"Stop being a Karen"

[ValsCupcakes]

I heard this on Tuesday from a young, no more than 20, guy saying it to his girlfriend in the street in town.

Is this still going on? I'm out this afternoon at my friend's house. She is called Karen and is sick of it. I heard a woman phone into the radio too the other week saying her husband's satnav was an annoying female voice so he called it Karen.

A term coined by an oppressed people, for a monstrous people, that is the essence of the Karen. That it has been trivialised and misappropriated is neither here nor there. Some muppet calling me a Karen when I know what a Karen is, i could never been offended by that.

america being the most racist entity in human history, a white settler entity founded by a group of white, privileged slave owning tyrants (the planter class, george washington, thomas jefferson et al.), it has inflicted hell on non white peoples over four centuries. The global leader in race law: white only citizenship (1790), white only vote, racial segregation (white only schools, white only graveyards), no race mixing/interracial marriage (until 1967), white only immigration (until 1965), and anti-literacy laws (no black education).

To take offence at a term given to a monstrous people who have committed heinous acts against non white people is extremely arrogant, self absorbed and downright offensive.

When you know the history of the term Karen (and its predecessors), you very quickly lose your own self interest and develop empathy for those who suffered at the hands of the Karen.

Wow 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Most of the posters here will not be ignorant of how the word gained popularity, but you are referring to how it was once used, not how it is now used.

These days alternative to ‘mouthy bitch’ as an attempt to shut down middle aged women, whether their behaviour is reasonable or not.

The fact there is no popular name for a man for either the current or the historical meaning, considering the fact that men have far more often behind racially motivated violence (or any kind of violence) makes it clear that it is a misogynistic word.

@Eldrick47s you just keep repeating the same thing. Do you not understand that words can change their meaning? That the intention of the person who speaks it is what gives it that meaning? I'm not going to not care that some twatty man is trying to shut me up because the word he's using is an historical misappropriation..I'm engaging with his meaning of it and intent.

I don't care what you are or aren't offended by.

Your posting style is that of a man (there are significant gendered differences in how men and women write), so no-one is ever going to call you a Karen, are they? You have zero skin in this game.

(Edited to add - your posting style is also very suggestive of a bot, but I'll be kind and not accuse you of that.)

A term coined by an oppressed people, for a monstrous people, that is the essence of the Karen. That it has been trivialised and misappropriated is neither here nor there

It isn’t here nor there - it is everything. Language changes meaning all the time - we can only address the way words are used now.

america being the most racist entity in human history, a white settler entity founded by a group of white, privileged slave owning tyrants (the planter class, george washington, thomas jefferson et al.), it has inflicted hell on non white peoples over four centuries. The global leader in race law: white only citizenship (1790), white only vote, racial segregation (white only schools, white only graveyards), no race mixing/interracial marriage (until 1967), white only immigration (until 1965), and anti-literacy laws (no black education).

It’s very hard to defend the idea that America is any more racist an entity than the European Colonial powers, including Britain, which were responsible for not just colonialisation, but industrialised slavery and the brutal transportation of African people to the Americas and the Caribbean. The Third Reich also deserves a mention here. You need to think more deeply before you make sweeping statements.

To take offence at a term given to a monstrous people who have committed heinous acts against non white people is extremely arrogant, self absorbed and downright offensive.

All the truly terrible history you cite long predates the use of Karen as an insult, it is a recent invention. We might also note here that while white women were certainly part of this oppressive and violent system, it was almost exclusively designed, run and the violence dealt out by white men. Your rationale here isn’t rational.

When you know the history of the term Karen (and its predecessors), you very quickly lose your own self interest and develop empathy for those who suffered at the hands of the Karen

This simply doesn’t make sense. One can feel deep empathy for those who have suffered racism and all the violence, dehumanisation and lack of oppprtunity that goes with it, without thinking that it is OK to use a sexist and ageist term that while it has a connection to the history above, is no longer used in that context.

I don’t know if it’s a bot but it’s certainly someone using chat GPT to string together an argument - which is not a good idea, on account of chat GPT can’t think.

Btw - previous posters who talked about the word "mansplaining".... I think this is a fine example.

We've spent the whole thread discussing and acknowledging the US origins of the word, but obviously we didn't understand it properly. Thank goodness Eldrick47s came along to teach us all!

You know you are agreeing w Mr Hairy hands and his friend ChatGPT who is just here to entertain himself, don’t you?

It’s not defensible to use a sexist and ageist term to shut women up, on the grounds that Karen refers to racist women. Because a) Karen is used far more broadly and b) even it weren’t, there is no such equivalent term for white men, who are the group historically mainly responsible for institutional racism and racist violence.

I don’t know but @MNHQ can you take a look at this.

america is the global leader in race law (white only citizenship, white only vote, no race mixing (anti-miscgenation), racial segregation, anti-literacy law, and white only immigration).

That's six race laws it pioneered. You mention the Germans, they copied two of those race laws in their Nuremberg laws (white only citizenship, and no race mixing). Hans Frank (Nazi Lawyer) devoted a quarter of his text to their laws.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/american-laws-against-coloreds-influenced-nazi-racial-planners/

American laws against ‘coloreds’ influenced Nazi racial planners

"Their race-oriented predecessors helped turn American immigration law into an instrument of discrimination. To establish a restrictive entry system for Germany was a matter of course to Hitler, and his 1925 memoir was filled with admiration for America.

"The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races,” wrote Hitler in “Mein Kampf.”

American jurisprudence with regard to racial “mixing” was also scrutinized, wrote James Q. Whitman in his book “Hitler’s American Model,” published earlier this year.

Hitler had an “admiring engagement” with America’s handling of Native Americans, said Whitman. In a 1928 speech, the future dictator said the US had “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keeps the modest remnant under observation in a cage.”

And Martin Luther King in his 1963 book Why We Can't Wait, he writes:

"Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its Indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it."

Sure, now go do your research on the Colonial Powers, it’s going to take you a while so happy to wait.

Re Nazi Germany - I’m going to have to request a rewrite that considers the Holocaust.

Also, I’d like 30 lines ‘I must not get chatGPT to write my essays, or think that cut n paste from wiki is a replacement for thought.’

This level of argument wouldn’t get you through a GCSE PP.

Name another entity with a racist founding document?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech

And in response to this white settler document, a Native leader wrote;

"Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating. [July Fourth] is a day we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions — literally millions — of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism"

https://www.mic.com/articles/121671/native-americans-have-nothing-to-celebrate-on-july-4#.Qst75mbCL

And that's just the Natives (whose actions against them earned the praise of Hitler), there was the African slaves, whom the tyrants in Washington and jefferson owned over 600 each.

Getting back on point (though all of this is related), the Karen is the racist woman in america who has inflicted hell on non white peoples there. Once you grasp that you won't take any offence to its trivial misuse here.

I’m not calling you it though?

And what about my feelings being insulted and upset by a racist? Why are your feelings more important than mine? Why do I need to care about your feelings when you didn’t express a shred of sympathy at the racism I experience?

Nope, that’s a fail on that assignment PP.

No state needs a racist founding document to be racist - they’ve often managed very well without.

Sadly you haven’t satisfied the requirements for balance or reasoned argument, because you don’t anything about colonialism (or pre-Civil War US for that matter, but you are at least making a nursery slope effort there).

As previously discussed the term Karen is not exclusively, or these days even mostly, used in that context - it’s used to shut up middle aged woman regardless of whether they are being racist, rude, or perfectly reasonable.

Now go away and do some proper thinking, regurgitation without any attempt at thought is no comparison.

I think you’re also trying to argue that you have evidence that Hitler wasn’t racist? Again, you’ll need to balance that by considering the broader evidence.

The existence of racism doesn't justify misogyny tho. Just as we don't use racist / homophobic/ ablist slurs against, for example, a rapist with one of those protected characteristics. Because misogynist, racist, homophobic, ableist etc slurs don't just affect the person targeted. They denigrate all people with those characteristics.

The only reason people don't see this is because all societies are utterly soaked in misogyny.

And the use of Karen as a misogynist slur was in full swing in the UK before we learnt via The Guardian of its US history. What a gift for misogynists to be able to continue to use the term whilst feeling righteous. No matter that UK culture is not synonymous with US culture. That "Karen" here is often a working class name used by both black and white women. That the behaviours criticised here had fuck all to do with racism and usually featured the crimes of a woman daring to speak up or daring to have a haircut or home decor favoured by women from a working class background.

Duchess, I'm providing receipts, while you provide goose egg, zilch, nada.

More;

"Political rights have been circumscribed by race, class and gender since the founding of the United States, when the right to vote was restricted to White men of property. Throughout the history of the United States, race has been used by Whites for legitimizing and creating difference and social, economic and political exclusion."
Leland T. Saito, Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at University of Southern California.

Today, African people in america own 1.5% of national wealth; they are 14% of the population (that's 48 million descendants of slaves). In 1863, they owned 0.5% (so a whopping 1% growth).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racial-wealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation/

The white supremacist Mount Rushmore (sculpted by a KKK member)

Four figures on it:

george Washington: owned 600 slaves in his mount Vernon plantation. Signed the fugitive slave act 1793 (to enact the fugitive slave clause of the constitution), enabling him to recover his escaped slaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FugitiveSlaveActof1793

thomas jefferson: owned 600 slaves in his monticello plantation, raped at least one (that we know of), and also wrote "blacks were inferior to whites in the endowments of body and mind", before adding "The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NotesontheStateofVirginia

abraham lincoln: had no interest in freeing slaves prior to later life, and only did so to "save the union", otherwise he would have maintained the status quo, and in a 1858 debate he stated: "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. I as much as any man am in favor of the superior position assigned to the white race."
Abraham Lincoln (1989). Speeches and Writings 1832–1858: Speeches, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings : the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Vol. 1. Library of America. p. 638.

theodore roosevelt: on the frontier anti-Native sentiment where the white settlers were ethnically cleansing the indigenous people, in 1886 he stated: "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth"
Cary Michael Carney (1999). "Native American Higher Education in the United States". pp. 65–66. Transaction Publications

All this, and the six race laws it pioneered

White only citizenship (1790)
White only vote
Racial segregation (white only schools, housing, graveyards etc.)
Anti-literacy law (white only education)
Anti-miscegenation (no race mixing/interracial marraige, until 1967)
White only immigration (until the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImmigrationandNationalityActof1965 )

The Karen (racist american woman) ran alongside all of this discrimination. When you understand the hell that non white people have gone through there you will cease getting worked up by its trivial misuse here.

Bot or not, it's boring as hell

All of these despicable racists - men and women - they were all called Karen? Astonishing.

It shows the white supremacist entity the Karen was formed in.

The Karen (racist american woman) didn't just appear out of thin air.

You have to understand the culture it was created in. The white woman was the highest standard of woman in a white supremacist entity that is america. She was precious. If a black person so much as looked at her he could be in serious trouble. Race riots, lynchings etc. were instigated by the Karen, while the man was the muscle who carried out the acts.

What do you call men who demand to see a manager?

Sigh.

https://time.com/5857023/karen-meme-history-meaning/

"The historical narrative of white women’s victimhood goes back to myths that were constructed during the era of American slavery. Black slaves were posited as sexual threats to the white women, the wives of slave owners; in reality, slave masters were the ones raping their slaves. This ideology, however, perpetuated the idea that white women, who represented the good and the moral in American society, needed to be protected by white men at all costs, thus justifying racial violence towards Black men or anyone that posed a threat to their power. This narrative that was the overarching theme of Birth of a Nation, the 1915 film that was the first movie to be shown at the White House, and is often cited as the inspiration for the rebirth of the KKK."

So you’re suggesting that at this time in America, white women had more power than white men and forced white men to attack and lynch black people?