“Karen” is a misogynist term.

[Bleuuuughhh]

i just would like to get an idea of how other women feel about this term.

It seems deeply unfair there is no equivalent term for badly behaved men. In my eyes, the phase appears to be a new insult to add the huge list women have had add to put up with through the ages.

Women being sexually active is now more acceptable so the terms “Jezebel”, “slag” are not used as widely. Similarly there is an aging population “crone” and “witch” aren’t acceptable . Now a woman who complains, or doesn’t tow the party time is called a “Karen”.

Has anything really actually changed at all?

Like a PP I asked my 12yo what a Karen was

"Somebody entitled, who wants to get their own way"

I clarified with her whether that could be a man or a woman...just a woman she said.

Then I asked her whether she thinks of Karens as being racist

She screwed up her face and said no. She's literally never heard it in that context.

@ChillysWaterBottle
This is completely untrue. It was not originally coined to refer to racist white women and later appropriated. It was originally coined and in widespread usage in its misogynistic form and years later co-opted to have racial connotations as one of several evolutions of the term. Its so bizarre to see people just confidently spreading misinformation to justify derailing a thread about sexism, especially when this has been corrected several times already.

Yesterday at 11.41 I posted screenshots from 2014 showing the word being used in its original sense. It hasn’t been “co-opted to have racial connotations”, it’s the other way round.

Can you not see how frustrating this is?

@HRTQueen it is used for underhanded racism but it also is used when no racism has taken place. Telling a kid off for dropping litter, asking to speak to their manager a woman who is assertive etc. Those things aren't to do with race. In many of the karen clips on tiktok and the like the women being "karened at" are white or East asian NOT black. So I don't think it's about privilege or racism always.

Now incidents like Amy Cooper ( too young and middle class to be a Karen I know, but still) and that other woman calling the police on a black man for driving a posh car in a posh neighbourhood, those things are actual racism and deserving of a derogatory name and being shamed on social media. Not some 55 year old lady wearing cheap clothes and a rubbish hairdo having a bad day (or even a breakdown as some of these videos suggest) fed up with poor service in a restaurant or at Walmart. Or the same type of lady even who is rude and an a*hole.

That's the problem with having the same word for two different things entirely. They aren't the same. One is just something that some incel nerds find funny, the other is a serious issue of oppression and injustice.

I find the term Karen to be virtue signalling. To compare racism with a bit of argh bargy towards a waitress, where there is no power inequality etc with racism, which actually kills people (as the previous links on inequalities in maternal care show and That's just one example of how racism is life threatening).

Little connection to racism right I guess you would know this

TikTok is this where you get your life experience from

ok

It was used long before 2014 as a misogynistic term tho.

No one ever said it wasn't co-opted for different uses, or that some of those uses aren't referring to legitimate social concerns. But the original usage, and the current widespread mainstream usage, remains misogynistic. Bringing up alternative later uses when appropriate is one thing, using them to derail threads and shut down legitimate discussions about sexism, and spreading misinformation is another.

I don't but that's the place where I have seen the term Karen used. I'm not of that generation though (it seems more of a generation z thing not a generation x thing) so I only see young people using the term karen.

I said that yes sometimes the term Karen is connected to racism, but sometimes it isn't . You can't seriously say that a woman asking to speak to a manager in a shop has racist connotations ?

I'm saying the problem is that the same term (Karen) is being used for actual racism as is being used for something which is nothing to do with racism. A racist Karen is someone who weaponises white tears to get a black person into trouble e.g. Usually a black man into trouble with the police. There is a privilege and power imbalance in that situation. I have seen these women called Karen s. Not just on social media but everywhere. usually in the US, sometimes in the UK.

A non black woman is upset a non black waitress gets her order wrong and raises her voice at her. There is not a power imbalance here or any connection with race. It's a customer and service worker disagreement . But the same woman gets labelled Karen.

I probably haven't explained it well , I'm not very articulate due to my neuro impairments but I'm simply saying that calling two diverse things that have no connection is something I can't get my head round.

Do you believe that only black people can recognise racism or the lack thereof? If I see a white woman being called a Karen for complaining to a white employee, I can't make the judgement that there's no racism involved?

You can scorn my suggestion of looking on tik tok but if you want to better understand how a word is being used in society, a huge social media platform is a good place to start.

No I have not said a woman asking to see a manager or is making a valid complaint should be called a Karen

I have said that I am aware it is used by black and Asian people to recognise a particular type of underhand racism from women and I do not feel I have the right to tell anyone or object to anyone using the term when they have been subjected to such racist behaviour or tell anyone what terms they should use to recognise such behaviour

Ah, I see. Thanks for explaining , I think I can understand it better. For what it's worth I don't think the onus is on black people to stop using the term karen . I think their experiences are valid and a real issue.

I think it would be better for those people (usually incels) who use the term Karen for bossy entitled assertive women should use a different term than Karen . Thus not diluting or confusing it's meaning and trivializing racism in the process.

I apologise because I didn't make it very clear in my post. Certainly racism towards anyone and from anyone should always be called out and I myself when I see it will continue to do so.

It is true.

If anything, the origins are not entirely clear, as generally tends to be the case with viral memes. But the first two hits that come up from Google have this under their straplines:

'The "Karen" meme is being used to describe women who commit acts in public that are perceived to be racist'.

