Central Park Incident

[Coyoacan]

I saw the video when it first came out and saw a woman who play-acted on the phone to the police while torturing her dog for sound effects and using the colour of the man's skin in the hope that he would be shot on sight by the police.

It turns out that, as a feminist, I should have seen a poor woman, scared of a man in an isolated area, making a call for help and giving a limited physical description of the man.

In one discussion, where I suggested solidarity with the mothers of teenage black boys who never know if their sons would come home again when they left the house, that that is not a feminist issue.

Does feminism trump the fight against racism?

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting black men use mumsnet. I was saying that many posters here state that Karen was coined by black women, but is now used as a joke on social media by white men.

So I mean twitter, Instagram etc, where I see heaps of Karen jokes referring to ugly middle aged white women with terrible hairstyles, threatening to 'call the manager'.

The people creating and sharing those memes, why would they be 'white men', as stated by many on here?

I've just watched the video. Race aside, it makes me very uncomfortable how readily I'd have sided with her if I'd only heard a recording of her call to the emergency services.

I don't think either of them were behaving particularly well at the start, but then she deliberately raised the ante in her phone call exploiting her position over him being an African American, knowing that the police response may well be disproportionate to the situation.
It was calculated, dangerous and mean.

Some of the responses on here blaming him (the actual victim) and excusing her are ridiculous!

If this is feminism then I want no part in it

Some of the responses on here blaming him (the actual victim) and excusing her are ridiculous!

If I were in a park and a man I don't know, who doesn't have a dog with him but who just happens to have dog treats with him, is trying to attract my dog then I am perfectly entitled to think he is behaving in a creepy way. It would be a normal response to be nervous about that and even to consider calling the police.

Nobody has excused what she said but she may very well have been nervous or frightened by what was happening.

He's the US equivalent of the Chair of the RSPB. He was in an area he helped build and maintain. His role is to preserve the life and well being of the birds nesting in that area. She was breaking the bylaws of Central Park having her dog of its lead in a restricted area. Dogs destroy habitats and frighten birds. He is a citizen of the US. Every citizen is allowed to politely request that a lawbreaker to stop breaking the law. The treats tactic was the way to get the dog away from the habitats and to get her to start obeying the law to leash the dog. The filming was to protect himself from harm or false accusations. He had every right to be in that area. She didn't.

If I saw someone being mugged, I wouldn't think, well nobody appointed me to the police, I'm not helping. I would help. If I couldn't help but could film the perpetrator, I would.

If you object to him filming, then you have to object to people like Maria MacLachlan filming transactivists on a protest who don't want to be filmed and might find it distressing. Or women filming everyday sexism from men on construction sites, who don't want to be filmed because it might result in the loss of their job. People can be breaking the law, being dicks and distressed about being filmed doing it all at the same time. Why should the victim stop filming acts of aggression and crime? Or does that only apply to men?

How can you say she wasn't acting vindictively when she weaponised skin colour?!

This has reminded me of an incident when I was a child. I witnessed a violent assault by a Black boy against another child. When asked by the teacher to describe the perpetrator, I replied "I don't know how to describe him without being racist". The teacher took great pains to reassure me that it is not racist to mention someone's skin colour and ethnicity when giving a physical description in that context.

So was Ms Cooper weaponising Mr Cooper's skin colour, or was she describing the most obvious physical characteristic of a man who she sincerely thought had tried to poison her dog?

“I watched the video, ready to defend her.“

Why, @Ineverdidmind?

Feminism has nothing to do with it. That video was pretty grim. I don't think he should have called the dog over to feed it, that would piss me off, but the potential threat to his life, and I think she did know what she was saying, was pretty unforgivable. I don't know any women who would think otherwise.

He's the US equivalent of the Chair of the RSPB. He was in an area he helped build and maintain. His role is to preserve the life and well being of the birds nesting in that area

Was he wearing a park warden's hat? Because if not what she saw was an unknown man trying to tempt her dog with dog treats. At that point she had every right to be nervous. What she said to him was wrong but in the initial stages his behaviour was creepy and inappropriate.

If this is feminism then I want no part in it

This is the sort of thread that makes this forum special: a sensitive topic with differing opinions being offered by intelligent grown ups. If you don’t agree with an opinion argue why; emotions don’t need to be discarded, they can be used to articulate feelings about such topics.

So was Ms Cooper weaponising Mr Cooper's skin colour, or was she describing the most obvious physical characteristic of a man who she sincerely thought had tried to poison her dog?

Sorry but you have got that bit very wrong. She wasn't describing him. She told him she would call the police and say she was being threatened by an African American man.

That's the point she puts herself in the wrong.

What is wrong is what she said about going to report he was African American.

If you're genuinely feeling threatened (which isn't how I read the video, I'm reading it more as her being pissed off) and you call the police to tell them someone is attacking you, why would it even occur to you to inform them what race the man attacking you is? What does that have to do with anything? I read that part as a very clear and deliberate attempt to invoke the potential for violent action by the police because he was a black man. It reads as a threat, and not in the "you could get arrested" way.

I'd also say that if you are a man and you are having an argument with a woman and you tell her that if she doesn't (whatever) then she's not going to like what you're going to do then that also reads as a threat, and an adult man should know how that's likely to come across, especially if he's recording the conversation with the intent of later showing that the woman he's arguing with is being an arsehole (which I agree with him that she was, even before she called the cops).

Nothing to do with the general focus of the conversation, but the way she was yanking on the dog's collar and choking it also made me wonder if there are any laws in place that can permanently ban people from adopting pets if they've shown that they're not going to treat them properly. If not there should be.

I was saying that many posters here state that Karen was coined by black women, but is now used as a joke on social media by white men.

