Karen Owen uploaded a comparative list of her sexual conquests at Duke University, replete with names, pictures, transcripts, and explicit details. Let’s play Kick-the-Can with her excuse!
Original story: Wall Street Journal| October 8th, 2010
Karen Owen’s opening rationalization for her behavior is of the, “But the boys did it first!” variety – in other words about as infantile as it gets. And I don’t know who’s going around telling those serial harassers that their behavior is cool, but I bet there are few who’d suggest it’s worth emulating to such a deranged extent, no matter how “horrified” you pretend to be when word gets around. Didn’t realize this needed to be said, but if you’re trying to stand up for womyn or “win one for the team,” it might not help your cause to give millions of people a reason to dismiss you as a gonorrhea-infected skank.
Whatever your core issue is here, Karen, you guaranteed that it will remain unidentifiably adrift in a debate about double standards and a stampede of pigs eager get their fill at the digital trench (you know, your fans). Personally, I’m not interested in who did what to whom or in if it was a male or female that started this. I’m wondering about the location of your sense of dignity. Is it floating in the same toilet water as the self-respect of the jocks you’re pointing a finger at?
C’mon Karen, you issued performance ratings with charts and graphs and gave measurements of your partners’ Jack Kerouwackers. It doesn’t matter that you described how drunk you were while spreading ‘em wide ‘n proud, or that you positioned your harassment as 42 pages of mock-academia, or that you thought no one would care about something written by little ol’ you (while secretly hoping they would by starting this chain in the first place). You’re really just a narcissist. And those standards by which you expect us to measure your female empowerment are lost in the lowest common denominator example you’ve set.
Yes, we know that you intended to present yourself as clever, audacious, witty, sexually daring, capable even, but depravity isn’t female empowerment after all, is it?
Finally, Karen-Karen-Karen! An 18-year-old violinist at Rutgers University was driven to suicide after two of his fellow students secretly filmed him having gay sex in his dorm room. How could you have ignored how such invasions of privacy can and do affect people before choosing to do so to 13 of your fellow students, jocks or not? Not to mention potentially humiliating their families in the process. Feel empowered?