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Is Karen considered a racial slur?
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Anonymous
Are you hearing yourself? "Those women absolutely need to be silenced"? What year is this? It's 2023 and women have a right to speak up without being insulted about it. |
Anonymous
In every way in every scenario? No. So entitled. |
Anonymous
Have you asked yourself why the name give to these specific behaviors -- complaining, entitlement, aggressive -- is a name almost exclusively associated with middle aged women, a group who historically are expected to disappear from society because they no longer serve the two purposes society has assigned to women (being sexually attractive, having babies)? Lots of people are annoying, entitled, or aggressive. Why is the nickname for it associated mainly with women between the ages of 40/45 and 60? |
Anonymous
I thought vigilante justice was looked down on. Who made you boss? |
Anonymous
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Let’s break it down, and to do so we have to start with Becky first, then Karen second.
Merriam-Webster defines “Becky” as “a white woman who is ignorant of both her privilege and her prejudice.” A Becky is “a white woman who uses her privilege as a weapon, a ladder or an excuse”—and there are five distinct categories of them. Notable Beckys include Taylor Swift, each Kardashian, and every white woman named ‘Amber.’ Not every white woman is a Becky, of course. But all Beckys are white women. A “Karen” is basically a graduated Becky who’s extremely aware of her privilege and weaponizes it. A Becky convinces herself—and attempts to convince others—that her whiteness doesn’t matter. A Karen doesn’t even bother to fake it. She knows it’s her Big Joker and plays it whenever necessary. Karen is, at it’s heart, just the word people use for someone bossy and entitled. Someone authoritarian and nosy and far too involved with other people’s business. Racial slur, eh nope. Focus on the behavior. |
Anonymous
But using a name to label the behavior makes it about the name. Telling him he complains excessively is about the behavior. Calling him a Karen to criticize his behavior, makes it about the name. I don’t think you’re stereotyping all older, white women. I think you’re stereotyping everyone named Karen. People named Karen may be predominantly (but not exclusively) older, white, women, but only a small percentage of older, white women are actually named Karen. If you mean it’s not about me as someone named Karen, you’re absolutely correct. My name isn’t Karen. However, just as you feel compelled to call out your father for his bad behavior, I feel compelled in the interest of fairness, compassion, and civility to call out yours. Please note that I am addressing the specific behavior without resorting to slurs and stereotypes. Incidentally, I consider the use of “Karen” as a slur to be worse than the behavior associated with that label. |
Anonymous
Probably coined by someone who saw someone actually named Karen behave poorly. It's not like someone sat down to research name popularity by age to target that demographic. |
Anonymous
You are missing the point — Karen is a name. A name of middle-aged women. Calling someone a Karen is derogatory towards that group of women. |
Anonymous
LOL. No. I have a close friend actually named Karen and she's not a "Karen" at all. Definitely not stereotyping Karens. You think me telling my dad to chill is worse than him flagging the server to come over 100 times over inane crap? OK... |
Anonymous
Well said. |
Anonymous
And that is exactly the kind of white feminism the word is meant to poke at. People have literally lost their lives to white women who weoponize their privilege. Karen behavior can be deadly. But you want to act like calling someone a Karen is worse than acting like one? Give me a f#cking break. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
And you are so full of that word that Jeff still allows to be used. |
Anonymous
You don't have to research the popularity of a name to know that if you meet a Karen, odds are going to be good that she is a white woman in her 40s or 50s. It's instinctive. But you didn't answer the question. Why is the nickname for being annoying, entitled, and aggressive, a name associated primarily with middle aged white women? Are they the MOST annoying, entitled, aggressive demographic? Or it it possible that middle aged women are assumed to deserve nothing and have nothing of interest to say, and thus anything they say and do is interpreted as annoying and entitled? Even the stereotype of a Karen as someone who wants to "talk to the manager" raises questions. Sure, sometimes this is the behavior of an entitled, maybe racist person. But what if you've just been charged for something you didn't order and never received, and the server was dismissive and rude to you when you pointed out the error. Is it okay in that situation to ask to speak to a manager? What if the person who rang you up called you a "dumb b***h" when you couldn't get the credit card machine to work? Are you allowed to talk to the manager then? Is it so hard to imagine that a middle aged white woman might have valid reasons to request better customer service, or to complain about how she's being treated by someone else? Or are middle aged white women simply supposed to accept whatever treatment someone wants to offer, because if she asks for better, she's "entitled, aggressive, annoying"? And are you really going to tell me that white women are MORE entitled, aggressive, and annoying than white men? Or is it just that white men have more real power to command respect and compliance than anyone else, so they don't have to ask to speak with the manager -- they get better service from the jump and can successfully bully someone into treating them better without needing to call a higher authority. |
Anonymous
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