I've heard it in my workplace from white men, and they don't use it to mean a white woman abusing racial privilege.

The other thing about "Karen" versus "handmaid" is that there is no one with "handmaid" as a first name. "Handmaid" doesn't mean someone's name being associated with an ugly stereotype. No schoolgirl called "handmaid" will be bullied because her name means "busybody" or "call the manager" because "handmaid" isn't a name. No one will ever consider changing her name to avoid subconscious negative bias because of feminists using the word "handmaid", whereas if my name was Karen, I'd be seriously thinking of changing it in the current climate.

No, what she saw was a man saying, please put your dog on the leash as per the law. She refused. Had she chosen to obey the law, and put the dog on the leash and left, that would have been the end of it. He could have let her dog go on he rampage and filmed her and her dog destroying the habitat as evidence that she was breaking the law. Would that have satisfied you? Or would that too be creepy?

One question though, the idea that Karen is now being used as a meme by white men - really?

Yes, really. You haven't experienced it personally, many other women have. I suppose they could all be black women or black men LARPing as white men though? I really don't think so. The context is especially important, because it's in the same comments as getting called a TERF.

He didn’t do anything creepy, and inventing wild hypotheticals and engaging in insane whatiffery (the post commenting what if the man was carrying POISON!! instead of harmless dog treats) is psychotic.

Because @overnightangel I had read a few takes on Twitter suggesting that she was scared because he was a man who was being intimidating towards a woman.
As a woman and a feminist this is something I can understand and I will always take the side of a woman who feels threatened by a man.

However, as explained, this is not what the video shows at all.

She told him she was going to call the cops and say an African American man was threatening her life and as soon as they picked up the call she said 'sorry, i'm in the ramble..there's a man, African American..'

The call handler hadn't had any time to ask any questions, let alone ask for a description.

I know opinions differ but personally, I think anyone calling with the persons race in their opening line, IS racist.

A man who doesn't himself have a dog with him but is carrying dog treats to feed other people's dogs is behaving in a very odd way. It is not normal or acceptable behaviour to feed other people's animals or to try to entice other people's dogs to you. I would be suspicious of somebody doing that.

And unfortunately poisoning pets does happen. Suggest you try Googling "poisoned dog treats" - there loads of results- many involving public parks.

Look, if I get into a disagreement with a man, even if I'm in the wrong, if he whips out a camera and starts filming me, I'm going to find that threatening. And if that person is giving my dog treats, I'm going to find that threatening too. So that's a feminist thing.

However, it seems clear he's not moving so the obvious response is to walk away, with my dog.

But then the racism really kicks in and what really struck me, particularly when you rewatch it, is that it almost sounds like the 911 operator isn't really following and so she seems to up the ante by a) acting even more scared and b) emphasising that he's African American. That is clearly weaponising his race against him.

It's entirely possible for there to be multiple issues going on at once here.

She told him she would call the police and say she was being threatened by an African American man.

Ah, the version I saw only had the call. I've looked for more versions and there's a longer version at www.yahoo.com/gma/central-park-confrontation-sparks-outrage-073550077.html that makes it more clear.

why would it even occur to you to inform them what race the man attacking you is?

"I'm being attacked by a man, he's wearing a red jacket" on the call would show commendable presence of mind but not be unreasonable because the caller is describing the suspect to the dispatcher. "I'm going to call the police and tell them I'm being attacked by a man in a red jacket" before the call doesn't make sense, you'd just say "I'm calling the police". Even if you genuinely thought someone was threatening to poison your dog and panicked, which would explain the very ham-fisted restraint "technique" she used, you wouldn't say more than "I'm calling the police".

So, yes, I'm less inclined to give her the benefit of doubt now that I've seen that she was threatening him.

TBH I don' think there were any grownups in the Ramble that day. Feeding someone else's pet is generally a no-no, you don't know if the animal has allergies or is on a veterinary diet. It does look like very much like she was weaponising race to threaten him and that is not OK. But I say again, it should not be possible for her to do that in the first place because the police should not be a hazard to Black people.

Something else that this has highlighted to me is how selective video editing can be used to alter how we perceive an incident. If I'd seen a full-length video, I might have been more skeptical of that National Review piece.

Karen is also used by white women on social media to imply they're not that 'type of woman'. It's like white women using 'white feminism' as a criticism and to imply they're better. 'Karen' is used to denigrate any white woman that people disagree with. It has class implications because people named Karen tend to be lower or middle class. But ultimately it's just another term used to tell women they should shut the fuck up and that being white and female is something they should be ashamed of.
In the Central Park incident the woman both weaponised race and put the man's life at risk. That makes her a racist and possibly criminally irresponsible, not a 'Karen'.

Look, if I get into a disagreement with a man, even if I'm in the wrong, if he whips out a camera and starts filming me, I'm going to find that threatening. And if that person is giving my dog treats, I'm going to find that threatening too. So that's a feminist thing

It isn't a feminist thing. Anyone is entitled to feel threatened by that behaviour.

Full disclosure, my name is Karen and my best friend is also Karen! I love my name and while I loathe the meme, nobody in my real life acquaintance is aware of it and I'm only bothered by it in an online context.

I don't imagine Karen's in the UK are being slagged off to their faces, I certainly haven't been.

But I object for all the boring feminist reasons, not because I'm a narcissist or unable to laugh at myself. I've asked for the manager a few times, as have all my friends because when you hit middle age your bullshit tolerance leaves the building along with your desire to look pliant and polite in the eyes of strangers. I could not give a fuck if people think I'm bossy, strident or pushy, after all nobody labels men who display those traits.

The call the manager interpretation of 'Karen' is used by all demographics on twitter as far as I can see, not by 'white men'.