July 7, 2020 - 7:00am
When you hear someone telling a woman, “don’t be so loud” and “get out of the way”, your gut instinct might be that you’re in the presence of a reconstituted misogynist. Perhaps the ghost of Bernard Manning has popped back to put on a show. But no: these are actually the words of alleged feminists, speaking on a BBC podcast, on the subject of how white women can avoid being “Karens”.
The obvious problem with the question (asked by host Sadia Azmat of her two white guests, Amelia Dimoldenberg and Dr Charlotte Riley) is that it supposes being declared a Karen is some kind of just process, rather than a reflexive jab of contempt that can be aimed at any woman over 35.
When Dimoldenberg’s immediate answer was that women should “educate themselves”, I wonder what kind of “education” she thinks would have helped the woman in this viral clip, who was pursued to her home by a man who has a history of calling people racist as a prank. Maybe if she’d read one bell hooks book, he’d somehow have intuited that she deserved to be left alone.
Of course, no one who says “educate yourself” actually means “educate yourself”: that would involve getting into the gritty stuff of intra-movement controversies and ultimately having to use your own judgement to decide what’s right. “Educate yourself” means “mouth this catechism and keep your head down”.
There’s always been a place in public life for the woman who says other women should shut up. Sometimes she has a column in the Mail. Sometimes she’s the UK’s first female prime minister. And sometimes she’s calling herself a feminist, calling other women out (this, I guess, is easier than calling out men, who are quite scary).
All this adds up to a pretty embarrassing scene, where a conversation about racism devolves into two white women talking about white women. How this helps to centre black voices or redress historic exploitation, God knows. What it does do, however, is throw a very welcome bone to the hard Right, which knows just how to get at the nourishing marrow of a culture war. A clip like this will keep anti-BBC, reverse-racism polemicists in material for weeks.
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SubscribeHow tiresome. Once again, anyone who wants to defund the BBC is “hard right” (i.e. someone I disagree with) and anyone who objects to this absurd, racist clip for the ‘wrong’ reasons (i.e. not being politically aligned with Sarah Ditum) means you’re a rabid right-wing dog, foaming at the mouth as you tear apart bones to feast on culture war marrow. Is there anything more boring than lefties with extreme views who are desperate to portray themselves as sensible and moderate? They’re the midwives to this madness, yet think they’re the calm and sensible defenders of moderation.
I thought it was quite funny and satirical. Especially the bit when everyone realises that they all Karens within the mental construct of Karen. So that you are either a direct Karen, a reverse Karen or an inverted Karen. The satire being that we are all so excessively privilaged, relatively speaking, but at the same time, in denial of that excessive privilage so that in our denial, we now spend all our time accusing everyone of being excessively privilaged.
In other words, we have now reached late stage middle class neurosis.
Excellent description ” midwives to this madness”.
Some of the Karen videos from the US are hilarious and reveal some truly obnoxious characters. The irony of the BBC latching on to this is that the BBC is the ideological home of Karens. It is Auntie Karen. 5Live is full of them (men and women) and I have no doubt that everyone in its HR and Diversity departments etc is a Karen.
HeeHee! Well said, Fraser Bailey!
“The irony of the BBC latching on to this is that the BBC is the ideological home of Karens. It is Auntie Karen.”
100% correct FB. I am bored and angered by ‘experts’ on BBC radio ‘explaining’ how – after a professional life dedicated to informing and stressing the importance of ‘individual’ critical analysis to my students, I am – a) out-of-date (despite a First Class Hons in the subject), in my comprehension of the English Language and Literature; that b) I have been deceived, despite a Masters in European history, on the ‘cruel’ reality of British history; and c) at core, I am an ignorant, subconscious ‘racist’, steeped in ‘white privilege’ and intent on patronising ALL those of a different ‘skin’ colour!
Ergo the hysteria on our streets; and the shame and guilt being currently imposed on the indigenous population of the least ‘racist’ country in the Western Hemisphere.
