Karen and the Generational Divide

[LucilleBluth]

My very good friend kept sending me TikTok videos via whatsapp and told me to get on it. I resisted but last week I decided to have a look what it was all about.

Now I’m 40, friend is 42, both white and degree educated with teenagers and primary aged DCs. It would seem that according to this app that middle aged white women are the actual devil. I’m from a working class background and friend is MC.

I’ve never seen younger people be so vitriolic against people they don’t know. It’s definitely misogyny and ageism but dressed up as being woke???

I can’t quite figure out why or where it’s coming from. Any sociological explanation for this?

How is being white or middle aged a crime?

Unless it's the misogynistic crime of not being bondable.

Looks at sweat pants Guilty as charged.

So far every example given by posters of being called a karen in real life has come from their own children with the exception of the poster with the black friend. This has appeared on other threads too. What does that say about you and how you all teach your kids about misogyny then? If they can do that to you as a parent, imagine what they are like online.

Good point - but aren't you saying that we all should in essence be considered equally.

The woman who shouts at a man cleaning his car that he is a thief has arguably a racist motivation. Now you don't know that, but you can assume it.

The person who shouts at a woman and calls her Karen - associates that woman with a million different prejudices belonging to the actions of other people.

One might think one has a basis in fact, the other looks like anger at women as a class.

@debbrianna

It's amazing how mental illness is being brought into this for the Karens on camera . I don't think the bristol woman on bike callkng the black man a thief for cleaning his car is mentally unstable. This sort of excuse is never afforded to people of colour. They shoot up a school or church and get sympathy. There is a pattern and it's starting to repeat on this thread. For the sake of fairnes , the excuses being given here is jarring at best..

Mental illness wasn't referring to the racism cases. It is referring to the screaming at someone for McDonald's running out of fries or getting the wrong milk in their latte. And I in no way excused it. A likely explanation isn't an excuse.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Don’t conflate N* with Karen it’s not even nearly the same thing

Woeful attempt at a derail.

You're just desperate to shift the discussion to racism, aren't you? Why does talking about misogyny make you and VladmirsPoutrine so uncomfortable?

You seem desperate to see this issue outside of any context. Totally devoid of history. It began as a term to refer to white privilege which is a racist issue. That's why people keep bringing it back to that. It originally meant a woman who was using white privilege to assert dominance over black and brown people.

Feminism has to be viewed through the prism of intersectionality. Black women's experiences of misogyny are also experiences of disempowerment within a society that privileges white people. A disabled woman has a more complex relationship with patriarchy and power structures because she is a woman and disabled. A lesbian woman will have a different experience to a heterosexual woman and so on. It's made more complex by other forms of power such as class.

You are dismissing racism because it obviously doesn't affect you and you are therefore, blind to it. White people benefit from living in a predominately white society. Racism affects POC on all levels most recently with Covid.

In the US black people are coming from a background of slavery, segregation and widespread racism which affects them on every level. It's not as simple as men have power, women do not. A white woman in a racist society where black people can be shot for simply being black, has more power than her black counterpart. A Karen was originally a woman who used white privilege over black people.

It seems to have changed from that to mean any woman saying something or standing her ground. I believe black women have been called Karens as well, so the original meaning has completely twisted. It now seems to mean a woman and I agree it's become misogynist. It seems to be another way to tear women down.

It's disingenuous to suggest that black and brown women experience patriarchy in the same way. They don't.

@TheBuffster

Someone on here sourced the Karen phenomenon to incel groups. "Karen took the kids". It was a user who'd heavily researched incel as part of her job (sorry, can't remember the name) so I believe her over that fairytale sounding origin above.

Use in the UK is primarily about ageism and sexism.
Vile, vile phenomenon.

That is very interesting.

And not at all surprising.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

If history has taught us anything it's that people do NOT like women being assertive and will use any trope, insult and agenda to smack us down when we raise our heads too high.

Yes!

No one should be racist
No one should abuse any service or retail staff
No one should be mean to anyone

But...the original Karen meme as far as in can recall was about a middle aged woman with a dodgy haircut asking to speak to the manager. Which is something any same sensible person would do if not getting the service they need or want.

My comment about shooting up schools and getting sympathy was a gerelised sympathy white people give to one another that they do not do with other cases that involve non-white people. I see the post about karen progressing in that way. Excusing behaviuors by coming up with reason is not even funny becusee thry put other people's lives in danger. The danger is the men. No one ever had sympathy for Shaniqua and her babies..maybe she had postal depression. No ! She was just ghetto.

I'm not sure who would disagree with that Poppyzbrite.
I think the issue for me is when people say "it started with this meaning and so it is fine for it to still be used even though the meaning and use has drastically changed"

Look, if anyone wants to discuss racism then I'm personally all for it. Start a new thread, I will partake, as racism is terrifyingly real and prevalent absolutely everywhere in the world.

But the Karen insult, no matter what it's origins, no longer has anything to do with racism. The overwhelming use of he Karen trope is now "woman who complains" and is peddled by misogynists at every turn to keep women down. In the U.K., it's pretty much exclusively used this way. It's so far removed from race now, that it's quite alarming that something that once 'belonged' to the POC community has been stolen by sexist men.

