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.

'I had to be a "Karen" and push very politely but quite hard.'

You think a man wouldn't have made his voice heard to the receptionist if in the same situation? Would he then have went on to say he needed to be a "Karen" to be heard & to get an earlier appointment? Definitely not, thats just his right to ask & this is where the problem lies with the misogynist expression being a "Karen". Its planting the seed of self doubt in females, particularly our younger generation that are now growing up with this BS 😡

It's really insiduous. I'm seeing it more and more - women who absolutely should be insisting on something, or drawing a boundary about something, feeling really unsure and hesitant. Why? "I don't want to be a Karen". I see it on here a lot.
The trope is actively causing harm.

And frankly the way public services are theses days in England being “pushy and assertive” can be a matter of life and death (see article written by the mother who was too deferential to doctors. Her 14 year old Dd died from a preventable cause the dad has now written an article in todays guardian. Read it and weep).

What are examples of women ‘weaponising their whiteness’?

Btw if women do experience misogyny as you accept then they get to talk about it.

Karen is a derogatory term to get women to shut up in the US too.

@TheaBrandt I saw that but I must admit I couldn't face reading it today I'd previously read Merope's account and it was one of the most harrowing things I have ever read.

And that's the thing. The NHS is now so troubled that you very likely have a fight on your hands for your own health and life. That's hard for people anyway, especially when they're very unwell or very stressed about a loved one. Add in additional self-doubt about "being a Karen" and it might be enough to silence someone that literally needs to speak to save their own lives.

Yup 💯 and it's really really sad

I work with the terminally ill and see the difference at the hospital if there is an assertive and confident family around the patient and when there isn’t 😔

I notice that you say that the threat of women who weaponise their whiteness is equally damaging to black and brown women as the threat of misogyny. Would you be willing to expand on that?

💔

I listened to an interesting discussion on this on a podcast for Black women, more so Black mothers. It's frankly tedious at best and racist at worst the amount of times Black women are told 'There's no need to be aggressive' or variations thereof. All for having the temerity to ask questions, push for support. It's fantastic that white women so bravely refuse to be silenced by the use of Karen or any other term when more often than not they're the very ones silencing their Black counterparts. Pithy advice for Black women seeking healthcare advice/treatment was basically to try not to get sick.

Apologies for quoting myself but I just wanted to clarify that I'm in no way asking you to explain what women weaponsing whiteness is. Rather if you could expand on it being an equal threat to black and brown women as misogyny.

@CloudyMcCloudy Women do get to talk about their misogyny I don't believe @Socrateswasrightaboutvoting was disputing that.

The Karen stereotype does surface the white woman who yells at, behaves aggressively towards and is condescending towards Black and Brown women. As a Brown woman I face a lot of this in a corporate environment - these women tend to talk to us the way a "mansplainer" would. It diminishes our chances at climbing the ladder. We are effectively recipients of both misogyny and racial discrimination.

These white Karen women also ignore us when serving us at restaurants.
I've also been on the receiving end of verbal abuse from a Karen neighbour and when I relayed my account to another white female neighbour who fashions herself as a feminist I was wholly dismissed and she felt uneasy talking about racism.

I for one have been glad for the Karen stereotype as it has brought to light the type of middle aged white women who do not treat ethnic minority women/people with respect.

We ethnic minority women also have the right to talk about the racism that we face from Karens.

Is there a word for young white women who treat you in a similarly dismissive way? Or middle-aged, or indeed young, white men? Or is this treatment exclusively from this particular grouping of age and sex, hence requiring its own word?

Can we not see the Karen insult in an unpolarised way: as increasingly misogynistic (in its second usage for middle-aged women) AND as a symbol of a particularly destructive form of white female privilege? That’s how I see it and I THOUGHT the vast majority of women in the UK who know about the original use in the US. It’s like most dictionary definitions that have numerous meanings.

Also, I’d rather racist white women were called by their own names and by exactly what they are: racist. To do otherwise by describing them as a Karen risks minimising the gravity of it, in my opinion. Especially if there is ambiguity about what it means to be a Karen, which seems to be the case on this thread at least.

The issue is, in most cases it tends to be middle aged white women who behave in the most aggressive way when you're an ethnic minority woman.

Honestly you're worried about ageism but being an ethnic minority woman in the UK is no walk in the park. Shame you don't seem to have any sympathy for someone talking about racism.

Some of those who have been misusing it are on this thread.

Yes it is, and you & them are among those who are misusing Karen by appropriating it.

Some of those who have been misusing it are on this thread.

No-one on this thread has been using/misusing it as a slur, they have been objecting to that usage.
Honestly, round and round we go.

Not all of y’all have.

We don’t want the Karen term that’s the whole point.

We object to it. It’s used on us due to ageism and sexism and we don’t want it.

I knew this would happen but was accused of “spamming” last time I posted the definition of Karen from the Australian dictionary. Here it is again. Your personal experience of any local usage is not as compelling as a published dictionary definition which reflects the most common usage of an entire nation.

We object to it. It’s used on us due to ageism and sexism and we don’t want it.

It is apparently the objecting to it that is causing the issue. By objecting, we're appropriating it.

"MorrisZapp
When my mum was pregnant with me, she decided that if I was a girl I would be named Laura. When I was born, they ushered my dad in afterwards to meet me and he looked at me and said 'hello Laura!'

My mum said 'this isn't Laura, it's Karen!'

And that was that 😂. I bloody love my name, it'll take more than some ill educated, meme quaffing, mouth breathing tosser to make me ashamed or embarrassed.

My motto: love Karen, hate sexism.

"Strength in numbers, Morris! It was the most popular girl’s name in England and Wales in the 1960’s and remained popular till the early 80s. There must be hundreds of thousands of you!"

Karen is indeed a lovely name and still used to name babies in the UK today.

I know a lovely Karen, early 50s (who of course doesn't fit the UK misogynistic stereotype, or the US racist stereotype) she laughs off any jokes but thinks it's unfortunate.

Just depressingly familiar.