"How the 'Karen Meme' Confronts the Violent History of White Womanhood"

[Igneococcus]

This just popped up as a recomendation in Firefox when I open a new tab. I can't fully read it right now because I'm in a meeting any moment now (someone's still sorting out techinical issues), but a first quick scan makes me go "WTF" :

time.com/5857023/karen-meme-history-meaning/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

@ShinyFootball

By the way, you are welcome to message me and I’ll respond when I can but I likely won’t see it today.

You can post a bunch of times again acting like it’s a victory for you to have run me off the or that I don’t have a response but it’s a actually a holiday here and I do have other things to do.

using curse words

Possibly another cultural difference rearing its head - I think we swear a lot more in Britain!

I'm not posting like it's a victory.

I want you to straightforwardly answer one question before you go.

Do you think I'm an NF type.

Just that 1 question.

The incident with Amy Cooper in the park took place on May 25th 2020.
Here are screen shots from an image search on the phrase "Karen meme", with results ONLY up to the end of March 2020.

I'm not going to message you I don't PM on MN I prefer to discuss on threads.

Maybe this Catherine Tate character is similar to the 'Karen' caricature in the US?

Perhaps part of the issue is that our perceptions of class and its influence are very different in the UK. Maybe if 'Karen' was called something different and was shouting at a shop assistant to hurry up because her 4 wheel drive was parked on a double yellow and she need to get her children to Mandarin classes we would 'get it'?

However, for me, 'Karen' is a harassed nurse of 52 living in Ayrshire, and I want her to be able to speak to the manager, because her concerns are usually ignored.

For those that say suck it up, I can see that 'Karen' is just a slur. But the slur comes from the so-called wokes...yep, those who hate stereotypes. 'Karen' is a stereotype (justified or not) that seeks to harm and humiliate. It is that I object to more than anything. Call people out for who they are, their terrible acts, the awful things they say. Don't lump people together under some shared characteristics and tar them all with the same brush. We all lose that way.

Agree but don't know how that fits with men as a class/ namalt ...

OTOH I'm happy to agree that all white people in USA UK etc have structural privilege over all black people and as a white woman I have no idea of how it is.

While men rarely make this statement when it comes to women.

In fact plenty believe they know what we are, how we think, what we like, what we 'really mean' when we speak, better than we do. And that's men in general not referring in any way to trans people.

@nellodee

The "speak to the manager" was the original. We can see from News articles like this one, globalnews.ca/news/6986111/central-park-karen-amy-cooper-dog/ which says :

Melody Cooper described Amy on Twitter as a “Karen,” an internet slang term for an annoying, middle-aged white woman who wants to share her trivial complaints with someone in authority (often a manager). The term has been around for a few years, but it’s become more common during the novel coronavirus pandemic as a shorthand for ignorant and abrasive white women.

Many of Amy Cooper’s critics called her a “racist Karen” for taking her complaints to the police and not a manager. They also compared the incident to past cases of racial injustice in which white women falsely accused Black men of crimes.

Here's the thread:

twitter.com/melodymcooper/status/1264965252866641920

So yes. A term for "ignorant and abrasive white women". Or, if you want, any woman you don't want to fuck and do want to shut up.

Yeah, I'm not sure why people continue to insist it was always about race in the US. That' just not where it originated.

These things grow in their own way of course, and IMO Karen is a bit like Boomer, it's become so broad it's basically meaningless now.

To vary up my daily diet of the usual SM and online content, I've been looking at stuff like Spiked

www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/25/the-hatred-for-karens-is-out-of-control/

Absolute nonsense, for every one white woman it is used for appropriately, there's a dozen it is used for completely inappropriately for no other reason than cheap entertainment on women's behalf. Just like with spamming "ok boomer" it is nothing but childish online behavior.

@merrymouse

Maybe this Catherine Tate character is similar to the 'Karen' caricature in the US?

Perhaps part of the issue is that our perceptions of class and its influence are very different in the UK. Maybe if 'Karen' was called something different and was shouting at a shop assistant to hurry up because her 4 wheel drive was parked on a double yellow and she need to get her children to Mandarin classes we would 'get it'?

However, for me, 'Karen' is a harassed nurse of 52 living in Ayrshire, and I want her to be able to speak to the manager, because her concerns are usually ignored.

Yeah, I think in terms of its origins, the person it is describing is closest to a sort of soccer mom, but the emphasis is more on how the individual treats people like retail workers. So someone with a certain amount of monetary power in terms of consumer shopping, so probably not too young, with a family, very middle class, who is entitled with regard to how they treat low-paid employees in places like the grocery store or M&S.

Somehow it came to be applied to any women of that age and class who had a certain look, or whho the speaker thought was a bit of an old fogey.

While the original characterisation wasn't particularly nice I think it's probably true that a lot of people recognise the type of person it was referring to, and it's easy to imagine some foot-sore harassed worker at the supermarket thinking it about customer. Whereas the way it is used now, 99% of the time it doesn't even make any sense and you don't really know what they are trying to say.

Left to itself it would probably die out quickly because its no longer a useful shorthand for anyone.

Somehow it widened out

Agree the Karen think was classist not racist. It was another way of calling someone a chav. All these othering names are nasty

All this identity politics is full of stereotypes. Black good white bad, this class good that class bad, young good boomer bad. Left good right bad. Privilege poker and splitting. People are people

@2Rebecca

Agree the Karen think was classist not racist. It was another way of calling someone a chav. All these othering names are nasty

Is chav meant to be WC? I think of Karen as middle class. We don't use chav in Canada though so I'm not up on the nuances.

Well therein is a part of the problem - Karen in US may well be white 30-40 and a middle class soccer-mom-who-complains, but Karen in the UK is IME white in a broader 20-50ish age, and frequently working class and working herself in Asda.

First example that pops into my head - the barmaid in Shameless' name was Karen.

@KarenKuruma

Well therein is a part of the problem - Karen in US may well be white 30-40 and a middle class soccer-mom-who-complains, but Karen in the UK is IME white in a broader 20-50ish age, and frequently working class and working herself in Asda.

First example that pops into my head - the barmaid in Shameless' name was Karen.

So is this in terms of the image the name conjures up, demographically? Or how people use it?

The name isn't common in Canada in the right demographic either, it's older than the American one it seems. I don't know anyone near my age called Karen, it's more my mother's age, so senior citizen.

If you have ever watched, and thought about, the way some white women talk to Black women in public you will immediately understand why Black women use the term Karen among themselves.
The fact that it has been appropriated by misogynists is unfortunate but inevitable, because misogynists appropriate everything.

Maybe that is very USian of me, but I understood what was meant the first time I heard it in context.

Yeah, I think it makes sense if you are talking about a "type" that is entitled and condescending, it would resonate with anyone who feels entitled and condescended to. I can imagine it would resonate with WC women in general too, as well as retail workers.

It's true generally I think that we encounter these types of people that we sort of recognise - some of them get named after literary associations for example like a person who's a real Gragrind.

The thing with Karen is it's kind of used not just about people who behave a certain way, but to disparage a whole group of people of a certain age and sex. And guess what, middle aged, middle class women with certain haircuts are not all like that.

I've worked bookstore retail and honestly? Academic 'intellectual' men are the worst in that context. Very self important. I can imagine how in times past, they would have treated their maids like part of the furniture.

Women at least tend to have manners.

I still don't feel a need to have a name for 'those' type of men nor an urge to diminish all male voices by screaming 'OK Theodore' or whatever name I might think sums up blokes who run uni departments.

Need, maybe not. But is there anything wrong with it if we say about a feckless young well of lad who is rather dim and can't keep his trousers buttoned "well, he's a real Tom Jones?"

Bookstore patrons are very evenly mixed by sex IME, I suspect the Karen thing comes out of grocery or clothing retail which are heavily dominated by women customers.

Well off lad, it should say.

I’ve worked in bookstores too and I definitely recognise the Karen type (the US version). The issue is that the blurring of the distinction between being one of those arrogant, entitled and demanding types, and being strong and confident and assertive, standing up for yourself, and not taking any shit. It seems to me that misogynists are now using “Karen” to mock/threaten/punish/silence the latter as well as the former.