But race and the Karen insult are entirely serpents issues. No point responding with "ooh look at your white privilege" when this is pointed out.

That doesn't mean those who are insulted by the Karen trope are racists, or excuse racism. It's that we refuse to allow people yet another Avenue in which to silence women, especially when it's in the name of "exposing whites privilege"

Once again, the incel creeps uploading out-of-context 'Karen' videos to Tik Tok would not piss on a POC if they were on fire. Stop being dumb.

Is being assertive and asking to see the manager related to privilege or skin colour? I wouldn't have thought so as I see assertive women from all classes and colours. Many black and Asian women or working class women have had to get used to fighting for their rights, and don't have the luxury of being passive and staying quiet. And it's actually a good thing for a woman to be genuinely assertive and polite whilst doing it

Good point. The posters who claim to be so concerned about racism should realise that anything weaponised against women generally is always weaponised 10 times as hard against non-white women.

'This sort of excuse is never afforded to people of colour. They shoot up a school or church and get sympathy'

Black people in America don't tend to go around 'shooting up churches'. Nor do women.

That shit is invariably white men.

White men who as you say get sympathy. Often it's because they couldn't get sex (bitches won't fuck him), mummy was overbearing (what a bitch she was), wife had an affair or tried to leave (what a bitch) etc etc and so on.

There seems to be a pattern as well of men who get involved in terrorism having a history of VAWG.

So why does the man get sympathy? Because it was all really the fault of a woman.

Woman is the root of all evil- st Jerome, early Christian scholar.

And so it goes on. These ideas run through the core of society. Not explicitly, but it's there again and again in do many ways.

@LadyWithTheBraid I think that's the problem with meme's and things like this - they get interpreted in different ways. I certainly don't think Karen refers to all women or ethnic women. I think it's always white women of a specific age.

You're just desperate to shift the discussion to racism, aren't you? Why does talking about misogyny make you and VladmirsPoutrine so uncomfortable?

It doesn't make me uncomfortable. I exist at the intersection of both - if anything I spend far too much of my energy thinking about these issues.

Someone literally excusing the behaviour of Karens as 'exhausted' & 'neurotic'

To be fair discussing 'Karen' on Mumsnet is akin to joining a vegan forum to extol the virtues of eating a bacon sandwich on a miserable Sunday morning

😂😂 this is true. I told a group chat of friends I’d responded to a thread on Karens & was mocked for my self-flagellation 😄

I don't think Karen is sexist. It only applies to a certain type of woman behaving in a certain way. I think it's a useful term to call out a specific type of white privilege that hasn't previously been challenged.

Exactly! People don’t like being challenged on their own privileges & it shows

Woeful attempt at a derail.

You're just desperate to shift the discussion to racism, aren't you? Why does talking about misogyny make you and VladmirsPoutrine so uncomfortable?

Talking about misogyny doesn’t make me uncomfortable? What about being called on white privilege makes you uncomfortable?

Finally, not that anyone asked but I’m not even a guy as people keep seeming to assume 😄 I’ve just seen people jumping on the victim bandwagon without checking their own privilege first. Yes as girls & women we’re discriminated against & yes it’s shit but that doesn’t mean some women don’t still have it easier than others 🙄

Agree the sexism / ageism combo aimed at middle aged women is rage inducing.

However you are deffo only seeing a corner of TikTok there.

Again, what's wrong with being white or a certain age.
Both are things beyond our control.

Valar morghulis.

The irony of the people on this thread calling "Karen" ageism and then accusing people who use it of being "woke millenials". I guess it's only ageism when you're over 40.

You were all complaining of the same old shit when it was "Ok Boomer" instead. Turn the computer off and find something better to do then complaining about the culture you've decided to deliberately misinterpret as it seems every older generation choses to do and in doing so consistently alienate their children and younger relatives.

Well thats ok then

I suppose then what is the object of the insult? If you say it is a middle aged white woman, then does it not have its own racial connection?

I’ve just seen people jumping on the victim bandwagon without checking their own privilege first. Yes as girls & women we’re discriminated against & yes it’s shit but that doesn’t mean some women don’t still have it easier than others

So white women who've experienced, abuse, rape, violence, CSA (of which I am a survivor) should, what exactly? Count their lucky blessings? STFU? Stop playing the victim card? Apologise? I don't understand your point.

[quote Nothinglikeachocolatebrownie]@LadyWithTheBraid I think that's the problem with meme's and things like this - they get interpreted in different ways. I certainly don't think Karen refers to all women or ethnic women. I think it's always white women of a specific age.[/quote]
and that is a problem.

It is offensive to consider that being female, middle aged, middle class, white etc are linked to entitlement when an entitled attitude is not linked to these factors.

Killjoys you've made a shedload of assumptions there.

the other looks like anger at women as a class

Exactly this. And the posters on here who don't want to see this will find that it comes back to bite underprivileged women hardest - including POC. That is the true meaning of intersectionality, not hatred directed at 'privileged' lower middle class white women for having an opinion and the wrong haircut.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows In the main white women don't face adversity and discrimination because of their 'whiteness' whereas non-white women... do.