Classic Karen Credit: Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
What is Karen? Karen is asking to see the manager. Karen is reporting people to the police for inadequate social distancing. Karen is not taking social distancing seriously enough. Karen is panic buying groceries. (It’s Karen’s fault you can’t get eggs.) Karen is white. Karen is middle-aged. Karen is suburban. Karen is straight. Karen has children. Karen has a graduated bob. Karen is a racist. Karen is not sexy (ugh, Karen). Karen is eating organic kale salads. Karen is dumb. Karen is Hillary Clinton. Karen is Jess Phillips. Karen is Elizabeth Warren. Karen gets really mad when you call her Karen. Karen, it goes without saying, is female.
The name Karen has been adopted as a catchall label for that kind of woman, and quickly gained social media ubiquity. The not-entirely-coherent list of Karen attributes above comes from a Twitter search I did just before I started writing. You could do your own, and make your own slightly different list, but it would still have one guiding principle, which is this: Karen is annoying. If there’s something irritating in the world, it can be pinned on the Karens. And conversely, if a woman is irritating you, then she must be a Karen.
The correct online etiquette when encountering a Karen is to reply to her with the following phrase: “OK Karen”. That way, everyone will know she’s just a stupid, common, entitled Karen. (In the UK at least, Karen is not a posh name: if Karen is middle-class, she’s lower middle.) Unsurprisingly, not all women have been delighted with this linguistic turn. In a tweet, Julie Bindel described it as “woman hating and based on class prejudice”. In response, inevitably, she received several thousand replies calling her Karen. (Bindel is a lesbian, which just goes to show how flexible the Karen stereotype can be when people want to get their misogyny on.)
She was also called racist. This is because there’s a defence of the Karen meme which claims that it originated with black American women as a way to talk about their aggravating white peers. Consequently, pushing back against it can be framed as entrenching white privilege by denying black women a vocabulary to describe their own oppression. Which is all very lofty considering the way the name is actually used: look at who’s engaging in the Karen discourse on social media, and you’ll find that politically engaged black women are mysteriously outnumbered by angry white men.
If you’re female, and like Bindel you make the error of suggesting the Karen thing is transparent sexism, then you’ll meet those men in your mentions — deeply aggrieved by the suggestion that you, a Karen, should presume to tell them how to speak. It’s impossible to unpick the origins of the Karen meme from the morass of the internet, but if it really were a cherished piece of racial justice rhetoric, it seems likely we’d be having a wider conversation about how these angry white men have culturally appropriated it. The fact that we’re not doing that suggests how flimsy the defence is.
When Karen is used to belittle women, and especially when it’s being used to belittle women for showing solidarity with other women (as in a tweet calling the MP Jess Phillips “Shadow Karen Minister”, which went viral after she was appointed shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding), this is precisely in line with its accepted usage. It’s a finger trap insult, where struggling against it only makes it grip tighter. When its defenders say that there’s no reason to worry about it so long as you’re not a Karen, what they’re really doing is proffering an individual exit from the abuse — so long as you agree that some women deserve it, maybe you can qualify for a pass.
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SubscribeI recently discovered Unherd and was pleasantly surprised with a lot of the articles. However, articles like this moaning stand out like a sore thumb. Women getting paid 50k for being a surrogate mother are somehow oppressed by the patriarchy? (Sperm donors are often free.) Women having agency and voluntarily working in the sex industry are deserving our empathy. (While men cleaning sewers can blame themselves.) STEM has too few women. (The gap between boys and girls in university is now a staggering 20%!!) One could go on for hours, almost all statistics are staggeringly biased against most men.
These articles are all an excellent illustration for some interesting research called gamma bias, a combination of alpha bias (magnifying gender differences) and beta bias (minimizing gender differences). Alpha bias is when a cop gets shot in Canada the newspaper talks about a female agent. Beta bias is when 5 males rescue kids in a cave in Thailand; then the neutral term ‘rescuers’ are used. Both biases can be used to stress a positive role or a negative role. However, women like this journalist, are busy to always use alpha and beta bias in a way that is positive for women and negative for men. Boko Haram kills and recruits 10.000 boys? Yawn. Boko Haram kidnaps 200 girls? Whole sisterhood up in arms.
