This is how women are silenced today - so afraid of being called "that lady" aka the K word that she's afraid to send an email to her kid's school!

radsera99 · 2021-05-03T19:56:12+00:00

This whole Karen meme is so telling of the deeply rooted misogyny in our society. It originated from white women being racist/harassing employees as far as I’m aware but I think this doesn’t actually have anything to do with racism and everything to do with misogyny and hatred of the ageing woman. This is further proved by the fact that even WHITE men call women Karens and men of colour call WOC Karens. It is simply another word for ‘naggy bitch’. Men have always hated women that speak up and voice our opinions so it’s not really surprising that a new but ‘woke’ word has been invented as a new way to shut women up.

The other day I saw a post on Instagram of a lady talking about how she doesn’t let people touch her kids unless they ask to be picked up. The comment section was full of people calling her a karen.

I find it really telling that the woke crowd are fine with bullying women as long as they’ve decided they deserve it. Btw, I think anyone that is racist obviously needs to be dealt with accordingly but I have an issues with women being targeted and a word being weaponised against us only when men are the ones out here committing most of the violent crimes against men and women of colour.

P.s. where is male equivalent for Karen?

slight_sapphire · 2021-05-04T00:27:47+00:00

I spent years working in retail and other customer service-type jobs. Men only accounted for about 10-20% of the customers I dealt with, but at least half of my nightmare customer experiences involved men. I definitely dealt with plenty of the stereotypical “Karen” types, but they were never as bad as dealing with a disgruntled male customer. They were the ones who’d explode with anger at the slightest inconvenience and try to intimidate me (a teenage/early twenties girl who weighed 120 pounds) to get their way. Men are the true Karen’s if you ask me.

Golden_Lavender · 2021-05-03T19:07:22+00:00

"Karen" like most internet youth slang got highjacked by mass media, overused until the word lost all meaning. It used to mean an entitled middle class women that mistreats retail/ hospitality workers but now it means a woman who dares to be vocal.

fdssavedmylife · 2021-05-03T22:17:04+00:00

My 10 year old niece told the family a “joke” yesterday along the lines of “Google is a girl because she gives you her opinion before you’re even done talking” or something like that. I was absolutely horrified, but my family has shunned me repeatedly for being too “radical” (aka calling them on their bullshit). So I just left the room. I can’t say I’ll have as much self restraint the next time I hear something like that, though. 10 years old and already being taught to hate herself through “humor.”

VanessaViews · 2021-05-04T02:14:47+00:00

I got called a Karen by some random guy trying to harass me while I was walking alone and told him to stay six feet away and that he needed to respect my space and leave me alone.

thegenuinedarkfly · 2021-05-04T00:53:07+00:00

Karen is just as bad as the Stacy in the incel “Stacy and Chad” nonsense.

FWIW, my middle name is Karen so if someone calls me one I will eventually say, “well, my middle name IS Karen” like someone would if their middle name was Danger I guess?

It’s pretty pervasive among tweens at this point for “a woman complaining” regardless of context. It’s the next evolution of sexism.

LynneStone · 2021-05-03T19:27:20+00:00

God I hate “Karen.” Sometimes it fits, but did we really need another way to be dismissive of women?

I commented on an online recipe about one of the ingredients being quite obscure and would likely necessitate going to a nursery to buy a plant. I was essentially told “Go away Karen.” I’m not allowed to comment with a true issue about a recipe??

Woman has opinion = SHHHH KAREN

huevos_and_whiskey · 2021-05-03T20:46:07+00:00

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haunted_vcr · 2021-05-04T06:31:07+00:00

LVMs have hijacked Karen - a very specific term for someone who wants to talk to the manager and has a wonk haircut - to tell women to shut up in completely inappropriate contexts.

Watch how often they use that word.

ceramicunicorn · 2021-05-04T00:20:47+00:00

I’m really, really trying to not sound intolerant here but...

I’m so sick of this Karen shit, at the expense of being able to speak up. The balancing act is exhausting. How bad does the offense have to be to call it out, to where you’re not the asshole for doing so?

Just yesterday, I watched a man kick the door of a car that was not his, which dented it, and then storm down the avenue in a rage, knocking over every public trash can, spilling trash all into the bike lane. I almost called 911 because, this wasn’t just someone yelling and ranting, which I’m used to seeing. This was someone taking out physical aggression on property, his eyes looked crazy, fists balled, and I could imagine him being violent with a person who passed by and looked at him wrong. Had he hit anyone yet? No, but it looked like it could go that way. I wasn’t looking to get the guy arrested, but he was not in a state to be on the street and needed a wake up call that society does not tolerate that shit. Go punch your pillow, punch in your wall if you own the home, but do not make your anger management other people’s problem.

But I didn’t, because I’m white, and if he had been POC (I couldn’t tell if he was for sure), this would have made me a “Karen”, a greater offense these days than demonstrating actual menacing behavior. It didn’t matter to me his race, or his gender, or whatever, it’s because he was literally kicking shit over- hard, seemed a potential threat, and I would’ve felt the same way about the behavior, regardless of demographic. Maybe he escalated and punched someone in the face later or kicked his dog, who knows, because he felt emboldened by his warmup rampage. But at least I’m not a jerk for calling the cops!

