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?

[quote Nellodee]Here's a Karen meme from 2018, right back at the start of Karen memes, before she got her Talk to the Manager cut.

Its accompanied by the text:

Her: Something tells me you're cheating on me
Him: Why can't 'something' ever tell you to suck my dick, Karen?

www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/9gf3l0/get_nasty_karen/[/quote]
How strange. It's almost like the Karen meme is good old-fashioned misogyny and not a brave crusade against the tidal wave of racially-motivated violence and trauma unleashed by middle aged women 🤔

Nope me neither. Yet still able to call out the misogyny, which I figure is passing you by..

So, if anyone can actually be arsed to read through my posts, I've made a pretty bloody convincing case that Karen was always a misogynistic meme, that only had the racial aspect as a minor afterthought until quite recently - unless bringing potato salad to a barbecue is THAT bad?

Anyone want to actually counter my well researched case?

Thanks, MissLucy, it does seem that way, doesn't it?

You can tell people are grasping at straws when they obtusely claim to take sarcasm seriously. @Nellodee it's perfectly obvious what you meant ignore the poster playing dumb

Possibly the first ever fully formed Karen meme, with haircut:

'Non-white' is awful. It's like saying 'non-women', like white is the main colour and everything else is 'other'

So how is saying people of colour any better? It’s like when people say ‘I’m not racist I don’t care if you’re purple or blue’ like there’s even such a thing, it’s just derogatory. White people are not all one colour, some are pinker some more olive and some paler, to suggest non whites are the only people with a different skin colour just doesn’t make sense. I hate the term mixed race but people use it all the time, dual heritage would be better but there you go

It was under the reddit: bugger off Karen, incase its not obvious why its a Karen meme.

The women in the karen memes are always depicted with a short choppy hair cut.
Any why is short hair so common amongst middle aged women?

Because society tells us we are too old to have long hair. Long hair equals attractiveness and middle aged women mustn’t be attractive. We are dried up old prunes past our child baring usefulness. Our sexuality is gone and we should know our place and get on with our looking after aging parents, grandkids and doing a bit of knitting and gardening.

Millenialcunt, why are you completely ignoring my full and cited research, absolutely proving that Karen is a sexist meme?

I wonder will the "hair" change as so many of us now sport rather longer hair styles because of lockdown?

If anyone is interested, I did a google advanced search on "Karen Meme" at three month intervals from Jan 2014 onwards, ignoring links to current meme sites that would have recent, rather than period memes. The evolution was very apparent. There was possibly a slight "Mean Girls" influence, but it was always pretty tenuous.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

You can tell people are grasping at straws when they obtusely claim to take sarcasm seriously. *@Nellodee* it's perfectly obvious what you meant ignore the poster playing dumb

Well we're either dumb enough to be arguing about a misogynist term or we're not. Or do we pick and choose which misogynist terms we use against women? Are you dumb enough to drone on for hours about Karen as a misogynist term yet too dumb to see the irony in clapping someone on the back for using a misogynist term that's been used against women for millennia?

@Nellodee

You absolutely owned the thread.

I'd imagine it will change to reflect whatever most bitter men's ex-wives are wearing these days.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

You can tell people are grasping at straws when they obtusely claim to take sarcasm seriously. *@Nellodee* it's perfectly obvious what you meant ignore the poster playing dumb

I am definitely taking this advice, thanks.

@Millenialcunt

'Non-white' is awful. It's like saying 'non-women', like white is the main colour and everything else is 'other'

So how is saying people of colour any better? It’s like when people say ‘I’m not racist I don’t care if you’re purple or blue’ like there’s even such a thing, it’s just derogatory. White people are not all one colour, some are pinker some more olive and some paler, to suggest non whites are the only people with a different skin colour just doesn’t make sense. I hate the term mixed race but people use it all the time, dual heritage would be better but there you go

The trouble with the term dual heritage is that it supposes just two heritages. There are often more than two heritages involved, so mixed race as a term could be preferred.

[quote LexMitior]@Nellodee

You absolutely owned the thread.[/quote]
Any excuse for a bit of google search-y research. I love it!

@Nellodee I’m not ignoring you, there’s so many posts basically saying the same thing it’s hard to keep track of who’s specifically saying what tbh

Did you not read where I quoted the Wikipedia page, about how having a term for white people (often women) exercising their privilege/looking to get black people in trouble as harking all the way back to the Jim Crow era and being called Miss Ann? It’s not a new concept however you want to dress it up. It may well have first been used on a Reddit but obviously it was quickly taken to replace Miss Ann/BBQ Becky/Permit Patty etc. No one has said this is something all white women do, plenty don’t & are great allies to non white women & challenging their discrimination but there are a definite group of those who do & this is who Karen is directed toward. People who are not that shouldn’t be offended by the term as it’s obviously not meant to describe them

@ItsIgginningtolooklikelockdown

I wonder will the "hair" change as so many of us now sport rather longer hair styles because of lockdown?

I already had the longer hair. And shock horror it is grey and not the trendy dyed grey but the natural getting older grey.

this was my first attempt at being confident about something I care about and affects me.

Well done, LetMeBubble. I hope you were successful and I hope you find it gets easier every time you dare to do it.

Me: What have you got to say about my incontrovertible evidence that Karen was, from it's inception, a sexist trope?

MillenialCunt: Did you read my post?

@Nellodee

So, if anyone can actually be arsed to read through my posts, I've made a pretty bloody convincing case that Karen was always a misogynistic meme, that only had the racial aspect as a minor afterthought until quite recently - unless bringing potato salad to a barbecue is THAT bad?

Anyone want to actually counter my well researched case?

And that is probably why it is "Karen" that has become so popular rather than, for example, "Permit Patty", "Barbecue Becky" etc - terms which were specifically coined by African Americans to describe (apalling) racist behaviours. But those names havent caught on in the same way the much more flexible term "Karen" has. Because its easier to redirect Karen back to good old mysogyny. Because thats how it started.

It IS meant to describe us though. It's meant to describe ALL women who ever stood up to white males. THAT's it's origin.

@OllyBJolly

It only applies to a certain type of woman behaving in a certain way

It really isn't. It's more and more used by men to put women down for speaking out, standing up for themselves, asserting themselves. I hear it most often from men who claim that "Feminism has gone too far", "Women hold all the powerful positions", "She got the job because of box ticking", "My fucking ex-wife ruined my life. It's not my fault I had the affair(s)"

It gives mediocre men a trope to blame for their lack of success and for their misogyny.

This. I supervise a lot of younger women and cannot tell you how many have proudly told me that they are not feminists or anything, like that is something to be proud of. The level of misogyny in society makes me want to weep.