It is surprising how widespread this gamma bias is once you start noticing it. It is a bit disappointing to see it on a publication like Unherd, that further seems quite reasonable.
Sobbing about being stereotyped as a Karen is about as gamma as it gets.
Hear, hear!
“STEM has too few women!”
I don’t see them decrying the lack of female workers on deep sea trawlers, bin lorries, on building sites, and in any manual trades, like plumbers, electricians. It’s only ever the jobs that seem cool and trendy, or highly-renumerated and prestigious that they ever care about. Funny that.
Actually a lot of ‘STEM’ post graduate research student posts are filled by females, with the Athena SWAN Gold gong being the target in may woke Universities, to the extent many have more females than males. The b***h-fests, and worse, when the established queen bee’s feel threatened by up and coming new females are much more hateful and damaging than most would imagine, for all the claims of sisterhood and sisters doing it for themselves.
Why is that surprising? I mean, obviously there are more women interested in working in STEM jobs than as garbage truck drivers; hence why there is more of a fuss over the STEM jobs.
And there are plenty of working-class women who do actually care about the fact that there are barriers to getting into certain “tougher” traditionally male jobs, like working on container ships, etc. It’s just that stuff never gets publicized because the media doesn’t find that stuff glamorous or interesting to publish.
Good point about feminist bias. Here’s another: men are always “males” as in male writer, but females are always women, as in woman cop.
Why the difference? This is part of the hidden agenda to erase men as a category, or to denigrate the category of male. So “male” violence against women is an issue, but not female violence against men and children, which is far more prevalent than the mainstream media will acknowledge. Females are responsible for 50% of violence against children, and I initiate 50% of domestic violence.
We hear lots about toxic masculinity, but nothing about the female variety. How long before toxic masculinity morphs into the meme that being male is in and of itself, toxic?
But, double standards and gender stereotyping are wrong…. unless you’re a feminist.
Erase men as a category? What the f**k?
I agree with this article. The main thing I find frustrating is that right now people are taking an opportunity to engage in this lighthearted and playful misogyny and somehow claiming that it’s a way to get revenge on white people, when really it’s just needlessly targeting women with a dumb-ass stereotype.
The term is just tiresome and generalizing; over-applied in any context in which a middle-aged woman complains about something. If you don’t like it, then you can’t complain about it because ta-da, you’re just another Karen. It strikes me as just another way to diminish women’s opinions. Sure, if someone is acting irrational or outright racist and you want to insult them in anger, I suppose I understand that. But this term is just flying around now as a term for any sort of middle-aged woman who asserts herself. And arguments like “Karen ISN’T SEXIST because it’s used by black people as a way to liberate themselves from the burden of white privilege” only serve to put into the spotlight the fact that we are now explicitly claiming there is a “privilege hierarchy,” and sexism is less of an issue than racism. It just seems a little bit counterproductive to spend all this time fixated on one injustice only to perpetuate another and claim that it’s somehow justified.
True.
I’m beginning to sense, in these articles, a growing awareness even in the author, that the world is finally tiring of this brand of feminism and its endlessly repetitive cycle of grievance, resentment, victimhood and false entitlement -the targets for which are certainly getting more desperate and irrelevant. Who seeks validation for an ideological world view by recourse to an analysis of twitter feeds?!
Whatever the time, whatever the place, this way of looking at the world wants ‘women’ (whoever the hell they are as a collective group) to be the number one victim, all of the time and in every situation – therefore entitling them on account of their victimhood to the same sorts of privilege and power it rails against and blames for its oppression.
Absurdly this thinking also seems to hold on to a very antiquated and paradoxial view that it’s men, particularly ‘angry white men’ (whoever the hell they are as a collective group) who must be the facilitators and granters of this elusive power and privelige – a bizarrely patriarchal idea in itself.
Excellent points.
If calling a particular woman “Karen'” is offensive and sexist, then how about “mansplaining”, a term used to demean the voice of any man who dares to hold a point of view different from a woman’s? Why is that acceptable to the feminists who employ it as a put down? How about calling men “pigs”? Or the thousands of examples of sexist male-bashing characterized as “liberation” by feminist hate mongers? Why is any of this acceptable?
