politics

They could just say they don't want women to vote because they tend to be more empathetic and compassionate and therefore vote against conservatives. Just tell the fucking truth for once.

Never mind the weekly family
annihilators who are not women and who never make the news. Same with any other issue about women. They don’t actually care unless they can exploit it to harm us while pretending otherwise.

The Lindsay Clancy case did generate some genuinely disturbing online rhetoric. There are, in fact, fringe conservative and MAGA-adjacent accounts calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment, and there is even a petition explicitly connecting the Clancy case to a demand to repeal women's suffrage. That part is real.

But that is very different from saying “MAGA is exploiting the Lindsay Clancy case to try to end women’s right to vote.” There is no evidence that the MAGA movement, the Republican Party, Congress, or any serious political organization is pursuing repeal of the 19th Amendment because of this case. What exists is a fringe online reaction that has been amplified because it is outrageous.

The actual court case has nothing whatsoever to do with women's voting rights. It was a criminal trial concerning whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for killing her three children. The jury ultimately deadlocked 11–1 and the judge declared a mistrial.

And frankly, I think the lone holdout juror deserves some credit for doing exactly what a juror is supposed to do: make his own judgment rather than surrender his position simply because eleven other people disagreed with him. Whether his interpretation of the evidence and reasonable-doubt standard was correct is a legitimate question. But unanimity exists precisely because one juror is allowed to disagree. The defense even attempted to have the juror removed, and the judge declined to do so.

That's not “MAGA ending women's voting rights.” That's the jury system functioning as designed, even if the result is frustrating.

The Nation is taking a real but extremely fringe online phenomenon and presenting it in its headline as though it represents an organized political effort to abolish women's suffrage. That is sensationalism, and it is dangerously close to misinformation because the headline encourages readers to infer a political movement that the evidence does not establish.

There is certainly room to criticize people who genuinely advocate repealing the 19th Amendment. I would criticize that position myself. But we should not turn a handful of inflammatory social-media accounts into “MAGA is trying to end women's right to vote.”

And if this is a moderated community, this is exactly where better moderation matters. A provocative political claim can be discussed, but the title should accurately describe what the linked article actually establishes. “Fringe MAGA-adjacent activists are calling for repeal of the 19th Amendment following the Clancy mistrial” would be a defensible description. “MAGA is exploiting the case to end women's right to vote” is a much broader claim that the evidence simply does not support.

Disclaimer: Nothing in my comment should be interpreted as support for MAGA, the political right, conservatism, or any effort whatsoever to repeal the 19th Amendment or restrict women's rights. I oppose those positions. My objection here is specifically to sensationalized and misleading claims that take fringe rhetoric and present it as an established political movement. I support equal rights and the fundamental human rights afforded to people regardless of sex, race, religion, political affiliation, or any other personal characteristic. Fact-checking exaggerated claims is not an endorsement of the people or ideology being discussed. It is simply an insistence that political arguments be based on what the evidence actually demonstrates.

I hate how people keep emphasizing “the one holdout was male!!!”. The other two men in the jury voted with the women. I get that there’s a lot of theories about how and why gender matters in this case, but the gender of the one holdout is really a meaningless piece of information. If gender had nothing to do with it, there would still be a 50/50 chance of the one holdout being a man.