But a major driving force behind the antipathy toward Patrick appears to be that women recognize the broad contours of his alleged behavior toward his wife—and they are pissed as hell about it. This is evident when you look at the social media comments on the TikToks accusing Patrick, which are filled with harrowing stories from women whose husbands treated them insensitively while they were struggling with postpartum anxiety or depression, left them for another woman while they were at their lowest, or even emotionally or physically abused them.
(As many TikTokkers have pointed out, Rusty Yates, the husband of Andrea Yates, the woman suffering from severe postpartum psychosis who drowned her children in 2001, reportedly urged her to get pregnant again while she was in recovery from postpartum depression after her fourth pregnancy, against her psychiatrist’s advisement.)
Many right-wing (male) pundits have been inclined to dismiss these comments as the ramblings of female hysterics, who are somehow using their own terrible experiences with new motherhood as an excuse to demonize men or exonerate Lindsay. In an X post from last week, far-right pundit Matt Walsh referred to Lindsay’s defenders as “psychotic women on the internet … outright exalting or celebrating” her, attributing this sentiment to “a deep sickness in our culture.” Others have criticized those casting suspicion on Patrick as frivolous misandrists, who are too obsessed with true-crime podcasts and millennial feminism to maintain a logical perspective on the case. (An astrology meme suggesting that Patrick killed his kids because he was a Gemini is often cited as evidence of this perspective.)
Walsh’s reading is an extremely shallow one. The fact that women are empathizing with Lindsay does not suggest they are “celebrating” or “exalting” her, let alone excusing her crimes. But what it does suggest, pretty damningly, is deep structural perversity—not just with the institution of maternal health care in this country, as so many commenters have pointed out, but with the state of motherhood in the United States. Lindsay’s suffering ran so deep that ultimately she thought the only way to end it was to end her own life, and take the lives of her children. Nobody seems to be asking why so many women empathize with that.