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.

@IncognitoMam Do you have a link to the ad? If so we need to make a complaint.

It's not a race to the bottom @DeeCee77
We don't need educating on the origin of the Karen insult.
We do need to stop thinking that the original usage is the only one.

@Richmondgal so what if your friend laughs it off? My friend doesn't. And the fact that some people are entitled whingers is irrelevant to the fact that it DOES get used in the same way as "nag" to stop women complaining legitimately or raising a concern, often related to poor service or being fobbed off. I know women who actively DON'T complain when they should because the don't want to be a "Karen". I also think its absolutely true that middle aged women (including me) do get more assertive in our 40s for a number of reasons - look at the many threads on here about no longer caring what people think or worrying less about fashion or whatever. As confidence, independence and assertiveness increases, so a person's footprint in the world is clearer - and some people find that very threatening.

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

Exactly. It's almost always being used in this context when I see it, generally by white British and American males. It's pure misogyny.

This is the internet though not America.

I hear you @DeeCee77 I actually hear and understand what you're trying to get across BUT they aren't getting it. 🙄

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

Yes, the meaning has been massively skewed and misappropriated from the origins of the term.

We get it. We just don't agree because it isn't being used in that context 99% of the time and that's blatantly obvious if you spend 5 minutes on Reddit or Youtube's comment sections or practically any male dominated forum.

You do know the "Internet " is worldwide 🙄

I used to laugh along when I got teased at school because the teasing got worse if I didn't. Doesn't mean I actually found it funny.

Don’t worry. By the time you’re middle-aged, it will be a Jessica. Let’s hope that’s not your name

@DeeCee77 are you in the US?
I'm not in the US or the UK, but my understanding is the term Karen has a different use/ meaning outside of the US.
Scold
Nag
Terf
Karen
All are one word meaning " Shut up Bitch"

The Karen

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/27/karen-race-white-women-black-americans-racism

"Amy Cooper’s Karen status was cemented when she called the police on Christian Cooper, a 57-year-old Black birdwatcher, after he had asked her to leash her dog in New York City’s Central Park. Not content with falsely alleging, twice, that “an African American man” was “threatening me and my dog”, Cooper put on a play for the 911 operator, changing the register of her voice to one of distress and panic as she cried: “I am being threatened by a man in the Ramble. Please send the cops immediately.”

It was through that performance that Amy Cooper took on the mantle of an American archetype: the white woman who weaponizes her vulnerability to exact violence upon a Black man. In history, she is Carolyn Bryant, the adult white woman whose complaint about a 14-year-old Emmett Till led to his torture and murder at the hands of racist white adults. In literature, she is Scarlett O’Hara sending her husband out to join a KKK lynching party or Mayella Ewell testifying under oath that a Black man who had helped her had raped her. In 2020, she is simply Karen."

I understand where the term comes from and why it was used.
I can also understand that today it is not being used the same way as it used to be. Today it’s used a shorthand for Bitch/Nag.

Just another way to try to shut women up.

The original meaning makes even less appropriate this advert has used it to sell their product, tbh.

Regardless of which way they meant it - that is a shit advert.

It was Facebook

Deecee you aren't teaching us anything we don't know but that still is not the context in which it's used the vast majority of the time especially as I've seen some black women referred to as Karens.

It was through that performance that Amy Cooper took on the mantle of an American archetype
An American archetype.

We get that. We all know the original source and origins of the word @DeeCee77

It's been misappropriated, in the UK at least, to mean something entirely different. It's misogynistic and not ok.

I've probably missed it, but who is the company?

Absolutely fed up of it being used to shut women up. Also absolutely fed up of threads getting derailed calling the term appropriated. Even DeeCee has posted "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" 🙄

The behaviour of these women was vile. That doesn’t mean their guilt and shame can be projected onto any random middle aged white woman who isn’t sufficiently quiet and submissive. Keep it for the racists.

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 just one way to shut women up.’

If someone tells you to shut up, are you going to shut up or carry on speaking? I know that if someone told me to shut up, I’d carry on with my point. So why all this victimisation saying that it’s just one way to shut women up?

If someone in real life (or online) calls you a Karen then so what? Does that impact your life in any way? If you all understand the origin of the word, why are you bothered about how some people use it in the UK? I don’t understand how people on this forum are so worked up about this everytime that there’s a thread about the word.

Someone says something you don’t like, just ignore it? Is it really that hard?

Excuse me? "They"? Presumably in your curated little world, no middle-aged non-white woman is ever referred to as a Karen. I would like to assure you that this does in fact happen.

We all know it began as an identifier of racist white women, although that in itself it a bit dodgy - we don't go around referring to all young black thugs as Rashid because that would be racist. Its gained wider usage, now its any middle-aged woman who speaks up.