Page 13 | Karen advert

IncognitoMam · 2023-08-26T06:29:14+00:00

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.

Bettelucksecondtimearoundimherewaitingforu · 26/08/2023 12:35

DeeCee77 · 26/08/2023 08:24

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.

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Oh, thank you for this comprehensive post- much appreciated.

So, it is about racism then and not 'assertiveness'. Why are people already jumping to cover up for racism?

I was just listening to an old programme on LBC that took place on Thursday when I was busy, about why there was an immigration policy welcoming Ukrainians and not for Afghans who even assisted the west in their war.

The presenter, Ben Kentish, did a stellar job fending off racists trying to justify it on common culture/ values, when the only thing Brits and Ukrainian have in common IS skin colour. He asked one if he knew/ liked Ukrainian food (hahaha) etc Here is the thing- proximity to us geographically, more media coverage of it so everyone in UK knew about the war in Ukraine etc etc just will not cut it as ONLY Ukrainian nationals (who are 99.9% white) from Ukraine were allowed in the UK 'under that special scheme' and all other nationalities ( mostly black and brown) people who found themselves living in Ukraine during the war, were not welcomed through the SAME racist scheme. We also saw how they were prevented on trains in Ukraine, something at least you will never see ( we hope) in the UK as we have much progressed and only a minority are still fundamentally racist.

A caller made a good point about Chanel four programme showing Ukrainian refugees shocked to see brown people in Birmingham which left the caller worried that as a nation, UK has moved a bit away from open bigotry and therefore the Scheme was importing (lol) racists, antisemites, homophobes etc from Ukraine which clearly demonstrated they do not share the same values with the majority of British people (many of whom are English) in the UK.

Argue with that- I will be waiting!

Sourcherriesarebest · 26/08/2023 12:35

This is interesting about the origin.

If correct, it was originally a general slur about women, changed to a specific one about racist white women.

Then morphed back into a general one, but specifically middle-aged ones.

Any etymology experts please chime in! Language evolution is crazy.

https://www.insider.com/karen-meme-origin-the-history-of-calling-women-karen-white-2020-5?amp

'Karen' meme origin: the history of calling problematic women 'Karen'

The "Karen" meme depicting women who ask to "speak to the manager" has become nearly ubiquitous online. Here is the meme's history and origin.

https://www.insider.com/karen-meme-origin-the-history-of-calling-women-karen-white-2020-5?amp

WolfFoxHare · 26/08/2023 12:36

Lndnmummy · 26/08/2023 12:05

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.

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@DeeCee77 has already said she’s white - how is people disagreeing with her on any way either a ‘pile on’ or evidence of racism?! If you repeatedly try to derail a thread and get called out for it, that’s not a pile on.

IrresponsiblyCertainAboutSexualDimorphism · 26/08/2023 12:36

GoFaster83 · 26/08/2023 10:12

I do agree the word isn't appropriate and I don't use it myself. But I have been on the receiving end of that sort of behaviour and it's very real. Its not about criticising assertive women. Its about identifying bullying, rude and inappropriate people (mena and women). I'm no misogynistic for calling it out this type of behaviour when I see it or experience it. Sorry OP I know this wasn't the point of your post! It just drives me mad that some people immediately jump to defend the awful behaviour of some people. We just need a better word to label it.

No one is defending bullying behaviour, much less racist behaviour. We’re condemning

a) the conflation of women standing up for themselves with women being racist and/or bullies
b) the use of a woman’s name as lazy sexist and bullying shorthand for women standing up for themselves

SomeCatFromJapan · 26/08/2023 12:37

So, it is about racism then and not 'assertiveness'. Why are people already jumping to cover up for racism?

I don't think anyone has? It's not like the women the slur is aimed at get a choice in the matter. If anyone feels it's cultural appropriation, take it up with the name-callers, we'd all be delighted if they stopped using it.

wayyour · 26/08/2023 12:37

This is inaccurate. Its not cultural appropriation. 'Karen' is a term created and popularised by white men. That was its original and for many years only usage. It came from Reddit in the late noughties but was used all over the Internet for years.

