horror of rape and sexually inappropriate behavior. They see it as the ultimate violation and very much internalize it as a bane of their existence that is their unique curse.

The correctness or morality of that mindset aside, it means that when they see another woman doing it, it incites a heavy reaction that strips away a lot of that bias.

It is one of the few things that I will give feminists despite my feelings towards them; they do not partake in the disgusting "Ooh, nice" mentality that surrounds tales of sexual impropriety and outright rape between women and men, apart from some truly sick people.

When it comes to child murder, this is where I think an inversion of the dynamics I just discussed occurs. It isn't all women of course, but I see a lot of women defend mothers who murder their children in the same way men "defend" accused rapists.

It isn't real defense but they try to add nuance and shades of gray to a horrific atrocity because they feel empathy for the killer. I'm not familiar with this particular case, but I am unwillingly familiar with the Lindsay Clancy case of the nurse who murdered her three children and I interacted with some of the massive female support base that monster gathered.

These women felt an attachment and sympathy for Clancy since they themselves were mothers and had struggled with harmful thoughts about their children. Any time you tried to point out the horror of what she did, they would say you were "Just another man who can't understand what women go through".

It isn't even just cases like Lindsay Clancy though. Even calculating and intelljgent child killers like Brittany Pilllkington who was radicalized by feminist belief to the point she murdered her three sons had female supporters who felt more pity than evulsion.

I think it's similar to men and sexual misconduct---those women see themselves in the killers and think of how they would feel if pushed into the mindset of taking their own children's lives and so they try to feel solidarity with the monsters who do.

Meanwhile men feel little to no sympathy for something that kills children regardless of how pretty and sympathize its outer appearance and backstory may be. So women see us as cold and heartless because we "just don't get it".

Personally I think there is a galaxy of difference between men asking for nuance in MeToo style cases and people who downplay the murder of children but I think there is a framework behind the madness that can be understood and thus countered.

Novel-Tip-7570 · 2023-08-10T08:26:11+00:00

I just can't imagine a man getting sympathy for the same thing, even if it was proven that he had serious mental health issues.

Marty-the-monkey · 2023-08-07T12:49:07+00:00

I think cases like the tragedy of Chris Benoit illustrate that people who commit murder suicide are met with similar feelings of horror and sympathy (i don't know if that's the right word to use) regardless of gender.

In general I think we have come a long way (but in no way far enough) in how we look at depression and it seems (to me) to be an area where there is sympathy towards people regardless of gender.

G_E_E_S_E · 2023-08-07T16:19:15+00:00

You guys have the right idea, wrong response. Yes, there is an empathy gap, but removing empathy from women isn’t the way to close it. The answer is showing men more empathy. Empathy is not a limited resource.

This is more than likely a case of postpartum psychosis even though that hasn’t been confirmed yet. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Unless details to the contrary come out, compassion is the appropriate response.

Is it frustrating that a man in this situation likely wouldn’t receive the same response? Hell yeah. The way to combat that is to speak out for men, not against women. Show support on the next article you see about a tragic outcome of a man’s mental health crisis. Raise awareness about male suicide, and what can be done to prevent it. That’s when the double standard needs to be brought up.

Current_Finding_4066 · 2023-08-07T08:54:43+00:00

How is this mens issue?

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