'In African-American culture, there is a history of calling difficult white women or those who "weaponize" their position by a generic pejorative name. In the antebellum era (1815–1861), "Miss Ann" was used. In the early 1990s, "Becky" was used. As late as 2018, before the use of "Karen" caught on' …

You conclude your post wtih this little belter:

If people ever bothered to look into the actual origins of the term they would see the culture it was developed in and how horrifically racist it was. Maybe they would stop and think about whose words they were using and defending.

You quoted the post of mine to which you replied above. In the second line, I state: I'm one who does object to both the ageism and sexism embedded within that term. I do not use such terms. Far from defending them, I've taken issue many times with those who do. I'd challenge you to find a single post of mine in which sexist pejoratives like 'Karen', 'bitch' or 'cunt' are ever used. I'll wait. I suspect I'll be waiting for a long time.

The disingenuousness and 'spreading of misinformation', it appears, is all yours.

It's reappropriation of every issue highlighted by black people to describe their experiences, and the cavalier dismissal by some people of the experiences of others who don't look like them. No wonder books are being written with titles like 'Why I'm no longer speaking to white people about race'.

I asked my daughter the same question and got the same response.

Wow, so lived experoences, factual and research based evidence of racism, historical pejoratives to describe racists should be pushed aside based on the wisdom of 12 year old children, Tik Tok and someone's mum who was a midwife... Okay...

Is this the same monetarised Tik Tok which gives a platform to Dylan Mulvaney, Andrew Tate and their ilk, ill judged stunts, talking dogs, and people throwing disabled women and children around for laughs, likes and lolly?

If you think the arbiters of truth for Black/ethnic women/people are 12 year olds, whose brains are up to a decade away from being fully developed and Tik Tok, you have bigger problems than the name 'Karen'!

Bringing up alternative later uses when appropriate is one thing, using them to derail threads and shut down legitimate discussions about sexism, and spreading misinformation is another.

This. Karen was in use as a misogynistic term before it was retconned as "anti racist" and it has never really been used in the anti racist sense by the majority of people in the U.K. It's misogyny, and no amount of whataboutery and shaming is going to stop me calling it out.

I can't decide whether you're wilfully misunderstanding so as to push your agenda that I'm ignorant, or if you genuinely just don't get what I'm saying.

The OP asked whether people think Karen is a misogynist term. That's what the thread was about. Not about racism. Not about the origin of the slur.

You can argue and argue that Karen is racist, not misogynist. I don't agree. That is not my lived experience. That is not what I see.

Your personal views on tik tok are irrelevant - yes it gives a platform to all kinds of things you might not like. So? What has that got to do with the fact that it will literally show you how Karen is used on social media?

And as for 12yos being a decade away from being fully developed...again, so? They are still able to ascribe meanings to words. They are members of society and encounter language. And my DD's lived experience is that she has never encountered Karen as being a descriptor for a racist.

"Karen" is associated with the kind of person who demands to "speak to the manager" in order to belittle service industry workers, is anti-vaccination, and carries out racist micro-aggressions, such as asking to touch black people's hair.
But a predominant feature of the "Karen" stereotype is that they weaponise their relative privilege against people of colour - for example, when making police complaints against black people for minor or even - in numerous cases - fictitious infringements.

What exactly is a 'Karen' and where did the meme come from?

I have been trying to formulate my thoughts on this post, but as always @Socrateswasrightaboutvoting does it much more eloquent than I possibly could.

And in recent months a male version of the Karen meme has emerged, although it is less widely used: Ken. In June, when wealthy couple Patricia and Mark McCloskey were pictured pointing guns at protesters passing by their home in St Louis, Missouri, they were widely dubbed "Karen and Ken".

And for those asking what the male equivalent is. It is Ken. I stand corrected as have always called them John. Ken it is.

Karen and Ken

The OP asked whether people think Karen is a misogynist term. That's what the thread was about. Not about racism. Not about the origin of the slur.

Yes. Certain posters turn up on every one of these threads to handwave away the misogyny of this slur, and I'm simply not going to engage with them. They're not all PoC, there are several white women here doing the same.

Your points are perfectly valid. It's misogyny, but that's not important when people can gleefully stick it to the bad women i.e. those unimportant women they think should be silent and put up with being called names and disregarded. it's like the trans debate in that respect.

I've asked before if it's hypothetically ok for women to have a special word for the specific misogyny of a particular non white race of men, and strangely it doesn't seem to be.

Oh dear, all those pesky people turning up being anti racist. And goodness me, not all of them are PoC. Some white people do it to!!

Jesus wept.

Go and do a Family Fortunes style survey and ask 100 members of the public what they think of when you say the name Ken.

Pretty much every answer would be Barbie.
You might get a couple of outliers who say Ken Dodd or Ken Loach or something
NOBODY would say oh yes that's an entitled man/a racist man/a male Karen.

There is no male equivalent, and you need to ask yourself why that is.

All of this.

Non engagement is the best way.

You're right. Karen is a misogynistic and ageist slur used against women with an opinion. It's use as a slur says much much more about the person using it than the woman who is the subject of the slur.

It appears to me that women on this thread want to continue being Karens, without being called out on being a Karen.

Over my dead body.

 never change @Lndnmummy

You're right. Karen is a misogynistic and ageist slur used against women with an opinion. It's use as a slur says much much more about the person using it than the woman who is the subject of the slur.

It does.

According to the BBC, there is a male equivalent. But you will not accept that. You will also not accept black and brown women's lived experiences.

YOU need to ask YOURSELF 'why that is.'