Let me “mansplain” a possible answer. For feminists, “sexism” is a term that can only be applied to men, never women, unless the woman happens to express prejudice against other females. Expressing sexist thoughts about men, however, is not only acceptable, but somehow praiseworthy.
Double standards, too, are only something that men possess, never women. That makes it acceptable by feminists to violate their own principles, while feeling smug in their self righteousness, while dismissing any criticism as “misogyny”.
Meanwhile, male death by suicide is 3x the female rate. Men are given longer prison sentences for the same crimes. We spend 5 times as much research money on breast cancer as prostate cancer, but it is feminists who complain about sexism in medicine. Over 90% of the homeless are men. The examples are rife.
But the writer thinks that calling a woman “Karen” is somehow worse.
Feminists have been, by far, the biggest sexists for 50 years. Most of us are sick and tired of their sexism combined with their hypocrisy.
There are many wave-lengths. My wonderful, brilliant grandmother was named Karen, and so was the most beautiful woman I have ever met. Say “Karen” and I will see the air scintillating with the light of tiny dancing stars. Twitter, you can tune out.
This article is a perfect example why I count myself lucky to be old and not on twitter.
Excellent article. It’s interesting to see how those who take issue with it are either scrambling to explain what Karen really means — there are Karen rules, I guess — or acknowledging that it’s pejorative but maintaining the women they target deserve their scorn. I’m not sure why there’s such a heated discussion over the right to hurl insults. It seems that everyone should be able to agree that negative stereotyping is damaging, that it reinforces prejudices and quite literally aims to put people down. Seems to me a great many commenters on this thread are arguing that “all the other kids are doing it” or “she hit me first!” Perhaps all the nasty cartoonish memes that have become commonplace online have caused some people to regress to their tantrum-filled childhoods.
it’s almost as if identity politics based around festering ego-centric resentment is bad… but then apply the same logic to ‘straight white male’ etc.
A classic example of people who use twitter assuming that twitter reflects the real world. It doesn’t. It reflects the prejudices and warped? thinking of people who use twitter.
Whatever,…you have to admit that the Shadow Karen Minister thing is quite funny.
Considering her laughing when a debate on male suicide was proposed, it’s entirely accurate.
Why are there only males in here?
Right?!!
Karen: a meme used by people too lazy to more effectively label behavior they don’t like, and the parrots that follow them.
“Hey, Karen, it’s all good. It’s only a meme, a shield, a scar. We really are nice people, you know…”
My advice to people who use or help perpetuate this meme:
Enough of this childish name-meme mania already. People need to stop hiding behind memes, and just use the terms that fit, whatever they are. I’m sure the name-callers would feel different if it were their names, or their spouse/child’s name, or some ethnic/etc label that matches them and that they care about. Grow up, people. The emotional trauma that this callous behavior causes is real. And it will come back to you. Use your words, not some cop-out meme.
This may seem to many just light entertainment, just swimming in or reflecting on the cultural context we find ourselves in. Well it sends and amplifies messages far beyond that, and you are responsible for your part in it. Please help the end-result of whatever you do or say in relation to this meme to have a more positive result for the specific people affected, and the maturity of our society in general.
I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to assume that epithets directed towards a subset of an arbitrary set of people are always directed towards all members of that larger set.
To use that logic is to misunderstand why the insult is being lodged in the first place.
e.g. “Meathead” is an insult that targets specific characteristics about a person’s personality (usually a man’s), but it would be strange to assume that it targets all men at all times.
All women are not the target of this word. Twitter might as well use complainer, bellyacher, fussbudget, kvetch, or tattle-tale – but they’re just not as hip in 2020. 🙂
White people make the same argument for use of the “n” word all the time. It doesn’t work then, doesn’t work now.
This article sounds a bit like the classic:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
So now we have reached…
Then they came for the gammons I said nothing…
Then they came for the Karens i.e. me”and there was no one left to speak for me.
F**king patriarchy!!!
Wow. Men just hate women. Unbelievable.
I just like how black women are “politically engaged” and white men are “angry”)
People are so touchy. Liberal culture hurts itself with such nonsense to satisfy the muslim-loving, criminal-fondling, 58-gender crowd. Forget the TDS and just learn to be nice to each other.
Men and women are not as combative as the author suggests. I was once married but it end badly. She was going to take my truck away and maybe I was drinking and someone got hit. But after the police came, we had a discussion about it and long story short, I’m much happier today. I don’t need to call her any names and she certainly isn’t calling me anything.
Policing language online is such a chore. Years ago, it shockingly wasn’t taboo to call a homorsexual a F***** but now its a hate crime and frowned upon. But social media allows for people to act as they truly are, whether they want to post a bazillion articles about Donald J. Trump or welch on some bets.
What kind of sick woman would take a man’s truck away?
Articles like this are just responding to the fact that all these doinks who police language themselves if it’s about race are now just freely using terms that are specifically stereotyping women. I guess the hope would be that people concerned with racism wouldn’t want to also promote other types of prejudice, but alas, they seemingly do.
Really nice article! Not at all surprising to scroll to the bottom and see a bunch of men calling you a Karen. Please keep ruffling feathers ðŸ‘
I’ve seen one OK Karen (which had a female picture as avatar)? Most responders seem to articulate reasonable arguments against today’s feminism, and this article in particular, without hardly any name calling.
Care to point me out where all those simplistic responses are you seem to have read? Maybe bother to engage with the arguments raised? This response is otherwise as constructive as calling you a Karen.
Professional protestors have no desire to actually engage -that would lead to scrutiny of their ideas and under any critical examination such ideas as they have become transparently facile. That’s the nature of grievance and resentment -it’s just a permanent state of being against something whilst offering nothing to the debate.
Ok Mr. Waterford.
Uhhh, dude, there are twenty comments above you by men telling us why women deserve it. Reading is your friend.
When women attack men, or complain about sexism, it’s called “ruffling feathers”. When men complain about women or complain about feminist sexism, it’s called misogyny – usually by the same people who complain about double standards.
What’s that old biblical injunction about the sliver in your neighbour’s eye and a log in the your own ?
Angry white men posting all over the place mansplaining. Shocker.
They aren’t worth discourse or reply other than:
Ok Mr. Waterford. Yes Mr. Waterford. Thank you for explaining Mr. Waterford.
As for the women – what a sad bunch. Ok Stassi is good for them (google up the racist millennial that was fired yet NEVER called a Karen because she is not older and these white men find her hot). So Ok Stassi one day your looks will fade and Mr. Waterford will come for you honey.
To balance the meme, we have to be honest about Kevin.
Boring.
Middle aged.
Know it all.
Stuck in their ways.
Been there/done that, but hasn’t.
Bangs on and moans about the same old thing.
Brags.
Never lets you get a word in. Basically prattles on while you simulateously feign interest and back away.
Micro-manages everything.
Armchair expert.
Tight/stingy.
Opionated.
Leaves their dogsh*t on the pavement.
Smug.
Why should I attitude.
Ok Kevin.
Calm down, Kevin.
Poor Kevin.
How exciting, Kevin.
Tell me more, Kevin.
Sorry to hear that, Kevin.
Good for you, Kevin.
Nevermind, Kevin.
And let’s be honest about Mr. Waterford
1. Angry older male (often white but not always)
2. Has no problem with Stassi (millennial racist who calls the cops on her black “friend” who did nothing – google it) – Stassi is hot so he likes her she can complain to the manager or call the cops whenver – oh baby
3. Wants a sandwich and a woman to make it for him
4. Hates that female co-worker that got a promotion instead of him – it must be reverse sexism
5. Loud, angry demanding
6. Thinks he deserves respect and is wiling to make you respect him
7. Is above the law in most cases
8. Wears a cap to cover his bald spot
9. Seeks out younger women online (thinks they actually like him)
10. Not very bright but thinks he is
11. Complains incessantly about “male rights” and how “abused men are”
12. Thinks people care what he has to say
13. Constantly thinks about sex and when and how he will get it next
14. Thinks of his kids as little images of him – wants as many has he can get but wants his woman to take care of them
â¤ï¸
Bindel fails to realise that “Karen” is a thorn in the side of People of colour. Generally privileged, middle class, dismissive of “the help” ie service people on minimum wage. The mahoosive stretch toward virtue signalling on behalf of truly awful people is astonishing. She was ripped to shreds on Twitter particularly by said people of colour. Nice try Julie.
Thanks you for writing this. I am in the Karen age group and economic class, I suppose. I found myself apologizing for myself the other day. Not because I was doing anything egregious, I just felt very self-conscious asserting my own power and asking for what I wanted the other day. I found myself wanting to state I”m not a Karen. I really had to check myself. I’m Karen with a capital K and f**k you (I said to no one in particular). This morning I was listening to NPR (I know, how very Karen) was listening to a particular podcast about the “Karen” phenomena in which the millennial hosts (one man and woman) quickly gaslit any dissent by A) couching it in a POC right to “define”, I suppose their oppressors and B) being derisive of any critique as being, you guessed it, very Karen. God. How gaslighting.
Except it exactly means someone who is entitled
Entitled. I’m so sick of that word. We all feel entitled to be respected and seen regardless of gender or color.
You may not believe it, but Dunnings and Kruger understand you completely, having postulated and verified that the more stupid one is, the more likely they are to have absolutely no doubt about the truth of their opinions.
I interpreted #Karens to be a satire on female entitlement. For example here in Australia a Karen to me would be the lady who drives around in a ‘Range Rover’, spouts neverending drivel about healthy eating, is usually white or slightly overweight. Wears ‘activewear’ when not exercising. Is speaking constantly but never listening. Champions ‘her’ children over everyone else’s because of course ‘her’ children are ‘perfect’. Karens here in Australia are racist against aboriginals or they just deny any culpability in racial bias. Yet all the kids at their private school are non-indigenous. Hmm wonder why that could be Karen? Ever thought of that! Well no doesn’t concern me and my family and our white picket fence oh and the poor police. OMG these people are so in the wrong. Just for god’s sake stay home save lives. I caught one mom at our son’s school ‘joking’ apparently that ‘hopefully these BLM protests wipe out an entire raceOMG!’ To me this is the correct use of #Karen.
I am white, a woman mother of two, I am also Aspergers. I work hard and I can afford to send my children to the best schools and to my mind these Karens are horrendous and I wish I didn’t have to deal with them on a daily basis. Surely we as women have evolved further than this.
Sounds like you just don’t fit and are pissed off.
I wouldn’t count it out LoL!
Great article – as a feminist, I find this movement very disturbing, and more so that until this article I didn’t hear anyone speak up against the misogyny of the Karen meme (I’ve heard white women using it as a weapon against a brave, highly intelligent woman who speaks her truth politically). So thank you for this.
Literally the only people who care about this are people no one cares about. It’s just another identity politics circle jerk.
Our entire society is in lockdown – and our economy in meltdown – to keep entitled middle-class women comfortable and free of fear.
So, I don’t think now is the time your whining is going to get the most receptive hearing.
A very good point, well made.
Apart from being utterly wrong, it was perfect.
Which bit was wrong?
Oh, mate.
That’s not what she said.
What about entitled, middle-class men? I guess you think those don’t exist.
This self-serving drivel from someone I’ll bet has no trouble at all referring to you oh-so-privileged men as Chad, incel or just male chauvinist pig, and if you don’t applaud her while she’s doing it, YOU’RE the sexist. Oh, and your sons, who no longer deserve higher education or jobs or payment or anything? They CAN’T be raped by women, no matter their age, the teacher’s position of trust or authority, statutory law definitions, etc., so the female teachers who seem to maul their male students like pit bulls these days are completely innocent of any crime and are simply “living their best life” — your stupid sons got in the way, so they paid the price with their innocence, which they didn’t deserve anyway.
So much for that whole “strong, powerful, blahblahblah” wahwahwahwahmyns 😠thing, eh? Whine to someone who cares, honey …
No, the teachers are not “completely innocent of any crime”: they’re guilty of an offence against s.16 Sexual Offences Act 2003, and a number of them have been sent down for it, as well as being barred from teaching for life.
I assure you, it’s possible to think this term is sexist but to also be a person who doesn’t use sexist terms against men. I don’t make generalizing statements about men or use idiotic terms like “Chad” (I don’t even really understand what that means), because I’m fully aware that every human being is unique and that it’s harmful to alienate men by smugly calling them names. I find “Karen” a prejudiced term because it seems like a lazy, generalizing way to dismiss a female who is complaining about something, just to silence her. That doesn’t mean I agree with every aspect of “modern feminist theory” or every single grievance anyone else who calls themselves a feminist has.
…*shrug*
Agree.
Ok Karen.
Please point me to your article where you talk about the sly sexism behind ‘Kyle’, Or is it only sexist when it’s about women?
What the f**k is a Kyle? That’s not even a thing.
I do agree with you, Ms. Ditum, up to a point. There’s an underlying current of sexism to the Karen meme, especially on largely male forums such as Reddit. But it’s not as straightforward as that. Plenty of young white women who would call themselves progressive also use ‘Karen’ to mock older, irritating women who are often racist and deeply patronising to anyone who doesn’t fit their stereotype of womanhood. ‘Karen’ is shorthand, yes, but we use shorthand as a way of categorising those whom we want to mock all the time – luvvies, Sloaneys, chavs, etc. Generally mockery is seen as an easier way to cope with those we find irritating than internalising our anger where it may fester.
More importantly, it seems dangerous to me to call any woman who doesn’t agree with you that ‘Karen’ is sexist a ‘useful idiot’. All women needn’t think the same. I’m reminded sharply of the abuse conservative black people get online – being called things like ‘race traitor’ because they dare to have a non left-wing opinion. This is the kind of thing that makes me, a woman, wary of calling myself a feminist even though I believe strongly in equal rights for women. Because I have a number of opinions feminists generally disagree with (I’m pro life, for example) I generally get told I’m a useful idiot for the patriarchy. Really doesn’t endear my feminist sisters to me.
Karen is always ‘sharing’: endless ‘pics’ of her ‘Kidz’ when she’s ‘chatting’ on WhatsApp with Nikki and Sabrina; conspiracy theories about Muslims on Mumsnet; photos on Nextdoor of ‘suspicious looking males’ seen in her street, usually black but sometimes ‘East European or Middle Eastern looking’.
Her eldest daughter, Becky, by contrast is ‘woke’ and going to ‘uni’ in September. She starts petitions about free tampons on change.org and photographs her vegan dinners to ‘share’ on Instagram.
It is indeed a finger trap insult – welcome to welcome to the world you created, with equally finger-trappy terms like ‘mansplaining’.
What if you are someone who doesn’t use the term man-splaining? Why is the assumption that every woman who wants to be respected by men is using derogatory terms about men? I’m certainly not…
Ya’ll do mansplain a lot based on the implicit bias that you know better.
Women: if you get offended by women breastfeeding in public
Women: here’s a tip
Women: don’t fracking look.
Men: if you ever get offended my men using the word “Karen”
Men: here’s a tip
Men: don’t fracking listen.
“Do it to Julia”.
‘is so exhausting it makes me want to nap’. That’s what I thought when I glanced over this article (okay so I’m bored) . Zzzzzz Karen.
OK This is 100% someone who got mad over being called Karen, even though they are, in fact, a Karen
So any intelligent woman who has a complaint about the world is a Karen? Okay.
Not every “sexist” thing is worthy of anyone’s attention – like say, a joke on the internet. I’m more concerned with the overt sexism in the comments section. Probably not a bad metric for whether or not your problem matters…
Karen is not just any woman. Karen is specifically a woman who is unnecessarily disrespectful to others, specifically those who are not like her (e.g. people of color, teenagers, retail workers, etc.)
Karen is a control term. Not all women are Karens. Okay. Lots of white people say that not all black people are “N” words, but some are (meaning a lot). Just appropriating the same bullshit argument.
This article disgusts me. It is simply broadcasting a horrible take on the entire meme and term ‘Karen’.
In addition a simple twitter search shouldn’t be enough to constitute as research. I think the understanding of the Karen meme is a lot less complex than you make it.
I’m almost sure this author has been addressed as Karen.
OK Karen
Ok Mr. Waterford. Thank you for explaining that Mr. Waterford.
Karen is simply the product of a broken University System. To be a trained & certified requires a degree in women’s studies. Other degree also accepted are sociology, psychology, English literature. The worst majors for Karen training are Math, Science, Biology or worst of all Physics.
What are you supposed to call a Karen then? Susan?
The author looks like a methed up Karen so I don’t believe shit in this article.
I think the Karen meme is funny, legitimate, and most of all highly relevant. Nobody is ever a “Karen” because she (yes, she) has left an abusive relationship, or demanded the right to vote, or campaigned for office, or was a good manager, or wanted to major in math, etc. Karens are women who are already privileged and demand that level of privilege EVERYWHERE. I am in the service industry and although most women aren’t Karens, they exist and they make life miserable. The beauty of this meme is that a true Karen is not defensible. Karen is the woman who blames the ride operator because her junk food filled kid gets sick on the roller coaster. Karen wants to speak to the manager because the new employee rang up one thing wrong and now she wants her entire order for free.
That’s why defending Karen, makes you a Karen. This isn’t about silencing women, its about reminding Karen that life doesn’t always go your way, everytime, everywhere, and that you can’t fix everything by trying to flaunt your privilege (i.e. assuming a manager will take “your side”.)
Thank you for the explanation Mr. Waterford.
Why on earth is it only female? I have met men with all of these qualities. To pretend it’s somehow just women and that that isn’t your own personal prejudice about women possessing certain qualities is just silly.
Karen is simply the product of a broken University System. To be a trained & certified as a Karen requires a degree in women’s studies. Other degree also accepted are sociology, psychology, English literature. The worst majors for Karen training are Math, Science, Biology or worst of all Physics.
A Karen wrote this article
Ok Mr. Waterford. Yes Mr. Waterford.
The person writing this article sounds nothing like the stereotype of Karen. I guess you don’t understand it or the article.
Karen memes – like the word “basic” – has been co-opted from its original meaning.
Karen calls the cops on an 8 year black kid for selling water bottles. Karen is more than aggravating. When a Karen Karens she can get people killed and impact their livelihoods or mental health.
To reduce Karen’s behavior to mere “aggravation” is intellectually dishonest and/or lazy research.
Karen is ANY middle-aged white woman who flexes her privilege for power. Why middle-aged? Because of one key thing: fading looks. Used to being held up as the beauty standard, aging has Karen is loosing her social currency in sexist racist culture that assigns value to women based on looks – and race. But Karen benefits too much from the system to rail against white men, so she finds any easier target for her diminished power by harassing a Hispanic clerk at Walgreens over an expired coupon.
Patriarchal society frowns upon women expressing anger. So Karen hides her anger which seeps out as relational aggression and passive aggressiveness. Karen is the Empress of those passive aggressive emails at work.
People of color, especially women of color suffer the most. Black women, because of racist tropes, are assumed to be aggressive, have the most trouble dealing with her. A Karen will cause harm – saying something racist or spreading rumors to undermine – then use emotional manipulation or feigning weakness to garner sympathy behind her back then twists the story to make the black woman into the villain, which because of racism, ppl buy. People of color trust Karen less than even white men.
Karen is dangerous.
The funny thing is I actually know a male “Karen” if you defining it as someone who always calls the manager, always complains and is obsessed with organic and gluten free. He’s a pudgy millennial construction worker.
Okay, but for the love of God, any woman who complains about something is not a “Karen”
Sounds sad to me
So which one is it? Do Karen’s deserve it because they DID rail against men or because they can’t? Please see bevy of comments berating feminism above. Jesus f*****g christ.
Karen calls out white feminism. Or as I call it as a minority knowing the history of feminism just feminism. And a young version of karen is Becky. Sounds to me imho white women dont just like finally being put to task for once. That’s no shade no tea