‘We are dying Egypt, dying …’ – Mark Antony to Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, as he lies dying in her arms. Antony who had fought against his own people, Rome, on the side of Egypt.
(And referenced by the poet Louis MacNeice, at the onset of WWII)
“Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;/…….And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying”
Is not the Globalisation – into which we were naively led and betrayed – an “enriching” experience?
It is not. But what is an enriching experience is reading the wide-ranging laments from great writers that you have been able to recall. Thank you!
Such enrichment is ameliorating.
‘Karen’ is the new *n******’ word. Those who are comfortable using it today against white women are the same type of people who would have been comfortable using the ‘n’ word 50 years ago against black people.
BravoSierra!
“There’s always been a place in public life for the woman who says other women should shut up. Sometimes she has a column in the Mail. Sometimes she’s the UK’s first female prime minister”.
Try as I might, I can’t find such a quote attributed to Thatcher anywhere.
Everybody who leaves their house and goes out into the general public of the world must face some sort of adversity. No matter what gender, race, nationality you are. It is odd to see the powerless of societies fight over who is privileged or not. On the other hand there is the truly privileged who never have to mix with the unwashed watch their stock portfolios grow in their gated communities as we shut down the real economy. What a world we live in. It is almost like they want us killing each other as they grab more and more for themselves.
It was ever thus.
Part of the trouble is that Karen is known to be a misogynist term and I believe that a recent study which Medium highlighted showed it was more likely to be used by angry white men than annoyed black women. It doesn’t matter. It is a term used to prevent people from speaking their opinion and is used to denigrate. NWL (Nice White Lady) or NWLT (Nice White Lady Tears) are inter-changeable terms. They are used because as Professor Iris Bohnet makes clear in her book What Works: Gender Equality by Design, white women in particular wanted to be liked and behave accordingly. Thus it can be easier to move white women as a group than say white men, particularly if they are made to feel uncomfortable and out of step.
Thus an odious straw-woman has been created in an attempt to influence behaviour in a way that it would not be done for white men. It is misogyny at its purest and is used to shut an argument down because in general they feel they are losing control of the argument.
The trouble with the phrase ‘educate yourself’ is that the curated list proffered tends to give one side of the argument and ignores such black male commentators as Thomas Sowell and Jason L Riley who whilst acknowledging the very real discrimination have very different solutions to Reni Endo-Lodge (a black woman author of Why I am no longer to White People About Race) or Robin DiAngelo (a white woman, author of White Fragility). It also assumes the black community as a whole has one point of view rather than many.
A side note: the term Auntie Karen is already used to describe people like Candace Owens in the US who despite being black are not behaving in a black enough fashion.
“Gammon”, “pale, male stale”. There are plenty of names for both sexes, and by turning this into a sexism trope I don’t think is helpful.
As the article has stumbled upon the issue but is not making the right conclusion. The whole “educate yourself” style of criticism and thinking is the problem (as you also say).
I mean it with the best will in the world when i say that I think traditional feminists should take a step back and realise that it is bigger than just being about them. All people of all races and sexes who do not ascribe to the specific worldview are targeted.
Interesting but Karen was a popular name for girls in the US in the mid to late 60s. It denotes a certain stereotype — a woman of a certain age, and background. There may an equivalent term for men but I haven’t encountered it yet. This is probably more to do with my profession (I’m a historical romance novelist — published with Harper Collins) than anything.
I have been through some of this with the romance genre which is the best selling genre in the US publishing market., starting in 2018. The Romance Writers of America imploded over allegations earlier this year — the subsequent investigation by the Pillsbury law firm found no racism but instead gross incompetence over many years by the Board and the staff (which in many ways is worse imho). And yes, there have been problems with racial discrimination over the years in ways that most people who are not Black would not be aware of (for example African American romance being shelved in the African American section rather than in romance section of a v large bookstore chain with the subsequent loss in sales — the RWA knew about this and did nothing to campaign against it for example). Steps are being taken but it is a slow process. I can give chapter and verse if you like but things have improved and are still improving and it is far harder than one might think.
