No this is not justice
I saw it via Mayor Watermelon this morning.
What man tracking what woman down? This man tracking this woman down.
It’s horrible to watch. He’s a bully. He would be a bully even if she had “flipped him off” but his claims about her are not even convincing. And hello, he’s a man, he followed her home in his car, and then stood there shouting at her and filming her while she screamed and cried.
It reminded me of the Central Park clash between Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper, except that Amy Cooper called the police on Christian Cooper for no apparent reason, and Christian Cooper did not follow her home (or shout at her or keep escalating while she cried and shook).
Christian Cooper didn’t call Amy Cooper a Karen, either.
Ben Sixsmith in the Spectator US:
If you are on the internet you have no doubt heard of ‘Karens’. ‘Karens’ are middle-aged white women who have a fondness for reporting people, especially black people, to the authorities. ‘The archetypal “Karen”,’ says Vox in one of its invaluable explainers, ‘Is blonde, has multiple young kids, and is usually an anti-vaxxer.’ She ‘has a “can I speak to the manager” haircut and a controlling, superior attitude to go along with it.’
It sounds pretty fucking sexist right from the outset, doesn’t it, even before “Karen” has done much of anything. Oh no, she’s blonde. Oh no, she has kids. Oh no, I don’t like her haircut. Oh no, she talks in a way I would take for granted if a man were doing it. Sixsmith remarks:
In practice, calling someone a ‘Karen’ is generally an excuse to abuse a middle-aged white woman and make it seem woke.
Precisely.
Enter Karlos Dillard. Dillard is a young black man who was cut off while driving by a middle-aged white lady who then, according to him, showed him her middle finger. Mr Dillard followed her home and began to film her. Clearly, this woman had encountered the ‘Karen’ trend. She knew the rage of the internet could be turned on her, her family and her livelihood. She had what one can only describe as a breakdown, shaking, screaming and desperately trying to hide her face and her license plate.
Passers-by attempted to intervene to dissuade the young man from filming a woman in such obvious distress. Suddenly, Dillard insisted that she had called him the n-word. Really? Why he had not accused the woman herself of that is curious, given that no one would suggest that a raised middle finger is more hostile than the slur? Meanwhile, the woman continued to shake and cry.
Mr Dillard uploaded this video to Twitter, where he sports the unusual handle ‘wypipo_h8’. It took off, and has currently accrued 46,000 retweets and 97,000 likes. Commenters are laughing at the woman’s distress. ‘That’s extreme Karening,’ says one. ‘I wonder how they end up like this,’ says another, ‘Is it a defective gene or do they go for training?’
Yes, how dare women find it frightening if men follow them home. Nasty bitches with their haircuts and their attitude.
Edward Champion looks into the incident in more detail and doubts that Dillard is telling the truth about any of it.
Dillard claimed — in a series of Instagram stories — that he had the right of way to merge onto a street from Melrose Avenue in “Capitol Hill. Fucking Capitol Hill.” Dillard says that he was in the right lane. As the two lanes of the unspecified street were about to merge, Dillard says that the woman “freaked out and swung around me and got in front of me and slammed on her brakes and did a brake check.” He further claims that he nearly collided into the back of her car.
Well, you know, merges can be tricky. It’s not always clear what the other driver is planning and whether you should speed up or slow down or keep going at the same speed. It works fine when both parties are driving like adults, but there are assholes out there. Maybe it wasn’t “the Karen” who was being the asshole.
Dillard, a Trump supporter whose online record shows a clear angling for attention and online fame, saw an opportunity to go viral. So he chased the Geo Woman down in his car and confronted her, releasing the below video excerpt onto Twitter, which, as I write this, has been seen more than four million times.
He wants to be the next Christian Cooper, but here’s the problem: men following women home is not a social justice kind of look…at least it hasn’t been, and it shouldn’t be, but right now who knows, when the left has been so thoroughly steeped in angry misogyny by its trans wing that maybe now it is.
If any man follows me in his car and comes after me like this, he is getting hurt. This is disgusting misogyny and no real woman should have to tolerate this.