That is interesting.

EarthSight · 26/08/2023 12:37

Saraooo · 26/08/2023 12:25

What is the whole Karen thing? Can someone enlighten me?

It started out as an American way to describe a certain type of middle-class, rude woman who is racist and is always escalating everything. In the U.S it's a middle class name, but in the U.K, it's more working class.

It's grown beyond the bounds of it's original usage and is now being used to demonise mainly middle age women. Apparently there is nothing that deserves more contempt than a woman who dares to age and not be as sexually appealing to men any more. It's the misogynist go-to word to shut women down, to quieten any woman who dares to have any opinion at all, and is being enthusiastically being adopted by -

Younger women who want to distance themsleves from older women so that everybody knows they're not old and ugly

Younger men who are keen to express how disgusting they find older women being assertive and not appealing to them

Some older men, although I have found that to be rarer

Older women who want to be the cool girl in their mum group and show how woke and down-with-the-kids they are. They use a term to try and signal how unlike a horrible complain-y older woman they are, and to try and show their kids' friends that they're not that old yet.

Baldieheid · 26/08/2023 12:41

I suspect under those definitions that even the most ardent of the "calling someone Karen is okay" women on this thread will eventually find themselves on the receiving end.

Like those young women who say there's no need for feminism.

Wait till you get pregnant.

IrresponsiblyCertainAboutSexualDimorphism · 26/08/2023 12:41

AnObserverInThisDarkWorld · 26/08/2023 10:21

"Karen" doesn't refer to an assertive woman. It refers specifically to the kind of woman, or man "male Karens", who screams at employees for no reason, who asks to see the manager because they don't like the answer they've given even though it's correct, who try to get people fired for stupid shit, who scream at non-employees they think work some where...it's not about any woman who tries to speak up

And yet that’s exactly how it’s used.

PurpleWisteria1 · 26/08/2023 12:43

DeeCee77 · 26/08/2023 08:24

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.

Show quote history

Please don’t tell me you are actually defending this shite.
In the UK this is just used to put down any woman who speaks up for herself.
Awful for any called Karen.
Imagine for one second that tomorrow your name was commonly used for someone who was a complete arsehole and now whenever a new person hears your name for the first time they snigger.
Yeah- fun times.

ImNotWorthy · 26/08/2023 12:44

'Karen' is a term created and popularised by white men. That was its original and for many years only usage. It came from Reddit in the late noughties but was used all over the Internet for years.

Eh? Karen is a name that the parents of a female child have often named that child, since well before the "late naughties" and well back into last century, the 20th.

PurpleWisteria1 · 26/08/2023 12:46

EarthSight · 26/08/2023 12:37

It started out as an American way to describe a certain type of middle-class, rude woman who is racist and is always escalating everything. In the U.S it's a middle class name, but in the U.K, it's more working class.

It's grown beyond the bounds of it's original usage and is now being used to demonise mainly middle age women. Apparently there is nothing that deserves more contempt than a woman who dares to age and not be as sexually appealing to men any more. It's the misogynist go-to word to shut women down, to quieten any woman who dares to have any opinion at all, and is being enthusiastically being adopted by -

Younger women who want to distance themsleves from older women so that everybody knows they're not old and ugly

Younger men who are keen to express how disgusting they find older women being assertive and not appealing to them

Some older men, although I have found that to be rarer

Older women who want to be the cool girl in their mum group and show how woke and down-with-the-kids they are. They use a term to try and signal how unlike a horrible complain-y older woman they are, and to try and show their kids' friends that they're not that old yet.

Show quote history

This- completely this.
I would add another category - women of any age who are generally well meaning but don’t actually understand how damaging using this phrase is (and don’t have any close friends or family members called Karen)

BibbleandSqwauk · 26/08/2023 12:47

@ImNotWorthy oh come on... we are talking about the use of it as a slur being created at some point in the recent pst, not the origin of the name itself. Don't be disingenuous.