And yes, people who do not subscribe to a particular world view are being targeted. When the words Listen to are use it tends to mean to a specific world view rather than say to someone like Sen Tim Scott of SC or Thomas Sowell.
I think the Karen thing is pretty broad in its usage at the moment. Some are using it to very much focus on exactly the demographic you mention above, whereas it’s also used to just generally throw at any female (especially but not exclusively white).
The psychology behind it is fascinating as it has clearly resonated with a lot of people of both sexes across large parts of US and UK societies.
Really interesting points about the African American sections and books. But there is a certain damned if you do damned if you don’t aspect to this. Many authors of African American culture (and other cultures) explicitly want to be associated with those genres.
To bring it back round to the general point about identity politics – the issue is that instead of trying best to take race or sex out any equation in the name of equality – it forces it straight back into the limelight.
We end up with people not knowing whether it’s more racist or not to deny someones heritage by not pigeon holing their work under one category or the next. Because the answer is utterly subjective and dependent on the opinion of the would-be victim. Everyone has to second guess everything.
The majority of the imbeciles of the age (with no chin or forehead as V. Woolf point out) turned out to be congenitaly iodine deficient. Society could have sterilised all of them and all of their parents and yet had no effect whatsoever on the prevalence of iodine deficiency related prenatal brain damage.
The problem is, when you get a theory going in your head, you can miss a lot of better explanations for what you are only seeing though a single lens.
The up vote is mainly for the 2nd paragraph..that’s spot on…
Wonderful piece, Peter. While writing my latest novel (Q), I dug up much of this material, and the quotes you include are all familiar to me. I don’t for a minute suggest we stop producing Shaw’s plays or burn Woolf’s or Wells’ books, but I continue to be baffled at the absence of *any* mention of the American or UK eugenics movements in high school history textbooks.
Why is this? My first guess is that too many of the early 20th-century eugenicists were (and still are) revered by modern liberals ” or, as in Helen Keller’s case ” completely untouchable. To point out their ideological failings would necessitate a massive erasure campaign. Imagine The sins of early Progressives like Sanger, Keller, Wells, Du Bois (yes, even him), Rockefeller, etc. being exposed. We simply don’t have an eraser large enough.
I’ve an op-ed essay out on submission on this absence of the UK/US role in the eugenics movement in our history curriculum. I doubt it will be picked up, and I find that frightening.
By and large, mostly middle class feminists have been
contemptuous of women who don’t share their opinions for decades. The formula is
simple: Agree with them and you’re right; disagree and you’re suffering from
internalized misogyny. It’s exactly the same as “white fragility” ““ heads I
win, tails you lose.
I’ve noticed this progression of the woke brigade. First they came for the wealthy, then the white men, then the white women, now I’m seeing ‘wealthy white gay men’. All attacked economically to stop them working unless they self deprecate and do recorded1984 style apologies everytime they have the wrong opinion.
As Jerry McGuire said – Follow the money. This is a huge money-maker for the anti-racism industry. Corporations are enforcing such training not so much to “cure’ racism but to prove to anyone accusing them of having a “toxic” environment that they are indeed doing something about . They bring in a highly paid consultant to cure the problem and force everyone to attend which is a way of shutting down the criticism without doing a thing to truly rework a toxic environment.
On college student I know when signing up for a roommate in his dorm, was asked what racial/ethnic group he would prefer. “why would I care” he queried. I guess the training worked after all.
Ha ha. Taleb Starkes calls it the Racism Grievance Industry. He wrote Black Lies matter. Good read.
“Educate yourself” means “mouth this catechism and keep your head down”.
Careful, Ditum. Feminist ideology’s tawdry methods are in danger of being exposed.
About 15 minutes ago there were several comments on here , including mine. Where have they gone?
