Standing with the Sues, the Karens and the Sharons

[TeatimeCloud]

I have noticed one tactic to denigrate middle aged working class or lower middle class women is to refer to names like this when putting them down - a bit like the Sharon and Tracey Essex Girl trope of the 1980s.

May I respectfully suggest to those women with more middle class, upper class and younger sounding names to stop using this as a tactic to bully women from a different social demographic than you.

sorry TeatimeCloud, I had just come from a particularly pugilistic thread and obviously brought that vibe with me!

Rufus do the Tracey/ex-Tracey ‘s you know feel the need to change their names in part because of the ‘Sharon and Tracey’ stereotype?

I don’t want to make light of any hurt that led to the desire to name change.

But I have just made a link in my head between persuading people to change gender and bullying that might lead people into changing names. Which isn’t funny really, perhaps another example of identity politics making people feel bad about what they were born with/born into etc.

Yes i think it was the case with both those women teatime

I hadn’t noticed this before. It looks like “Karen” is the US version maybe? But, yes, its mran and childish and horribly self-satisfied.

Of course the transladies have to pick their own forenames and shave a couple of decades off in the process.

We have not my Nigel - but I don't think that's denigrating blokes is it - that's having a go at women again.

I've seen Karen a fair bit on memes - like that 'I want to talk to your manager' thing.

But again, not really from feminists - as a general rule, feminists tend to be against personal attacks on appearance/names in my experience.

It’s a thing. Not on FWR but all over the internet.

It’s used in sexist, ageist and classist insults.

Yes I've seen it too.

I think the closest version you ever see for men (in the UK) is "Barry."

'Dave" had a whole TV channel named after him.