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?

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

Yes, exactly. For some reason people often feel they have to decide one person was in the wrong, and therefor the other wasn't.

Dog poisonings in parks happen, unfortunately, and often they are thee sorts of situations where someone is taking on a sort of vigilante role.

There are women who post here that they do not run on trails because they are scared they might meet a strange man alone. It seems excessive to me, but I think they really are afraid. Did this man realise that? I don't know, but it might have been a good thing for him to keep in mind.There is a reason many groups now prefer to use male/female pairs when they are approaching women.

The "feminist" part of the response is not to say, "oh this women was justified, she must not have meant it." It's to realise that any time a man alone approaches a woman alone and creates a stressful situation, sex is likely to influence the perception of danger and risk on the part of the woman. There will always be an awareness that if push comes to shove at that moment, the immediate physical power is on one side. That is there even if you think that isn't how it will play out, and of course it influences response to some extent.

Yet every other social justice movement is allowed to focus on its own specific constituents, while feminism isn't.

It's quite astonishing, really.

There seems to be a lot of deliberate misinterpretation going on in this thread. I get the impression that there are people with an agenda here who want to make it look like FWR posters agree with the racist behaviour of the woman in that video, and they are distorting things other posters have said - and inventing from whole cloth shit that nobody said - in order to accomplish this.

Yes.

Noone said it was. Doesn't mean we're not allowed to discuss the events that led up to it.

It's irrelevant. She just wanted to start something. She doesn't care about the dog, she was choking it. She just wanted trouble.

No scared person aggressively marches towards the source of their fear pointing their finger and making threats.

She was entitled, calculated and racist.

It's irrelevant. She just wanted to start something. She doesn't care about the dog, she was choking it. She just wanted trouble

You have no idea how she feels about the dog. I doubt she wanted trouble when she set out for a walk that day, although inevitably that's what she got. And you don't get to decide for other people on a public forum what is or isn't relevant or what they can talk about it. I think the events leading up to it are relevant to try and understand what happened.

Feminism isn't about women making stuff up to get men into trouble

What a weird connection to make, op.

Feminism isn't claiming that all women are blameless and all men are evil

There was a confrontation. One person in the confrontation responded by doing something egregiously awful. After that point the details of how the confrontation came about or who was to blame for the confrontation stopped being important.

I truly dislike the term Karen. First of all, because millions of people have that name. Second, because while it may have been intended to define a certain kind of behavior, it has now lost that meaning and is now a general insulting term for a certain class of women. Just look at Urban Dictionary's most popular definition for Karen:

"Karen
gives raisins to kids on Halloween

drives an SUV to carpool her kids to soccer practice... better hope the ref doesn’t make a wrong call because she will sue!

love to use snapagram to post her workout selfies

after a long day of talking to managers and driving her kids around she sits down with her mom friends at book club and drinks lots and LOTS of wine
“oh my god Karen do you really have to talk to the Burger King manager every time they forget to give you a ketchup packet.“

“LOL! Yes!! I have to Facebook and instasnap it to all my friends to make sure everyone knows to watch out LOL!!!”
##karen #soccermom #probablyaboomer
by omgurmomsaboomer November 27, 2019"

Yy Karen has become yet another acceptable face of misogyny. Like there weren't enough already.

In a few other definitions that follow it mentions "talking to the manager"--but page after page of definitions do not show reference to race. So I think that this term has little punch in term of doing anything but women putting women down for being women. I think that it's wrong for white people to use their power against people of color. But it's wrong for both white men and women, and they both deserve ridicule equally. Also, now that the terribleness of being a "Karen" has pretty much been watered down to "talking to the manager," it can have the effect of shaming any woman who is white but who has a legitimate grievance from speaking up about problems which could use fixing. I am against shutting down women's voices.

I think handmaiden is different, though. I think it's a valid term because it accurately describes the behavior it is talking about. Handmaidens are women who are sycophantically elevating the interests of males over their fellow women. It's reasonable to call out that kind of behavior. Yes, I understand that these women feel they are speaking legitimately. And so they can. They will have powerful backing to do so by those who support them. But from the point of view of women who feel that their behavior is treacherous to other women, 'handmaiden' is an accurate descriptor.

Her response was absolutely racist and she knew what she was doing as evidenced by her threat (which she then carried out) to call the police saying an African American man was threatening her life

Has anyone said otherwise? No.

Why even bring up the treats? Is that a justification for lying to the police and attempting to get someone arrested or killed?

No one has said that. The initial behaviour by him was capable of making some one nervous. How she dealt with that is wholly wrong.