You must have used a word or phrase the moderating algorithm considered naughty. Or just possibly offensive to a theoretical person or persons. A potential micro-aggression in the world of the snowflake.
Well said, Meghan. I love the analogy of the co-dependent relationship. That’s exactly what it feels like.
To much wasting of resources in schools, highly questionable left wing anti white bias assuming all evils past and present have been committed by the imperialist empire.
‘There’s always been a place in public life for the woman who says other women should shut up.’
And there’s always been a place for women who won’t!
(men, too, for that matter.)
Interesting thoughts, yes be yourself and have courage to face the bullies. The woke individuals and mobs are just thugs and bullies wanting to injure the police and people generally and damage property. As well as the individual the state has a role and in particular the police, judiciary and politicians need to ensure strong penalties are applied be it BLM, XR or any other woke thugs applying cancel culture which is bullying. The role of social media needs also to be targeted for correction.
Wise words. You obviously have the benefit of experience to know that our integrity and worth can only really be realised by oneself. The rest is either people pleasing or people appeasing.
I guess the moral of the codependent story is to remain grounded and centred within oneself and if one’s attention (love) is pulled or pushed into another, then we simply need to reground and recentre ourselves again.
This is why I think the individual is so important. Not as the basis to be selfish or self serving but as the grounded and centred basis upon which we derive self value, self worth, self dignity and self respect.
Sometimes the terms grounded and centred can be quite confusing, but for me, being centred is the social (horizontal) dimension of our being whereas being grounded is the ecological (vertical) dimension of our being.
I look forward to more insightful and empowering articles like these. Thanks.
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Well said. One thing hit me wrong, although it isn’t really consequential to the main point. But I’ll say it anyway.
I know saying this could get me fired, but males don’t have mammary glands. Throughout the vast 200k year entirety of human history the fact that females do, is why they stayed with their offspring instead of going on hunts, and why they evolved as innately caretaking, empathetic, protective, and attuned to the emotions of their children, and thus socially as well.
These nature-assigned roles, and innate traits are what societies built themselves around, not vice versa.
Infant formula was invented 150 years ago. Reliable birth control even more recently. Said another way, if humanity was forced by nature to live a certain way for 1333 days, we have only had reasonably accessible alternative options since yesterday.
Higher measures of empathy in females cannot be laid solely at the feet of socialization.
Regardless, I love Louis C.K. and I don’t care who knows it.
Feminism has never been about freedom to choose, it is about ‘you have to be what we want you to be’
Er….and the difference is…?
At last, a Meghan M. who talks sense.
There is a more fundamental point, which shows just what a con these courses are. The first step is for the pupils to be told why they have ‘failed’ a test. They are then taught how to ‘pass’ the test. Finally they are presented with the test again and – surprise, surprise – they pass the test. Because that is what school pupils do – what their teachers tell them. The people running the course claim that their course is successful because more pupils ‘passed’ the test at the end of the course than at the start. The assumption is that the pupils are making choices that they believe in. No consideration is given to the possibility that they are merely doing what they have been told to do.
Nor is consideration given to the admittedly small possibility that the children are actually correct in most or all of their assessments. The photos are of real people who have their own individual characteristics. They are not people who are of average generosity, average trustfulness, average intelligence etc. etc. It is only reasonable to expect a child to be indifferent between trusting different people if those people are equally trustworthy.
Bravo! Banish the SJW Bullies – Begone ‘little peskys’
Would it were so easy!
All comes across to me as indoctrination of racialised mental constructs with IAT just another aspect of virtue signalling status culture.
I certainly don’t see how benevolent neutrality in ones thinking in relation to culturally created categories is going to be achieved by constantly reproducing the very same cultural categories that are causing the problem.
The disease is the cultural categories by which we demarcate ourselves from one another, the simplest being black and white. As such, creating and reinforcing the categories of black and white will surely make anyone who truly seeks benevolent neutrality to question why.
Why are we creating these categories of black and white, because apparently they are needed to tackle racism but actually, they are the cause of racism.
