Pregnant NYC Bike "Karen" was the victim, not the agressor

[littleripper]

Trial by social media for a pregnant woman who cried when a man tried to steal the bike she's hired is tried and hung by social media, and put on unpaid leave from her job, with no evidence or investigation:

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a43920956/pregnant-nyc-karen-on-video-trying-to-steal-a-black-mans-citi-bike/

https://news.yahoo.com/receipts-show-hospital-worker-accused-170920174.html

It turns out she had paid for the bike and he has no evidence he paid. But he is not the subject of the internets wrath, no consequences for him.

I hope she takes her employers to court and wins a massive settlement. Surreal levels of misogyny and hatred directed to a pregnant healthcare worker who did nothing wrong at all.

Will this ever be recognised for what it is?

[Walrussy]

I just saw this on Twitter. A pregnant nurse who had the audacity to get upset when a bunch of men surrounded her and tried to take the bike she was on. No one knew at the beginning who had the receipt but she's the one who gets ripped apart on social media. Fucking outrageous.

[littleripper]

The Hospital she works at suspended her!!!

[littleripper]

with no pay!

I hope sues this righteous bastards too:

[QuintanaRoo]

The men seemed adamant in the video it was their bike as well so I think it started off as a genuine misunderstanding. I wonder if there was a fault with the app. I mean the men should never have surrounded her and tried to get her off the bike but I got the important they weren’t trying to “Rob” the bike off her. He says he can evidence he paid for it as well. But I mean all this over a hire bike.

the sad thing is because she’s white and they’re not everyone automatically seems to have labelled her a racist and her employer has a kneejerk reaction and suspends her. I imagine she will be able to Sue her employer because effectively they have worsened the witch-hunt against her as people will think she must have done something wrong.

[BabyStopCryin]

I have seen a theme of videos doing the rounds - entitled young men acting like complete fools (walking into a complete strangers house, pouring water from a petrol can over someone’s car, picking ice cream cartons from store freezers and licking the contents before putting them back…) seemingly with the sole intent to get into a argument and film it for likes. Of course the actual victims are always the ‘baddies’.

The poor guy with his small kid looked pretty scared when he confronted these guys who marked into his home. this wouldn’t try that one in America.

[QuintanaRoo]

I suppose even though it’s only a hire bike if it’s on your account and not returned you get a bill of over 1k. So I can see why if they both believed it was theirs they didn’t want to give it up….shame they didn’t both calm down and maybe relock the bike, cancel the hire and start again. 🤷‍♀️

[littleripper]

He has not produced a receipt at any stage and has disappeared, which tells it's own story. They were trying to steal a pregnant woman's rental bike by the looks of things, of course he may appear with a receipt soon but he will know what is happening in the media and is choosing to lie low.

[MissLucyEyelesbarrow]

Predictable to anyone with half a brain. Lone, pregnant women of any race do not confront a group of young men of any race. It is SM that has turned it into a racially divisive issue.

[TrudyProud]

@littleripper @Walrussy you do realise the nurse lied ? The boys had already paid for and hired the bikes.
The nurse tried to steal the bike from them.
Said nurse then weaponised her white woman tears in an attempt to perpetuate said theft.

She deserves to be sacked not just suspended. In a recent past her crying wolf could have resulted in the murder of those black boys. Think back to Emmett Till

[TrudyProud]

@littleripper

He has not produced a receipt at any stage and has disappeared, which tells it's own story. They were trying to steal a pregnant woman's rental bike by the looks of things, of course he may appear with a receipt soon but he will know what is happening in the media and is choosing to lie low.

Why should he produce proof. He was already on the bike that he hired. Where is her proof that a) she hired the bike b) she's pregnant- where's the dated ultrasound ? Not that pregnancy would absolve her behaviour
^
^
The nurse knew she was in the wrong else why would she try to hide her identity? She took off her lanyard because she knew she was in the wrong and the white saviour man who came to bully the boys into giving up the bike advocate for the lying woman realised she was lying and took a step backwards.

