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.

It is the problem with any label that is initially used to call out toxic behaviour. They all eventually enter the public mainstream and their usage gets weaponised to silence whatever group that original toxic behaviour originates.

I hate the way people use "Karen". It started out as a nickname for a racist woman who felt entitled to discriminate against other races, but it's now used to shut any girl or woman up who has an opinion. Other reason I'm against it: if you meet a racist woman, call her a racist and have it out. Don't diminish what she stands for with a cutesy nickname that taints everyone with that name.

It's not incorrect

Karen is used as a term for being obnoxious and rude.

I've seen plenty of people called out for using it wrong.

"They aren't being a Karen, they are right"

Most people arguing it is a slur are... well
.. Karens. Calling it a slur to deflect off themselves

I spend a lot of time online. It's usage isn't to silence women but call ANYONE out for entitled behaviour

Good Guy Steve
Chad is the main one against men

My teen Dd is currently working in a popular coffee shop. The “mum age” women are the nicest customers. If anyone’s mean it’s older 60 plus men. Gerald’s?

I spend a lot of time online. It's usage isn't to silence women but call ANYONE out for entitled behaviour

I too spend a lot of time online, as I suspect many of us do and it is most certainly used to silence women. I've seen numerous examples of this in many forums and comment sections. If it isn't misogynist then why is there no equally popular equivalent for men? It's used pretty much exclusively against women.

That's not what Chad means.

@AnObserverInThisDarkWorld "most people calling it a slur are Karens" Thank you -- you just perfectly proved the exact problem. Loads of us on this thread have explained and given examples of where they have had that insult levelled against them when they were being perfectly clam, rational and polite, but were asking to have a mistake rectified, or for someone to adjust their offensive behaviour or language. Are you honestly trying to say that by definition, a woman who asserts herself in any way at all must be an angry entitled shrew?

I thought a Chad was used in the Incel community to describe the guy who is their complete opposite (in their self-loathing opinion).

Handsome, fit, charismatic, attractive and succesful with the girls. Chad is someone they're jealous of. He has his own car.

Karen as an insult is so far removed from Chad that it's on another planet.

'Chad' is from incel culture - used to refer to a stereotypically attractive man who has no trouble attracting women. It comes from an entirely different place than Karen.

x-post

Oh lord, Chad has entered the chat. Bingo time.

Could any UK poster who has ever met anyone named Chad please make themselves known.

Yeah, those women in NI who marched and protested for peace were a bunch of old Karens, weren't they? Maeve Mulholland · Anne Devlin · Susan McCrory · Mary Hannon and others. They should have stayed out of it and let the men sort it out with their bombs and bullets.

So this DeeCee person is white and thinks they can lecture ME as a non-white woman, about experiences of RACISM?

FOTTFSOFAWYGTFOSM. Dear.

Chad isn't derogatory. It's dripping with envy, and I'm sure the incels would LIKE it to appear derogatory but it's obviously not. Chad is someone they wish they were like.

Someone said this is aimed at GP surgeries. GPs are supposed to safeguard vulnerable people. I find this casual misogyny so worrying. If women labelled “Karens” aren’t worthy of respect, how are we going to protect them if they have a disability or old age etc? I mean, did anyone think this ad through?

I’ve found this really interesting. I knew that in the US Karen’s were initially toxic white women exerting their privilege over people of colour and I think @DeeCee77 s teachings would have worked far better in a post on its own right. They really do deserve that kind of attention.

so the post has highlighted a few things.

firstly that cultural appropriation of the term has essentially watered down the original meaning which for poc takes power away from them but also that the culturally appropriated term used all over the world now is also used to take power away from women of a certain age who dare to have an opinion on anything regardless of the colour of their skin.

Women complaining of being labelled Karen’s here have no power to stop the use of the term. It’s directed as an insult and designed to shut them up. Its current usage outwith the US (and even within it to a certain extent) has moved away from the empowerment it gave people of colour in calling out racism and is now used generally to shut down any woman and especially women over the age of 35. That is why its appropriated use is both misogynistic and ageist. People saying that are not wrong and DeeCee pointing out the origins of the term is not wrong, they’re just two different uses of the same term, one with social justice connotations and the other the complete opposite of that.

How on earth can it be irrelevant? Reading this thread alone and seeing, clear as day, the pile on towards @DeeCee77 clearly illustrates how heart breakingly relevant it is.

Worth noting that 'Chad' has its own female counterpart, 'Stacy' - the type of woman who will fling herself at a Chad but not give an incel the time of day.

NoI haven’t. Never seen any John memes either.

Women are already second class citizens when it comes to medicine.

How many times do we need to read the stories told by women who have had their pain dismissed, their symptoms brushed aside, their experiences put down to a "need to lose weight"?

It took ten years (yes 10) for my odd symptoms to be taken seriously enough for an EEG and MRI to confirm that yes, I actually DID have epilepsy.

My friend's husband presented the same year I was diagnosed and had his MRI and EEG within weeks of going to his GP.

I'm a Megan/Meg and was a teenager through the 2000s - with Drake and Josh/ Family Guy my name was used as an insult at my school all the time. It didn't bother me

Oh wait you’re white and Catholic Irish (albeit northern Irish)? Is this a basically hate the British and oppression forced by them on other countries/cultures etc? I’ve had that rammed down my throat by my Irish Catholic stepfather for a few years despite him living, and working in a civil service job in England since his mid 20s and paying British taxes. I’m not saying in any way I agree with what the British have done historically.

Oh really?

Interesting. I bet they hate Stacy more than Chad.

Doubly awful that it's a patient being a "Karen". Probably just someone wanting good care while in hospital, how dare they?