Do you find the term/meme 'Karen' an insult?

[VladmirsPoutine]

This is a discussion I have recently read a few opinion pieces about.

Do you think it's indeed classist, racist and misogynistic to describe certain women as a Karen?

Karen behaviours - assertive, vocal, advocates for herself and her family.

Karen appearance - not following the script for male approval.

Nothing that should be derided or despised there and yet it is. Women who won’t shut up and be pleasing to the Male gaze are such a threat they must be silenced and pushed out of society.

OK so not really comparable. And Mary is homophobic but also sexist.

As an entitlementism slur, not really. But its ageist and kinda classist so yes.

I’ve seen some awful fb posts where a woman named Karen posts or comments something fairly innocuous and has been absolutely piled upon with other people gleefully saying things like “oh look, KAREN has arrived with her opinion” and congratulating each other on their hilarity and wit.

Ditto with people plastering photos of unsuspecting women with a bob all over the internet and oh so wittily saying something like “I bet she’s waiting to see the manager!”

So I don’t buy the “oh but it’s just a meme, it’s not aimed at anybody!” Wide eyed innocence.

And no, there isn’t a male equivalent as widely used as “Karen”.

“All middle aged women are rude and unreasonable” is just as shit as “all young people are lazy and greedy”.

It is not my name but I was born in 1970 and yes I think it "get back in your box older woman".
A woman call Emily or Isabel can complain about poor customer service Im sure. Because she is young.

Karen behaviours - assertive, vocal, advocates for herself and her family.
Nothing that should be derided or despised there and yet it is

I don't use social media for much beyond communication and don't browse meme sites but my understanding was that a 'Karen' was a customer service nightmare (in terms of unreasonable demands and impatience towards other customers) and little more. Do you have an example of how 'Karen' is used more widely?

For some reason it seems worse than saying 'they've been Wendied' though I haven't heard that for a while!

Yes, I have called a number of people out on this recently. It is sexist, ageist and just boring.

I've never really thought about it. But the most 'Karen" person I know is actually called Karen.

My teen dc use Karen as a meme based more on Mean Girls "oh my God Karen. You can't "

If you put Karen meme in google images you can see it goes way beyond customer service.

No one is denying that people exist who are over demanding of customer service. But how is it that it is considered enlightening on a date to see how a man behaves to the wait staff and yet there is no male meme for it?

If you put Karen meme in google images you can see it goes way beyond customer service.

Thank you, that's quite an interesting way to explore memes. However, I'm only seeing 'talk to the manager' themes.

I can assure you they are there. And the talk to the manager memes are being used for other subjects.

images.app.goo.gl/X9o9vhvfXxsRuzGC8

www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/23-hilarious-karen-memes-to-share-with-all-the-karens-you-know/86013719/

It’s tiresome and not funny.

Karen, Wendy etc...just really lazy and yes, misogynistic.

Especially jarring when used by Twitter woke dudes.

Gronky look at the women in those images - how many are posed or stock images? Barely any. Which means they have had their photo taken without their knowledge or consent while minding their own business in public, and strewn across the internet for lolz.

How do you think those women feel?

Thank you, OverMy, perhaps I don't 'get' memes. Those seemed to me to be either directly relating to customer service demands or associating a particular hairstyle, except for the one with the man in a suit, which I can't understand at all.

Definitely ageist and sexist. Its pretty much just an excuse to use lazy stereotypes to dehumanize older women under the guise of virtue signalling.
I saw one recently can't remember the detail but it was blaming 'Karens' for stockpiling, and someone pointed out under the post, that it's the 'Karens' who are generally responsible for shopping, cooking and caring for their own families but also often elderly relatives?
You know that the people complaining about Karens buying toilet paper are pretty much the same people who expect it to magically reappear in the loo whenever needed, and are sitting on their arses complaining about Karens on twitter while their Mum takes that extra shopping over to the elderly neighbour who needs it.
It's just an excuse to put older women in their place. It's almost always gleefully spiteful too.

My god, that meme list is awful. Nothing but sexism and stereotypes. It reminds me of a modern version of those pictures of suffragettes drawn to show them as all ugly scolds. M

Can anyone find a meme where it’s a man asking to speak to the manager?

Googling male Karen - oooft enlightening.

Gronky - are you old enough to remember viz magazine? It is quite possibly why to a specific age group in the UK the names Sharon and Tracy would never be used as they became shorthand for traits that were ridiculed and derided. Then there is Harry Enfield’s Tim nice but dim.

Karen memes are global reach.

Which means they have had their photo taken without their knowledge or consent while minding their own business in public, and strewn across the internet for lolz.

It could be my cookies, I understand Google shapes its images based upon your search history but the ones I'm seeing are heavily edited or, where a real person is featured, they seem to be posing for the camera.

How do you think those women feel?

Presumably, similar to this man:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/23/meet-the-man-behind-the-white-guy-blinking-meme-drew-scanlon
(I couldn't find an interview with a woman who'd become the face of a meme in conventional media).

This is hardly a new phenomenon or one limited to women (Biagio da Cesena).

It may well indeed be misogynistic and deeply unfair on every real life Karen, but here in the US there is a breed of entitled, rude, predominantly middle aged women who fit the Karen meme down to the ground. I know several.

It’s always the same people who are yelling at the refs in their kids’ games, bitching on the FB Moms pages every time someone looks at them the wrong way, making their kids’ coaches lives Hell because Little Johnny didn’t get enough playing time at soccer today and generally taking out their miserable existence on everyone else. Yes, it’s a stereotype but in this case, a pretty accurate one.

Misogynistic and ageist

Gronky the meme you’ve linked to is different - he isn’t seeing his face or name being used as an insult.

PeytonManning interesting. So you’re saying that you never see any men acting unreasonably or entitled/rude/arrogant? Any young people kicking off at small issues? It’s literally only middle aged women who do this as a class and deserve their own meme?

I hate it. Although I always felt it was more snobbery of the working/upper working class, rather than middle class but either way it's classiest, which ever its demeaning.