It's not lost on me how quickly her waterworks stopped. She's a racist woman who was recorded on tape and she deserves everything she gets as a result

[MissLucyEyelesbarrow]

@TrudyProud

@littleripper @Walrussy you do realise the nurse lied ? The boys had already paid for and hired the bikes.
The nurse tried to steal the bike from them.
Said nurse then weaponised her white woman tears in an attempt to perpetuate said theft.

She deserves to be sacked not just suspended. In a recent past her crying wolf could have resulted in the murder of those black boys. Think back to Emmett Till

Except none of that is true.

And the fact that terrible, unjust violence is/has been inflicted on black men does not preclude women complaining about someone taking their bike, FFS. Have you any idea how much violence is inflicted on women (of all races) by men? By your rationale, women should be allowed to do whatever they want to men, and the men should not be allowed to complain. But it never works like that, does it? Somehow women are always to blame for male violence.

[TrudyProud]

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow which part of what I wrote isn't true?

• the boys paid for the bike ✅
• the nurse tried to take the bike ✅
• said nurse weaponised her tears to get her way ✅
• the nurse walked into a group of boys and attempted to create hysteria and then started crying ✅

You are a de-railer or troll because at not any point did I condone violence against women.

What I am doing is condemning a white woman nurse who weaponised her tears and opened up the possibility of violence being inflicted on some boys who were minding their business

[littleripper]

@TrudyProud

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow which part of what I wrote isn't true?

• the boys paid for the bike ✅
• the nurse tried to take the bike ✅
• said nurse weaponised her tears to get her way ✅
• the nurse walked into a group of boys and attempted to create hysteria and then started crying ✅

You are a de-railer or troll because at not any point did I condone violence against women.

What I am doing is condemning a white woman nurse who weaponised her tears and opened up the possibility of violence being inflicted on some boys who were minding their business

How do you the men paid for their bike? They have gone to ground and not confirmed this.

Calling black men 'boys' is racist, why are you calling them children?

[littleripper]

@TrudyProud : One day in the 1930s, a very young Martin Luther King Jr. was sitting in the passenger seat of his father's car when his dad accidentally ran a stop sign on a Georgia street.
"A policeman pulled up to the car and said: 'All right, boy, pull over and let me see your license,' " King remembered in an essay years later. "My father replied indignantly, 'I'm no boy.' Then, pointing to me, 'This is a boy. I am a man, and until you call me one, I will not listen to you.' "
The officer was so flummoxed that he quickly wrote out the traffic ticket and hurried away.
Some years later, when King was a civil rights activist writing from a Birmingham, Ala., jail cell, he would point to that word — boy — as one of Jim Crow's ritual humiliations, braided into the racial etiquette of the post-slavery South. It was yet another way — like withholding simple courtesies like honorifics — that white people weaponized language to remind black folks of their place.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/11/02/417513631/when-boys-cant-be-boys

Weaponising your words there I see

[MaybeSmaller]

Talking about women "weaponising tears" is misogynistic BS and nobody who uses phrases like this actually cares about women.

[littleripper]

@TrudyProud do you think these men are children and need you to stick up for them? Why? Why are they unable to show receipts when the whole of twitter was baying for this woman to be fired yesterday.
You need to have a think about your own attitudes and particularly why you have repeatedly called black men "boys".

I am a mixed race daughter of a black father and can tell you now that being called a "boy" was commonplace for him - but people only did it once.

[MissLucyEyelesbarrow]

@MaybeSmaller

Talking about women "weaponising tears" is misogynistic BS and nobody who uses phrases like this actually cares about women.

Exactly.

[Brefugee]

she was probably tired and emotional after a shift, and maybe also because she was pregnant so i get her tears etc.

But i also get how it looks. And assuming there was more than one bike, in a situation like this, surely the correct answer is to put the bike back in the dock and rebook another (which is what she did in the end).