I regret the whole thing and next time I see that kind of thing, I am 100% calling, “Karen” label be damned.

Galileo_Spark · 2021-05-03T20:04:31+00:00

I’m with you. That woman second-guessing herself and her hesitancy is why men have devoted so much time and energy to smearing Karens. A woman who fears being called a Karen is much easier to control. Karen is used to keep women quiet, meek, submissive and to prevent them from speaking out. One of many Karen subreddits has over 1.2 million subscribers.

_RustInPiece_ · 2021-05-03T19:22:31+00:00

Since the b-word got reclaimed (by feminists and those who don't call themselves ones but act pro-women too) the k-word has to do. I'd say time to claim the k-word as well. And every other misogynistic vocabulary as well.

And yes, you are absolutly right. It shouldn't be that way. But it as long as it works as a bullying mechanism the bully will keep on using it. Patriarchy is bullying against women.

2021-05-03T19:37:24+00:00

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fdskylie · 2021-05-03T21:08:57+00:00

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FDS-GFY · 2021-05-04T01:35:58+00:00

I am so pissed how white men stole a word that was defined by Black people for a specific reason, and used it to attack any woman they disagree with.

Interesting_Day1188 · 2021-05-04T02:55:47+00:00

I hate the Karen trope. It's literally a creation to put the blame on women to make men look less 'bad'. It's their way to shielding themselves from all the evil they've done.

Like what's his face's stunt on SNL. The guy who is married to a black woman. He is just as guilty and fucked as the people he's talking shit about. Somehow, he has a right to speak for black people now because he's married to a black woman. And he's out there talking shit about 'Karen' and white women stealing the 'woke' movement... hypocritical much? And talking shit about the gay movement? Pride month? Go fuck yourself dude.

It's actually that you're uncomfortable that you're being held accountable for your fucking privilege. Don't try to pass the fucking buck, dude. You're a shit bag, the color of your wife's skin doesn't change the fact that you are the ultimate in the land of the privileged.

The Karen trope doesn't just effect white women either. It's spilling over onto all women, so it's coming back to bite people in the ass who created it in the first place. It's just another distraction from the real damn problem.

disposable20201129 · 2021-05-03T22:50:56+00:00

As a woman of color, I see calling racist white women karen as comparable to calling a pickme a pickme.

Especially after nearly half of white women helped vote in the pussy grabber in 2016.

I do see internet trolls calling critics karens to get a rise out of them, but internet trolls are like that with everything.

Other than that, it's been consistently a label for racists. I have not seen a headline calling a black, asian, or indigenous woman a karen.

The reason that karens get a special label is because men don't really do this nearly as much because racist men are comfortable being straight up aggressive with the assaults and the insults. Women are socialized not to be aggressive, so racist women use more passive-aggressive means to funnel their rage. That's why nobody says kyle or kevin, because kyle is busy being an old school, classic racist.

In an indirect sense, it is created by sexism, because sexism pushes women to suppress and leak out their anger in twisted ways, but in the sense of someone just inventing the term ostensibly to put racists but covertly to suppress all women against interacting with authorities, nah, it ain't that deep.

Every so often I see non-FDSers misusing pickme or "I'm glad you got picked" in ways that FDS would never let slide. Are we going to stop calling pickmes pickmes if that starts catching on? If someone says, "I'm so terrified to date because what if other women call me a pickme?" I don't think so. Because we know what it really means and it doesn't matter how other people misuse it. And I think the same principle applies.

But actually, a better analogy would be someone saying, "I'm so terrified to reject this man because what if other women call me a pickme?" That's what it sounds like to me when this lady says she's scared to thank a school in case she gets called a karen, like the act is so antithetical. Something about this doesn't smell right to me.

shockingupdate · 2021-05-04T04:49:22+00:00

In Black circles we still use it the way it was intended, but of course everything we popularize for a specific purpose ends up getting hijacked, overused and warped to benefit other forms of oppression instead 🙄

Emergency-Feed8216 · 2021-05-04T03:45:58+00:00

I think one solution is to reserve the "Karen" epithet for its original application only: psycho white women (and men-- why not?) who call the cops on non-white people for walking, bird watching, posting a lost cat notice, waiting for the bus, checking their email, breathing, etc.

That was a valid burn but now it's being turned into a misogynist lash that ironically draws curiously terrifying power to silence from the same original valid purpose that's being dulled and invalidated by appropriation.

poetfrog · 2021-05-04T13:07:57+00:00

I don’t understand why the comments underlining the racial implications of using the term Karen keep getting downvoted. A Karen is an entitled white woman who harasses PoC - remember the whole Christian Cooper vs. Amy Cooper debacle? Or when white women would call the cops on black folx for simply existing? This too is its own kind of racism.

I mean, I agree it’s shitty of white men to appropriate a term that POC folx could use to call out specific behavior targetted at them.

I get your frustration that this term has been used to call out all women. That’s gross too. Instead of getting mad at the term, why not direct that frustration towards the racist behaviors that led to this name in the first place.

fdskylie · 2021-05-04T13:40:29+00:00

Don't believe the media outlets that claim calling someone a Karen is just, or even that it started out as something good but then got hijacked. Karen has been around for years and it has always been about sexism against aging women. It was created and popularized on reddit.

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