Contrary to what some people seem to think, it is totally possible to cut someone off by accident, especially if that someone is spoiling for a fight. I have been cut off by accident (and on purpose). I believe it is possible to tell the difference, but not if you have already decided that someone is a “Karen”.
And I have been flipped off by woman drivers; my husband, who is a much worse driver than I am, and has visual impairments from glaucoma, has never been flipped off by a woman. That could be coincidence, but I suspect a lot of women are going to be much more careful about flipping off a man than a woman. Size difference, aggressiveness, and all that (not to mention the surfeit of guns in this country).
Comment on his twitter:
“Do you have her info yet? I’d love to send over a corporate email to her employer”
The Twitter Mob needs to get this woman fired for… what, again? He says that she cut him off? She flipped him off? The vigilantes need to mobilize now to have such people hounded out of their jobs?
Yes, I know she is a (shudder) Karen, but maybe flipping people off (if she did) isn’t actually grounds for ruining someone’s life?
Ah but do you know she’s a Karen? Does anybody? I don’t know she’s a Karen any more than I know she’s a cunt or a bitch. The names are all much the same at this point.
Meghan Murphy had a great column about this today, about the Karen/Becky meme, and trial-by-viral-video, and all the damn misogyny.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2020/06/23/the-karen-becky-meme-has-officially-gone-too-far/
Wow, that’s something.
I feel bad for her. How could you not with that level of panic?
But I wonder if she did use a racial slur though. She says at one point something like, “You’re going to ruin my whole life. You don’t even know who I am and you’re going to ruin me.” Offhand that sounds like someone who has done something that they know could ruin them if exposed. A racial slur would fall into that category. Cutting someone off or flipping them off wouldn’t.
But maybe she’s just panicking and reacting that way even if she knows his accusations are false. People react in unexpected ways.
I don’t actually see a woman being terrified of a man physically at all. I could certainly see her having that reaction, but that doesn’t seem to be the reaction she’s having. She doesn’t seem afraid of being attacked. She’s desperately hiding her face and license plate because she doesn’t want her life ruined. If this were a black woman (instead of a man) confronting her I suspect the reaction would be much the same.
So, hypothetically, if she first drove up to him to call him the n-word does she go into the “ruin that racist” category?
Obviously if he made up the racial slur then she doesn’t deserve to be ruined (or deserve any of this). And him standing there continuing to take video that long is psychotic. But if she did call him the n-word and he confronted her is that wrong? Is he just supposed to ignore it?
To me the craziest part is her reaction is so extreme but is probably the rational one to have. So many people get videoed and are like, fine, I don’t care, go ahead, put it on the internet…then they’re fired, shunned, etc. Freaking out makes more sense than calmness with the way these things go.
If only she had had the good sense not to cry. All the hatred directed her now (I don’t mean here) is compounded by the fact that she cried so that this guy would get killed by the cops. Because that’s why white women cry, of course. She wasn’t actually terrified of having the Internet mob loosed on her after some guy followed her home and recorded her. She was only pretending to be terrified because she’s a devious puppet-master.
Not that you will ever see this Skeletor but seriously? If she made a racist comment it might be okay to ruin her life? SERIOUSLY? Would you say the same about a man who made a sexist comment? Most men who do that, if anything happens at all, may get sent to sensitivity training and have to suffer through a half hour with the HR director. Firing just doesn’t happen for that. But a woman (no, a “Karen”) must be hounded.
You should read that post from Sackbut; Meghan Murphy has an insightful take on this. And it seems the guy is doing this sort of thing repeatedly, for profit. Making t-shirts. Maybe it isn’t so clear that she was actually guilty? We can’t know. We won’t know. Because he didn’t film that part. He only filmed the aftermath, so we have to accept his story, or not. For me, I see it as a possibility either way. Maybe she did. Maybe he made it up for kicks, to ruin a white woman, to make money off a t-shirt.
It doesn’t matter either way. It is a shit thing to do to follow a woman home, film her, film her license plate, and then torment her on Twitter. If she said something, if she flipped someone off, there are better ways to deal with it, but hating white women is the new national pasttime (hating women in general has always been one of the major national pasttimes, anyway; now it is just going viral)..
