“How do you write about 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…” 

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. 

Examples are:

• the “Kavanope harpies” who hysterically misbehaved during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in 2018. They “set women back 100 years,” lamented commentator Megan Fox at the time (oh, if only);
• the “Shout Your Abortion” movement, which mixes childishness with pure evil;
• “purple-and-pink-haired”-type, body-pierced female teachers boasting online about indoctrinating children with “gender” ideology; 
• the female-heavy, college-campus shout-downs of “keep men out of women’s sports” speakers;
• the women who, distraught over President Trump’s 2024 victory, were screaming en masse at Lake Michigan. (In fairness, Michigan did give its electoral votes to Trump);
• the pink pu***-hatted “Women’s March” movement; and
• the heavily female post-Dobbs-leak protests (often at SCOTUS justices’ homes).

Perhaps such behavior isn’t surprising, though, since 2020 research found that 56 percent of young, liberal, white women have been diagnosed with some form of “mental health” problem. (I know—you’re shocked.)

Now, this frightful feminine female folderol is not entirely new. Winston Churchill was physically attacked by insufferable suffragettes in the early 1900s, and Roman statesman Cato the Elder complained about unreasonable women protesting in 195 B.C. Yet this phenomenon has in our time been put on (estrogenic) steroids. 

Thus did the aforementioned Megan Fox write that the anti-Kavanaugh “screeching gorgons’” behavior “has called into serious question their fitness to even participate in any serious matter of state.” Finally inspired to investigate the arguments against giving women the vote, Fox related a passage from a 1912 British parliamentary debate. Viscount Helmsley, she wrote, “nailed it” when saying:

The way in which certain types of women, easily recognised, have acted in the last year or two, especially in the last few weeks, lends a great deal of colour to the argument that the mental equilibrium of the female sex is not as stable as the mental equilibrium of the male sex… It seems to me that this House should remember that if the vote is given to women[,] those who will take the greatest part in politics will not be the quiet, retiring, constitutional women … but those very militant women who have brought so much disgrace and discredit upon their sex. It would introduce a disastrous element into our public life … it is little short of nauseating and disgusting to the whole sex…

Interestingly, this perfectly aligns with Duke’s First Rule of Women in Politics, which relates a sort of Catch-22. That is:

Insofar as women are in politics, they should be moral, traditional women. But traditional women aren’t found in politics. 

They’re at home raising children. 

This is as a general rule—with perhaps the occasional exception proving it—absolutely true. A cursory examination of our female legislators makes this abundantly clear, too. It’s generally abnormal women who enter characteristically masculine fields such as politics (and male politicians are abnormal enough without the gals spiking the abnormality quotient.)

Of course, I’ll be called a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal for writing the above. (Though I suspect those much-maligned Neanderthals knew, ahem, the difference between boys and girls.) But feminists and others thus disposed should check themselves: They don’t believe in “equality” any more than I do. How’s that? 

Commentator Katie El-Diwany noted the hypocrisy in 2018. “There is more than plenty of talk about the dearth of women in science, in engineering, in upper management positions, and as CEOs,” she wrote. “But there is no one asking: where are all the female garbage-collectors, the female elevator technicians, the female landscape laborers, the female oil rig workers?” 

“All of this reveals that feminist clamoring for ‘equal representation’ is not about equality at all,” El-Diwany concluded. “It is about power and prestige.” 

No question. Feminists (and their enablers) will complain about how there aren’t enough actresses playing leading-role heroines and fighting on film. Yet they never demand equal treatment in, oh, let’s say, what could lead to real combat: being subject to the draft. (And even once in the military, women’s roles aren’t as dangerous on average.)

In contrast, there was congruence in pre-suffrage days: Women weren’t required to go to war—but they also couldn’t vote for politicians who might plunge us into a war. They had less responsibility because they had less authority. 

Now they have equal (and perhaps greater?) authority, but still lesser responsibility—inclusive of not having to fight, bleed and die for the nation when situationally necessary. Can anyone honestly say he believes in equality while perpetuating this double standard? 

Then there are all those aghast at seeing “trans” males entering females’ sports. I take a back seat to no one on this. I was inveighing against the “trans” agenda back in 2009 (and was criticized for it at the time by conservatives). Still, it’s hard being enthusiastic because, well, feminists are just being hoist with their own petard. 

Anyone remember when they demanded access to males’ sports (e.g., boys’ wrestling teams) and other male spaces? In fact, even while shouts of “Girls spaces are for girls!” are registered, girls are still cheered when entering “boys’” spaces. This is all while touting “Equality!”—and people barely notice the contradiction. 

This reflects how so many tacitly align themselves with Lord Chesterfield’s belief. Women today are not only treated like children, but spoiled, coddled, pandered to children. Feminists want equal authority without the ultimate responsibility. They get it. They want girls’ sports for girls and, when convenient, “boys’” sports for girls, too. They get it. They want barriers they dislike ripped down and barriers benefiting them retained. They get it. 

I would say “Make up your mind”; I would say, “You can’t have it both ways.” Except there’s this:

I know they can. 

Feminists have had it both ways for at least a century and, in reality, it likely won’t end until and unless our civilization does—and then reboots. 

After all, let’s face it: In America today children are a most favored class. 

©2026 Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.

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