Karen advert

[IncognitoMam]

This shouldn't be allowed surely? Who comes up with this shit?
I'm not called Karen but I know Karen's that hate their name now because of the way it's used.

Karens

Totally agree. I have three friends called Karen. All lovely. It annoys my every time I see their name being used in this way. I would avoid any company I saw using it in their advertising.

Bizarre given their product - practice management software. Would imagine middle aged women may well be making the buying decision.

Someone will be along to explain it better than me but 'Karen' is really misogynistic age-ist shite. I can't believe anyone thought it was appropriate

The Karen thing is just a way to silence women. I would not be buying from a company that used this in their advertising.

The acceptable face of misogyny 🙄 I always call this out when I see it, it really riles me!

Where are they from? If they are not from the US that term doesn't apply to them.

Karen is just the latest term used by African Americans to refer to a meddlesome white woman from the US who uses her white privilege, sometimes to deadly consequences. US history is littered with white women terrorizing non white people by accusing them of something, which is followed by the white man then taking action. Emmett Till is probably the most famous example;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till

"Emmett Till was an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi 1955 at the age of 14, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store."

Good article in the New York Times on this; How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror;

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/opinion/racism-white-women.html

"We often like to make white supremacy a testosterone-fueled masculine expression, but it is just as likely to wear heels as a hood. Indeed, untold numbers of lynchings were executed because white women had claimed that a black man raped, assaulted, talked to or glanced at them. The Tulsa race massacre, the destruction of Black Wall Street, was spurred by an incident between a white female elevator operator and a black man. As the Oklahoma Historical Society points out, the most common explanation is that he stepped on her toe. As many as 300 people were killed because of it. The torture and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, a lynching actually, occurred because a white woman said that he "grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her". This practice, this exercise in racial extremism has been dragged into the modern era through the weaponizing of 9-1-1, often by white women, to invoke the power and force of the police who they are fully aware are hostile to black men. This was again evident when a white woman in New York's Central Park told a black man, a bird-watcher, that she was going to call the police and tell them that he was threatening her life."

Look at the reaction to the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation#Audience_reaction

Your friends need to stop attaching a label that doesn't belong to them, nor feeling annoyed over their ignorance, and also educate themselves on the misery and terror inflicted on a group of people.

What a shit advert

Don't even think the image is very strong and the Karen thing is just awful

Surprised that got signed off by anyone

It's misogynistic shite.

Your friends need to stop attaching a label that doesn't belong to them, nor feeling annoyed over their ignorance, and also educate themselves on the misery and terror inflicted on a group of people

This is a UK site and posters are referring to its common usage in the UK as a derogatory term for assertive middle aged women. No need for the inevitable cut and paste lecture derail.

@DeeCee77 is ostensibly correct though. And 'assertive' is not the term that applies here.

Of course it’s about assertiveness. What else is it about. It’s not about white women bullying black medical practice staff ffs

The Karen (or whatever the previous term was used by oppressed non white people back in 18th century america) has always been there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oney_Judge

"Oney Judge was a biracial slave who was owned by the Washington family, first at the family's plantation at Mount Vernon and later, after George Washington became president, at the President's House in Philadelphia, then the nation's capital city. In her early twenties, she absconded, becoming a fugitive slave, after learning that Martha Washington had intended to transfer ownership of her to her granddaughter, known to have a horrible temper."

The image below is the fugitive slave advertisement that the tyrant george washington, the owner of over 600 slaves (human beings), placed in a newspaper in an effort to catch Judge and have her return to him, her master.

Insults for women.. scold, nag, gossip, witch, crone and so on and on and on. Two new ones added relatively recently being terf and karen. It's misogyny pure and simple. Name calling to shut up, undermine, ridicule and castigate 'uppity' and non conforming women. Should you dare to have an opinion, should you dare to complain. Conform remain silent, I don't bloody think so.

@DeeCee77 . The use of 'Karen' now has a different use here in the UK. It's used as a derogatory term to describe a middle aged woman who disagrees or complains about a service being provided.

I agree with you OP.

Yep

No it’s not
some people men and women are entitled whingers
i have heard men call men karen
my mate is called Karen she laughs it off

The use of 'Karen' now has a different use here in the UK. It's used as a derogatory term to describe a middle aged woman who disagrees or complains about a service being provided.

It isn't just the UK. It's routinely used in that context on American sites, forums and comment sections too.

@DeeCee77 as others have said, the historical basis of the term is not the issue. Its' current usage in the UK is simply the latest iteration of the meme that middle aged women who assert themselves or ask to be taken seriously should be shamed into being "nice" and going away. In the UK, and in the US, this fear of middle aged, capable women who might not need to be controlled by a man led in part to the witch trials of the 17th Century. These days the burning is done on social media but its the same thing. I absolutely agree with the OP and similarly challenge the term when I've heard it used (especially by the teenagers I teach).

You are reading too much into this
most people don’t have the time to look into the origins of every word or expression

You can't think it's ok to use that term though? You see how it's to shut down women of a certain age (though this is branching out to be applied to any age girl or woman apparently). It's misogynistic crap.

It’s awful. Misogynistic, lazy and vile.

Language changes.
The origin of the Karen insult, as above, is now just a way of shutting down women who are speaking up.

That there are (presumably) women on this thread that think that's OK are part of the problem.

My heart really bleeds for anyone misappropriating a term given to deadly white women in the US.

Heres more Karens walking behind a 15 year old black girl in protest at her being able to go to a newly integrated school along with their white children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Eckford

"Eckford only spent one year at Little Rock Central High where she and the other black students were tormented throughout. In the years since, she has struggled through life, and twice attempted suicide. She was subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder."