"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.

Microaggressions 🙄 can’t we all concentrate on something worthwhile?

This is a great country to be a woman in. I feel like the better it gets for us the more we search for new problems to replace the old ones (with the exception of violence against women - UK isn’t awful compared to other countries but even 1 is too many).

You're right, the Karens on MN are all racist. Including you, obvs.

Someone I know was called a Karen for screaming at boys who set fire to a bin full of paper in a park whilst under a 200 year old tree.

Someone was called a Karen for stopping youths throwing pebbles at swans

People get called Karens because people smoke where smoking is prohibited.

People get called Karens because they might suggest that pushchair users fold their pushchairs so that someone in a wheelchair can access a bus as opposed to standing in the rain with their little child.

I’m sure that they called me a Karen when the scaffolding men drove over my front garden plants and I told them to not erect scaffolding on my wall for the benefit of the neighbour until they apologised.

In reality if you are middle class and assertive it scared lots of men. Intelligent assertive women without a professional badge as a shield are fair game. Give them a professional label and there is a different reaction.

Can people stop trying to pretend there's a male equivalent of Karen! For the love of god, there isn't. It's beyond wearying.

Chad, Brad, Keith, Kevin, Nigel and gammon are not used to shut men up. If men complain about being called a Keith nobody is going to say 'oh ha ha KEITH, do you want me to get the manager?'

Nor is there a Chad haircut, or indeed anyone in the UK named Chad.

Not one UK child is embarrassed because their dad's name is a meme.

Why is there such resistance to the fact that misogynist terms exist and have no male equivalent?

So can you explain why 'Karen' generates such ire when 'bitch' passes without the batting of an eye?

I don't think bitch does pass without the batting of the eye, a lot of the time.

Sometimes it does, but it is also often called out.

I thought the male equivalent of Karen was just a*h**?

Because this genuinely isn’t some of our experience, and trying to ‘school mistress’ us into being taught your ‘right think’ is not going to go down well. Gammon is absolutely used in a similar way, and there are other male-centric insults that aren’t used against women. We don’t always need to play the victim.

Both men and women can be arseholes

There is, it's Ken. It's widely used in the states and on SM.

I agree with PP that I've only heard it being used when the woman in question is genuinely being over the top and unreasonable.
I've never heard it be used in a way to shut a woman down when she is being reasonable. Women can be hysterical and over the top. And the many examples I've seen it used, is with a hysterical woman.

I'm not condoning it, it needs to stop, mainly for all the women called Karen. It's horrible for them. But I don't agree with the blanket term of 'used to shut women up.' When most of the people I've seen using it are women and teens, and as above, women being utterly unreasonable and hysterical.

Women can be hysterical and over the top

More misogyny. Nice.

Really? Because I see dozens of threads on here about arguments with friends / MILs / mothers, threads about OW etc where the offending party is described as a "cheeky bitch" / "she's a complete bitch OP" and so forth, without any comment being passed on the language used.

Women can be hysterical and over the top. And the many examples I've seen it used, is with a hysterical woman.

And thats the problem right there.
We DO get "hysterical" its because our wombs travel and affect every part of us so its impossible for women to be rational

They can be. So can men. People can be hysterical and over the top. Though there are also problems with the term 'hysterical'.

Yes, this is what I was trying to say earlier I think.

'Karen' basically means any woman over 40 who commits the cardinal errors of a) having her own independently formed opinions and/or b) not pandering to the male ego.

Alternatively it can be used, like 'terf', simply to mean 'bitch'. However it's helpful because 'bitch' is only a term of insult used by misogynists. When woke progressive men use 'Karen' or 'terf', they can therefore safely call a woman a bitch and indulge their misogynistic tendences without losing their woke progressive card.

When I've seen it (IRL and on SM) it's when the 'Karen' is being incredibly racist. Or having a complete meltdown in Costa screaming at the staff because her coffee was 'too hot,' or shouting at people in front of family planning for getting abortions.

Again, not condoning it, but women can and do be unreasonable, hysterical, and in the wrong. But Karen is the wrong word to use.

I've never heard of 'Wendy' being an insult.

To me 'bitch' means someone who is being horrible just for the sake of being unkind. Though my dog would like to complain that is species-ist and there is nothing wrong with being a bitch.

Absolutely this and dont tell me you've never seen unreasonable behaviour from a man- it's far more common for men to be arseholes - just look at crime/violence statistics for starters.

Yet there is no equivalent term for a man doing it - funny that...

I think 'Wendy' is rather MN-specific, to be fair.

You know who's utterly unreasonable and over the top?

The men who commit school shootings.
The family annihilators.
The men who stalk and kill their exes.
The men who abuse and kill their partners.
The men who run rampage with knives and guns in public places, killing passers-by.

So why the fuck is it that it's the female sex that routinely gets described as "overly emotional", "hysterical", "unstable"....?

No-one ever describes men like that, and yet all the evidence says that they should.

So why the fuck is it that it's the female sex that routinely gets described as "overly emotional", "hysterical", "unstable"....?

No-one ever describes men like that, and yet all the evidence says that they should

Exactly this.

The insult isnt referring to a species though, is it? Because a male dog isn't a bitch. It's about the sex of the dog.