I guess in the heat of the moment, and surrounded by a shouting bunch of people, emotion gets the better of you. But as a white woman, knowing people are filming, and the other people are black? redock and step away calmly, every time.

[Mumoftwoinprimary]

As the woman has now produced a receipt for the bike it seems pretty obvious that there are two options here:-

1. The man was trying to steal the bike
2. There was an administrative cock up and they had both paid for the bike

As someone who once was one of 6 people trying to sit in one train seat I suspect (2) although the fact that the man has now disappeared is slightly suspicious. If he doesn’t appear in 24 hours or so with his own ticket then I will change my view.

[Butitsnotfunnyisititsserious]

@TrudyProud

@littleripper @Walrussy you do realise the nurse lied ? The boys had already paid for and hired the bikes.
The nurse tried to steal the bike from them.
Said nurse then weaponised her white woman tears in an attempt to perpetuate said theft.

She deserves to be sacked not just suspended. In a recent past her crying wolf could have resulted in the murder of those black boys. Think back to Emmett Till

The woman paid for the bike so can you show where it proves the men paid?

[CovertImage]

@TrudyProud

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow which part of what I wrote isn't true?

• the boys paid for the bike ✅
• the nurse tried to take the bike ✅
• said nurse weaponised her tears to get her way ✅
• the nurse walked into a group of boys and attempted to create hysteria and then started crying ✅

You are a de-railer or troll because at not any point did I condone violence against women.

What I am doing is condemning a white woman nurse who weaponised her tears and opened up the possibility of violence being inflicted on some boys who were minding their business

"White woman who weaponised her tears", "some boys who were minding their business"

I love a nice bit of wildly biased assumption

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

Some people seem to be using- or indeed, weaponising the murder of Emmett Till as a sort of Eve and the apple original sin moment which makes all women guilty even when they haven’t done anything.
Congratulations on being an enthusiastic early adopter of the New Misogyny, TrudyProud.

[MissLucyEyelesbarrow]

Women like @TrudyProud (assuming that she is a woman) are busy creating a world in which no woman is allowed to speak up. They are so ignorant of history and politics that they think they can carve out an exception for women who share their own views. They tell themselves that it's only the Karens who are silenced - it will never happen to them.

Well, it doesn't work like that. By shutting down the women with whom you disagree, by supporting pile ons, calling them misogynistic slurs, you are helping to silence all women, including yourself. You're just too childish and ignorant to recognise it.

[IdealisticCynic]

@TrudyProud

@littleripper @Walrussy you do realise the nurse lied ? The boys had already paid for and hired the bikes.
The nurse tried to steal the bike from them.
Said nurse then weaponised her white woman tears in an attempt to perpetuate said theft.

She deserves to be sacked not just suspended. In a recent past her crying wolf could have resulted in the murder of those black boys. Think back to Emmett Till

Are you a troll?

If not, then perhaps you haven’t seen the updated information. The woman has provided a receipt to show she had paid for the bike.

I imagine the man who was accusing her of taking it genuinely thought he had, to explain the level of certainty he had. But he either hadn’t paid for that particular bike and had confused it with another or there was a glitch in the system such that they were both told they had that bike. But either way, he needs to provide his receipt to the hospital as she has, because right now a woman has been suspended without pay from her job and has been hounded and threatened via social media.

As for her crying - she is 6 months pregnant and just off her 12 hour healthcare shift. She was trying to get the bike she knew (and we now know) she had paid for but was surrounded by 5 men and shouted at and prevented from leaving. That would be intimidating at the best of times but with the addition of tiredness and pregnancy hormones, I’m not surprised she started crying. That is not “weaponising her tears” white or otherwise. It’s just crying.

This is not an Amy Cooper situation. Frankly it’s dangerous and counterproductive to the anti-racist cause to suggest otherwise, in light of the new information, because it makes genuinely racist incidents (of which I have been subjected to many) easier to downplay and dismiss.