And personally I think "handmaiden" is a terrible expression and if you have to resort to using it to prop up your argument you might want to reconsider your debating skills

It's irrelevant

If the circumstances of the event are irrelevant and not important why in all the hells is this thread seven pages long when everyone agreed on page 1 that the woman was racist, and everyone agrees on page 7 that the woman was racist?
I take i that certain posters will now be leaving the thread which they've stretched out to seven pages, because the woman was racist, as everyone agrees, and by their own reckoning there is nothing else to discuss.

Quite, Kantastic

@DidoLamenting Then why even mention it? It's clearly being used to defend the racist lady and her actions.

Offering her dog a treat is not threatening someone's life

It's threatening the dog's life if the dog has an allergy.

The only reason you're making excuses is because you empathise. You relate the woman in question and not the black guy.

Has anyone, apart from me before I watched the full video showing what she said before the call, actually said that her use of his race against him might be OK?

Sequence of events:

• She walked her dog off-leash, this was wrong.
• He asked her to leash the dog, as was his right.
• She refused, which was wrong.
• He offered her dog a treat using words that I would construe as a threat, which was wrong both for the words and the attempt to feed someone else's pet.
• She grabbed her dog, which was understandable because for all she knew he was a dog poisoner...
• ...using a poor and cruel restraint technique, which was wrong...
• ...and failed to leash it, which would have kept it safe had he been offering poison or a food the dog was allergic to. Her failure to leash the dog was stupid and made restraining the dog harder.

It's important to note that from this point, we can no longer give her the benefit of the doubt and ascribe her actions to concerns about the dog's safety, because if she was scared for her dog, she'd have leashed it and taken it away from him before calling the police.

• She then threatened to call the police and used his race as part of that threat, her use of his race in that threat proves her intent to use the police as a weapon. In my earliest posts on this thread, I had not yet seen that part of the video, which is why I changed my opinion in later posts. I tend to change my views when faced with new evidence.
• She then called the police and used his race as part of that call. Had she genuinely felt threatened, mentioning his race could been have a legitimate perp description. Her earlier threat makes it clear that this was not so and was intentional use of institutional racism as a tool to intimidate him, putting him at real risk of being killed or injured by the police. This is so wrong it is off the scale.

Asserting that he shouldn't have tried to feed her dog isn't empathising with her because she's white. It's empathising with every pet owner who has had a pet die or get sick because a stranger fed it the wrong food or even poisoned it. Including Black pet owners.

Asserting that he shouldn't have tried to feed her dog isn't excusing her racism either.

And my earlier point, that the real problem is that it is possible to weaponise the police against a Black person, stands.

@Durgasarrow

In a few other definitions that follow it mentions "talking to the manager"--but page after page of definitions do not show reference to race. So I think that this term has little punch in term of doing anything but women putting women down for being women. I think that it's wrong for white people to use their power against people of color. But it's wrong for both white men and women, and they both deserve ridicule equally. Also, now that the terribleness of being a "Karen" has pretty much been watered down to "talking to the manager," it can have the effect of shaming any woman who is white but who has a legitimate grievance from speaking up about problems which could use fixing. I am against shutting down women's voices.

I think handmaiden is different, though. I think it's a valid term because it accurately describes the behavior it is talking about. Handmaidens are women who are sycophantically elevating the interests of males over their fellow women. It's reasonable to call out that kind of behavior. Yes, I understand that these women feel they are speaking legitimately. And so they can. They will have powerful backing to do so by those who support them. But from the point of view of women who feel that their behavior is treacherous to other women, 'handmaiden' is an accurate descriptor.

What a hypocritical steaming pile of shite.

You "feel" that Karen isn't used legitimately, so it's bad. You "feel" that handmaiden can be used legitimately, so it's good.

You're logically inconsistent.

It is.
It's just so hypocritical.
Like "That slur is OK because it's one I agree with."

Like "That slur is OK because it's one I agree with."

Please define "slur".

You have no idea how she feels about the dog*

--*
You can't be this thick. She was too busy shouting at Mr Cooper to realise she was choking the thing half to death. Why are you making excuses for HER, yet have NO understanding for the victim?

You believe she cared about her dog in the absence of ALL EVIDENCE, but cannot fathom a man caring dog treats and we have people calling him a 'creep'

WTF

What has Karen been up to now!?

I saw the video - she was manipulative and entitled. Plus her actions could have caused him to be arrested or worse.

She had the dog off a lead in a nesting area - he has a keen interest in nature and the birds there. He was calm and polite. She just didn't want to be told what to do.

I'm sorry for her in one respect - the threats she will be getting will be awful. I wish, as a species, we could just walk away when there has been a consequence. She has lost her job and her dog and will be persona non gratia for ever now.

We could split hairs about whether his actions may or may not be seen as threatening, but her reaction was definitely racist and beyond reasonable.