Oppressors

[NoJuliana]

Kind of shocking to see the amount of people prepared on Mumsnet to attack the use of the term Karen on the grounds that it is misogynistic - are you saying that women have to defend people who systematically use their race and class privilege to keep others down, just because they are women?? Are we meant to ignore their racism and tactical deployment of class status, because sisterhood? No thanks. People who behave in a way that has led to them being known collectively as Karens need to be called out on their behaviour. But I guess if the name Karen is offensive, we could just use the term Oppressor

In all seriousness, if we are looking for alternatives, in particular those that avoid targeting people actually named Karen, and also that avoid the apparent UK/US semantic divide, then how about WOSP. Weaponiser of Socioeconomic Privilege. With a nod to WASP, of course….

WOSP could be applied equally to men as well…

Are you in the USA OP?

I think a lot of discussion on race in the UK is often side-stepped by saying that we (the UK) aren't like the U.S, or my personal favourite that the UK is the most tolerant country in Europe ergo we should all drop it and live together in perfect harmony.

No, i’m not.

I don't think it's a side step, but a clarification.
We have the solve the problems we have, not distortions of other countries problems.

Indeed, in the UK we rarely get past discussing if racism even exists let alone anything else.

Are we meant to ignore their racism and tactical deployment of class status, because sisterhood?

Objecting to a pejorative term being used to describe a person saying something racist doesn't defend the person or their behaviour.

Labelling a bigoted person a Karen is misogynistic as it perpetuates the idea that middle-aged women are a homogeneous group sharing certain (racist) views and behaviours, and further, that they are worthy of derision and comparison to racists and other bigots.

But criticism of calling someone a Karen is completely different from defending the person's views or actions.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and it only breeds division to say "don't be a prejudiced arsehole like all those awful middle-aged women".

Calling someone Karen is only an insult if you accept that it's offensive to be compared to a typical middle-aged women.

The problem is not that some people called Karen find it offensive. It's that middle-aged women have faced rampant misogyny and ageism for a ridiculously long time, and that it is invisible to most people, including most women, because of the patriarchy.

So throwing the word Karen around as an insult weaponises the misogyny women already experience, by throwing women at bigots, like we're expendable objects with no feelings to be used as desired by others.

I very rarely encounter anyone mainstream wondering whether racism exists.
But to solve any problem we need to know its outlines and how it manifests in our context so we can figure out how to reduce it.

Maybe there is some huge difference I’m not aware of between how Karen is used in the US and how it’s used in the UK

Do you spend much time around teenagers?
They throw the insult Karen round all the time and it definitely means ‘any woman I don’t find conventionally attractive having an opinion’

I’m think racism is rife in the uk, and I think having a way to describe and name different types of racism is extremely important.
However I think the term Karen has evolved past its original meaning to be a slur.
This happens all the time in language with slurs, their meanings and who they are applied to evolve.
Lots and lots of slurs start out as harmless descriptions but it’s not the word itself that makes it a slur but it’s usage.
9/10 you could quite easily replace the word Karen with the word bitch and the sentence would still mean the same thing.

Your suggestion of coming up with another way to describe that brand of racism is great, I’d fully support that.

Karen is such a Kafka trap because if you have any issue about it the response is ‘oh well of course you’d say that Karen’
It’s the perfect silencer.

If a middle aged white woman is exhibiting racism then I would call them out as a racist, not a 'Karen'

If a middle aged white man is exhibiting racism then I would call them out as a racist, not a 'Trevor'

If a 16 year old white girl is exhibiting racism then I would call them out as a racist, not a 'Lauren'

If a 19 year old white man is exhibiting racism then I would call them out as a racist, not a 'Matthew'

and so on...

Surely it's the behaviour that defines the issue, these people are racists.

Giving them different 'labels' to define them doesn't help in dealing with the problem. And where do you stop? How many new labels for each sex/age/demographic of racists are needed?

And what is the guarantee that anyone even understands what a 'Karen' or a 'Trevor' etc actually is? I mean, there's no agreement here, so there isn't going to be with the UK public either.

Racist is fully understood. Racists are abhorrent, shunned, condemned. I say use the correct term, 'Karen' or any other label simply waters down the accusation.

(Trevor and other names picked as random examples)

Okay I’m definitely happy to hold my hands up and say that the UK usage, and the extent of it, is something I wasn’t aware of, fair enough. I can see why people take issue with it in that case. I didn’t think it was two separate uses and two separate issues but I can see that I was missing some knowledge there.