That dynamic was evident during Clancy’s trial. Women gathered outside the courthouse dressed in pink, carried signs saying “Believe,” and talked about their own struggles after childbirth. Many believe Clancy was profoundly ill, failed by the medical system, and shouldn’t be held criminally responsible if she was psychotic at the time. That’s a legitimate argument, and it’s essentially the question the jury couldn’t resolve when her trial ended in a mistrial. But believing Clancy was psychotic is very different from believing that what happened to her could have happened to you.

Postpartum depression affects roughly one in seven mothers. Postpartum psychosis is far rarer, occurring in only one or two per 1,000 births. Depression doesn’t simply become psychosis because it gets severe. Psychosis involves a loss of contact with reality, sometimes including delusions or hallucinations. Even then, most people who experience psychosis don’t become homicidal.

Those distinctions are important. Blurring them can leave mothers with postpartum depression fearing that their illness is the beginning of something far more dangerous when, for nearly all of them, it isn’t. In trying to reduce the stigma around postpartum mental illness, we may inadvertently create more of it.

Empathy doesn’t require erasing distinctions. We can recognize something familiar in another person’s suffering while acknowledging that her experience and actions may be profoundly different from our own. But once someone else’s story becomes our story, judgment gets harder. Questioning her can begin to feel like questioning ourselves.

We’ve turned “women supporting women” into a cultural virtue. Often it is one. Women have stood together against discrimination, abuse, and exclusion, sometimes when nobody else would stand with them. But solidarity loses its meaning when it becomes an obligation rather than choice. Solidarity can also become an expectation: Believe her. Defend her. Identify with her. Questioning another woman can start to look like betrayal.

This solidarity isn’t extended equally to all women. Consider Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer who became an advocate for sex-based eligibility in women’s sports after competing against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. Gaines says she is defending fairness and opportunities for female athletes. For doing so, she has faced intense criticism and accusations of intolerance. The very women we’re told should be heard and believed can quickly find that principle withdrawn when their views become inconvenient.

You can disagree with Gaines. But it’s difficult to miss the contradiction in a culture that celebrates women for finding their voices, then condemns some of them for what they say. “Women supporting women” can end up meaning women supporting the right women. At that point, solidarity starts looking a lot more like conformity.

NOBODY OWES MACKLEMORE A STADIUM

None of this settles what should happen to Clancy. Her mental state matters in determining criminal responsibility, and postpartum psychosis is a serious psychiatric emergency. Compassion for her doesn’t mean approving of what she did. But feeling for someone doesn’t require believing you could have been her, and sharing her sex doesn’t require taking her side.

Maybe the mistake is telling women they should “support women” in the first place. Women aren’t a team. They’re individuals. They can disagree, make bad decisions, hold unpopular opinions, and be wrong. Taking women seriously means allowing them to judge other women and to be judged themselves. Blind support isn’t respect. It’s the refusal to make distinctions.