Spywoman · 26/08/2023 12:48

DeeCee77 · 26/08/2023 09:13

The Karen = a racist white american woman who uses her white privilege to inflict terror upon a non white person.

That's it.

Someone called Karen from Croydon has got nothing to do with "The Karen". Tell your poor, unfortunate friends (sarcasm) to stop misappropriating a term that historically refers to a very dangerous entity to non white people in america.

It's not the women being called the name that are misappropriating the term! It's all the people (mainly men but appallingly some women) using it.

I care that there is so much racism directly at people of colour.

I don't appreciate or agree with you deriding women's experiences of basically being called nags and bitches.

There is definitely white privilege. But there is also male privilege and we shouldn't be indirectly encouraging that by ignoring misogynism. Ignoring misogyny if anything encourages other kinds of discrimination. If you allow that all bets are off.

ThePoshUns · 26/08/2023 12:48

ImNotWorthy · 26/08/2023 12:44

'Karen' is a term created and popularised by white men. That was its original and for many years only usage. It came from Reddit in the late noughties but was used all over the Internet for years.

Eh? Karen is a name that the parents of a female child have often named that child, since well before the "late naughties" and well back into last century, the 20th.

Eyeroll

Anonymouseposter · 26/08/2023 12:48

Using one name as a shorthand for an unpleasant type of person wasn’t great in the first place. It’s a form of stereotyping and discrimination. That’s not to say that the behaviour of those people wasn’t deplorable. It has been extended now to put down women aged 50+ in general. Very poor that it’s used in an advert about patients when this group of people tend to get poorer medical care.

WolfFoxHare · 26/08/2023 12:48

Lndnmummy · 26/08/2023 12:21

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

I have been wanting to type this all morning.🤣

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Nice to see you’re outting yourself as an agist misogynist there @Lndnmummy . So basically what, protest against being labelled a Karen and you’re a Karen, or accept it without protest and you’re a Karen? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t?

You might think this is a winning argument but actually you’re just revealing your own biases and prejudices. Maybe educate yourself, or at least take a good long look in the mirror.

Bettelucksecondtimearoundimherewaitingforu · 26/08/2023 12:49

EarthSight · 26/08/2023 12:37

It started out as an American way to describe a certain type of middle-class, rude woman who is racist and is always escalating everything. In the U.S it's a middle class name, but in the U.K, it's more working class.

It's grown beyond the bounds of it's original usage and is now being used to demonise mainly middle age women. Apparently there is nothing that deserves more contempt than a woman who dares to age and not be as sexually appealing to men any more. It's the misogynist go-to word to shut women down, to quieten any woman who dares to have any opinion at all, and is being enthusiastically being adopted by -

Younger women who want to distance themsleves from older women so that everybody knows they're not old and ugly

Younger men who are keen to express how disgusting they find older women being assertive and not appealing to them

Some older men, although I have found that to be rarer

Older women who want to be the cool girl in their mum group and show how woke and down-with-the-kids they are. They use a term to try and signal how unlike a horrible complain-y older woman they are, and to try and show their kids' friends that they're not that old yet.

Show quote history

Look, I am not up to the word's evolution, which I believe is not supremely relevant to know anyway, but can't we all agree it is about racism first and foremost towards blacks in US.

Next, the debate on evolution is only relevant as to the identity of teh perpetrator or those using it to distinguish themselves from it: First racism by: white women, evolved into white men, evolved into younger women distinguishing from racist (not 'complain-y' come on!) older women ( also a new entrance for misogyny and ageism here) et. etc etc.

But the common and fundamental thread is racism. You may care by whom, but blacks on the receiving end care not a jot who the perpetrator of their daily misery is. Capeesh!

Winederlust · 26/08/2023 12:50

That's as it may be, but the term has been bastardised into a misogynistic slur for any middle aged woman with an opinion. Blame the people who have done that, not those on the receiving end.

