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. (Itâs Karenâs fault you canât 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 thereâs 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: âOK Karenâ. That way, everyone will know sheâs just a stupid, common, entitled Karen. (In the UK at least, Karen is not a posh name: if Karen is middle-class, sheâs lower middle.) Unsurprisingly, not all women have been delighted with this linguistic turn. In a tweet, Julie Bindel described it as âwoman hating and based on class prejudiceâ. 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 thereâs 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 whoâs engaging in the Karen discourse on social media, and youâll find that politically engaged black women are mysteriously outnumbered by angry white men.
If youâre female, and like Bindel you make the error of suggesting the Karen thing is transparent sexism, then youâll meet those men in your mentions â deeply aggrieved by the suggestion that you, a Karen, should presume to tell them how to speak. Itâs 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 weâd be having a wider conversation about how these angry white men have culturally appropriated it. The fact that weâre not doing that suggests how flimsy the defence is.
When Karen is used to belittle women, and especially when itâs being used to belittle women for showing solidarity with other women (as in a tweet calling the MP Jess Phillips âShadow Karen Ministerâ, which went viral after she was appointed shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding), this is precisely in line with its accepted usage. Itâs a finger trap insult, where struggling against it only makes it grip tighter. When its defenders say that thereâs no reason to worry about it so long as youâre not a Karen, what theyâre really doing is proffering an individual exit from the abuse â so long as you agree that some women deserve it, maybe you can qualify for a pass.
It is and always has been a way to spit out a generalised contempt at women, and make it palatable by casting her as the privileged one. Nearly everyone knows that hating women for being women is a bad look â but what if they were white women? Presto chango, suddenly youâre punching up! No wonder the angry men are so attached to it, and no wonder there are plenty of women eager to defend Karenning in the hope they can keep themselves out of the punching line. Which means that Karen is just the same tatty old woman-hating gussied up for 2020.
In a 1991 essay, the feminist scholar Catharine Mackinnon noted that the phrase âstraight white economically-privileged womenâ had become a kind of âdismissive sneerâ, used to imply that the women it referred to were too pampered, too cossetted, too privileged to ever experience subjugation on the basis of sex. What is the âwhite womanâ, asked Mackinnon? âThis creature is not poor, not battered, not raped (not really)⌠She flings her hair, feels beautiful all the time, complains about the colored help, tips badly, canât do anything, doesnât do anything, doesnât know anythingâŚâ What a Karen.
The idea that, three decades on from Mackinnon writing that, I am patiently trying to establish that a disparaging epithet for women is in fact a disparaging epithet for women (or âsexistâ, if you want to save a few syllables) is so exhausting it makes me want to nap. The women who pop up now to say Karen isnât sexist are the same kind of useful idiots who, in the 2000s, would have been laughing too loudly at the jokes in ladmags, trying not to let themselves become the punchline. Karens, it is known, lack a sense of humour.
Hereâs whatâs funny. There is no way out of the Karen double bind for women. Itâs always there to keep you in line. Even if you embrace it, itâs still hanging over you. (Regardless of race: the FuckYouKaren Reddit has multiple posts highlighting the misdeeds of âBlack Karensâ.) And one day, maybe you will need to speak to the manager after all. Maybe youâll want to get a haircut thatâs a practical length, but also flatteringly layered! Maybe, God forbid, youâll want to run for public office like Clinton, Phillips or one of those other Karens.
The only way to ensure youâre never a Karen is to be forever quiet and compliant. OK Karen?
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