Tennis star Novak Djokovic got himself booted from the US Open on Sunday after he — accidentally, it seems — hit a line judge in the throat with a tennis ball, sending her sprawling to the ground clutching her neck.
Djokovic’s suspension was pretty much automatic — the rules are clear — but rather than blame him for hitting a ball in frustration after play was over, his fans decided to take their anger out on the line judge instead.
As the Daily Mail explained:
Fans of the world No 1 were quick to take to social media, finding [the line judge’s] public profile and sending thousands of hate-filled messages, including death threats. …
[Her] son died in 2008, and one of Djokovic’s fans told her ‘don’t worry, you’ll join him soon’ … while another posted: ‘hahahahahahahaha YEEEEES, YEEEEEEEES.’
They were not much more polite on Twitter, calling her a “bitch,” a “cunt” and a “Karen,” and accusing her of exaggerating her pain after being struck by the ball.
There’s nothing, it seems, that online misogynists can’t blame on a woman, but blaming a woman for being hit with a ball is a new one for me.
She didn’t make the rule that got Djokovic disqualified. She didn’t force him to hit the ball in frustration. Her only crime was catching a fast-moving tennis ball in the neck.
Djokovic, for what it’s worth, has asked his fans to stop targeting her, noting that “she’s done nothing wrong.” But somehow I doubt that will shut them up.
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You know the whole Karen thing has been broken when Karen isn’t asking for the manager, but literally IS the manager.
To me, the whole Karen thing was inevitably going to become sexist, if it wasn’t always. And not because discussions about “white women’s tears” are wrong, but because Karen never precluded sexist uses. I’ve worked in customer service my whole life, and now work in a call center resolving disputes (among other things), and the one thing I’ve learned is that every angry customer has a story, and that you shouldn’t judge a customer until you know their story. Some people really are entitled assholes, some people are banking on bigotry of some kind, but some people’s actions become’s more understandable once you learn about the reasons for them.
IMO, the problem with Karen isn’t that it makes a valid point about “white women’s tears”, it’s that it’s a blanket term that’s made about a customer’s motivations usually without their story and motivations being known. As such, it is inevitably falls victim to the user’s sexism, given society’s delusions about women and their lives.
@An Impish Pepper
That has seemed to be the ever more apparent implication. That being said: I feel baffled whenever those same guy’s that use the “Karen” prejorative also seem to, weirdly also apply it to men like me whenever I call them out for their nonsnse, bigotry and general bullying?
I don’t know wither they think I am a women simply on the praxis that I call them out on their bs and they think that “oh only a ‘irrational, sensitive, emotional’ woman would object to my big brain logic” and therefore think I am a woman to “be put in her place” (the fact they do that to any women to begin with when met with dissent is already pretty damn bad, but it’s bemusing when they assume that anyone who does dissent from them is a women by default) or the are trying to apply the pejorative to men like me as a sort of prolapsed adjective devoid of actual meaning.
Which to me seems to lend credence to the saying: “Their is no bigger Misandrist: than a Misogynist.”