Spywoman · 26/08/2023 12:52

EarthSight · 26/08/2023 12:37

It started out as an American way to describe a certain type of middle-class, rude woman who is racist and is always escalating everything. In the U.S it's a middle class name, but in the U.K, it's more working class.

It's grown beyond the bounds of it's original usage and is now being used to demonise mainly middle age women. Apparently there is nothing that deserves more contempt than a woman who dares to age and not be as sexually appealing to men any more. It's the misogynist go-to word to shut women down, to quieten any woman who dares to have any opinion at all, and is being enthusiastically being adopted by -

Younger women who want to distance themsleves from older women so that everybody knows they're not old and ugly

Younger men who are keen to express how disgusting they find older women being assertive and not appealing to them

Some older men, although I have found that to be rarer

Older women who want to be the cool girl in their mum group and show how woke and down-with-the-kids they are. They use a term to try and signal how unlike a horrible complain-y older woman they are, and to try and show their kids' friends that they're not that old yet.

Show quote history

This is so true. And so depressing.

If only we learnt to support each other.

wayyour · 26/08/2023 12:52

'Karen' is a term created and popularised by white men. That was its original and for many years only usage. It came from Reddit in the late noughties but was used all over the Internet for years.

"Eh? Karen is a name that the parents of a female child have often named that child, since well before the "late naughties" and well back into last century, the 20th."

I don't think that poster means that the white men created the actual name (it's an old Danish shortening actually- popularised in the US as we all know) but when it started to be used in a misogynistic way.

Rosscameasdoody · 26/08/2023 12:53

Pleasebeafleabite · 26/08/2023 08:38

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.

I agree but ‘assertive’ is not what I’d call some of the stuff I’ve seen posted on YouTube - rude, ignorant and abusive are words that mostly spring to mind. Agree about the Karen thing though.

Bettelucksecondtimearoundimherewaitingforu · 26/08/2023 12:55

Winederlust · 26/08/2023 12:50

That's as it may be, but the term has been bastardised into a misogynistic slur for any middle aged woman with an opinion. Blame the people who have done that, not those on the receiving end.

Cool. You got it!👌

Yes, next debate- which is mainly relevant to whites. I agree it is unfair to use the name for something like this. And I also do not agree it is right for younger white women to use it against older white women. Everything is wrong. However, the term is now highly relevant to racism and to think otherwise, is also misleading.

Spywoman · 26/08/2023 12:59

Bettelucksecondtimearoundimherewaitingforu · 26/08/2023 12:55

Cool. You got it!👌

Yes, next debate- which is mainly relevant to whites. I agree it is unfair to use the name for something like this. And I also do not agree it is right for younger white women to use it against older white women. Everything is wrong. However, the term is now highly relevant to racism and to think otherwise, is also misleading.

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Not in the UK.

I have never heard it used in that context here.. And incidentally we're talking about a product designed for the UK market, not the US market, so what is important is the meaning used here, not there. And here it's a nasty, misogynistic ageist slur. It's outrageous that it's being used to market a product here and I hope no-one buys it.

Saschka · 26/08/2023 13:05

Bettelucksecondtimearoundimherewaitingforu · 26/08/2023 12:49

Look, I am not up to the word's evolution, which I believe is not supremely relevant to know anyway, but can't we all agree it is about racism first and foremost towards blacks in US.

Next, the debate on evolution is only relevant as to the identity of teh perpetrator or those using it to distinguish themselves from it: First racism by: white women, evolved into white men, evolved into younger women distinguishing from racist (not 'complain-y' come on!) older women ( also a new entrance for misogyny and ageism here) et. etc etc.

But the common and fundamental thread is racism. You may care by whom, but blacks on the receiving end care not a jot who the perpetrator of their daily misery is. Capeesh!

Show quote history

Do you think that the advert for GP practice management software in the OP, captioned “for when your patient is being a Karen”, meant “for when your patient is using White Women’s Tears to whip up racism”?

Or do you think it means “when some stupid old bag is moaning about something and you want her to STFU”?