Damn. If all the people who ever 1) cut someone off accidentally or on purpose and 2) flipped someone off in traffic were to have their lives ruined, well I won’t speak for anyone else, but I’d certainly be in trouble.
This is disgusting. I’ll admit to getting a certain amount of satisfaction out of seeing people behave disgustingly while they know they are being filmed, and then having to deal with the consequences of their bad behaviour – as long as it’s not disproportionate. That cyclist recently hassling the kids over their flyers? Publically embarrassed for being an arse. Good enough for him. But this? He claims she was rude while driving but that’s not on camera. What he’s got is a terrified woman who is freaking out because some guy has followed her home and is now letting her know – with his running commentary – that he intends to put footage of her, her car registration, and her house on the ol’ internet for everyone to judge her for something he can’t prove she did. And he thinks he’s the good guy in this. I wish I could take a break from this shit it’s wearing me down.
For once, twitter agrees that this sort of bullshit is too aggressive for the platform: “@wypipo_h8
‘s account is temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.”
You know what? I don’t care if she called him “nigger”, even though that is not proven. Calling someone “nigger” is not something I would normally do, but maybe, just maybe, if I was pissed off enough, I could, in the heat of the moment.
Not a nice thing to do. But that is not a reason to follow a woman, to threaten her. The adult thing to do would be either ignore and get on with your day, or, if you came across that person again, ask them why they felt that was an appropriate response.
I admit to having used racist slurs in the past, I was young and pigshit ignorant. But I didn’t stop because I was followed home and abused. I stopped because someone I abused told me how hurtful it was and asked why I thought it was a good way to speak to and about others. I had no answer other than ignorance and lack of empathy. I learned. I changed. And now I will not tolerate racist comments in my hearing.
That man, who took the time to question me, did far more than 20 beatings ever would.
I saw a decent article recently about the Republican Party’s difficulty in dealing with system racism, how they turn everything into a discussion about whether this or that individual “is” or “is not” racist. I agree with, in particular, two points that it brought up: an individual being “racist” is not a binary (nor stable) state, and the important issues are much bigger than the attitudes of individuals.
There is entirely too much looking at minor individual actions and statements, which are both both inconclusive and irrelevant. Might this woman be “a racist”? Why would it matter? Does she have some kind of power where she can deny resources and services to Black people, and if so does she do so? If not, it doesn’t really make a difference. In fact, I applaud people who can do the right thing even for people they hate. The Jewish doctor who saves the life of a skinhead, the Evangelical Christian baker who provides a cake for the wedding of two men. They are not required to like the people the serve. Should these people lose their jobs for expressing opinions?
And of course, as has been noted several times, the video does not document any sort of transgression, it merely shows a crying and terrified woman who the videographer claims did him wrong in some way. It’s not documentation, it’s punishment. Well, it does document a man harassing and threatening a woman.
Spoke too soon, his account is back up.
But if he’d said a woman doesn’t have a penis, he’d be down forever.
Skeleton #6
“But I wonder if she did use a racial slur though. She says at one point something like, ‘You’re going to ruin my whole life. You don’t even know who I am and you’re going to ruin me.'”
Yeah, because he is saying “here is your face, here is your house, here is your license plate, and I’m going to publish this all over instagram.” It’s vigilantism, it’s doxing, it’s an invitation for anyone in the world to commit violence against her. That’s f*ing terrifying. And you know it. So when you go one to muse, or speculate, or imagine things that you know nothing about, like this:
“Offhand that sounds like someone who has done something that they know could ruin them if exposed. A racial slur would fall into that category. Cutting someone off or flipping them off wouldn’t.”
That’s just crap. For all you know — and all that there is any evidence of — is an unknown male *following her home,* blocking her in the driveway, filming her, and saying “I’m putting you on the internet, showing everyone who you are, your car and its identifying number, and where you live.” What purpose could that possibly have? Only intimidation by threats that ANYONE can hurt her in her person, in her home, wherever she might be. That is ugly, it is criminal, and it is unjustifiable. Quit trying to think up excuses to justify terrorizing someone.