If we did not conceive of each other through the mental categories of black and white, then there would be no mental basis for comparison.
Therefore, all these tests are doing is creating the basis for comparison and then seeking to construct additional mental constructs to adjust and modify that comparison. The danger of course is free will. How will one compare from one day to the next considering our ever changing emotional states.
All these strategies do is create the basis for comparing ourselves to another which is exactly the same template used by scientific racism. Reinforcing these templates does not eliminate racism, because these templates are the mental basis on which racism occurs.
And now we have what amounts to a form of intellectual eugenics, eagerly embraced by even more academics and ‘progressives’ than their antecedents of a century ago. Thus those who do not share their opinions are the new degenerates and imbeciles.
I recall taking various psycho-profile tests as a manager, in theory designed to ensure square pegs went into square, not round, holes. Of course, it was usually easy to detect the thrust of the questions asked in many of the tests, when to give an honest answer and when to give the “correct” answer. However, it was always amusing to look at the post test analyses and compare notes with fellow testees. A nice little earner for the management consultants who manage to keep a straight face when selling to the HR departments. When it comes to unconscious bias, though, it will be like diversity: strictly one way, viz Caucasian bias against BAME, never the reverse, let alone inter-BAME. And a new tool for the Woke thought police.
I am consciously biased towards my own racial group, and yet I don’t feel at all diseased. We cannot reprogram nature. Efforts to do this will only result in people being more vulnerable to the outgroups who have no problem at all in exercising their bias against them. I embrace my people and my preference for them over all other races.
” The idea that the average male Trump voter is less prejudiced against women than the average female Clinton voter is “¦ well, it’s not inherently ridiculous, but it would require a huge redrawing of society’s understanding of what prejudice is and who has it.” I don’t find it difficult to believe that female Clinton voters were more prejudiced against everyone else — including the groups they make a big show of standing up for, and including even themselves — than male Trump voters.
Recommended reading: Sowell’s Intellectuals And Race
https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465058728
Why not take a different tack? I know that science, facts and reason aren’t so persuasive, but maybe they could contribute something. Maybe teaching the truth about races will make people more comfortable with it than just telling them that they should be comfortable with it.
What is race? It’s heredity. It’s minor genetic (and usually some cultural) variation. Yes, there are genetic differences but that’s OK because if you study biology you learn about variations in species and their importance. In biology, races would probably be referred to as “families” within a species. They are essential to how species (and cultures) evolve. Genetics are additive. When “families” with different characteristics hybridize, the offspring can have the strengths of both parental families sort of added together. It can be more than that even. In plants it can lead to what is known as “hybrid vigor” which all modern agriculture depends on. Now there is a drawback. In biology, the first generation of parents from different “families” are called P1. Their first generation of hybrid offspring are called F1 who may have the strengths of both parentals (P1). Unfortunately, the next generations, called F2, F3, etc. may not be as strong because after recombination the genes may not fit together perfectly. Some will though and in nature, those will be the survivors until they are stable hybrids that do consistently have the strengths of both parental “families” (P1) or races. The problem is that nature is notoriously bad at mixing the genes of hybrids (what I call the Third Level of Selection). Luckily, humans can (and need to) use fairly simple genetic technology that is actually already developed a little bit to do Pre-implantation Artificial Genetic Selection. It would be economical, which is needed. It is also ethical because the outcome would be healthy children, families and communities – which is the basis of human morality. We’re going to have to use artificial selection anyway to survive because what we have called human progress is the removal of natural selection. Natural selection is essential because it is what keeps the genes of a species healthy by removing the weak or broken genes. Every generation there are what they call de novo mutations (Latin for “fresh”). They aren’t fresh, they are broken and they will build up generation by generation if they aren’t removed. Worse yet, parents are older now and as we age we get far more broken genes in our sex cells. We will have to use artificial selection to replace the natural selection we’ve removed or we will not be able to maintain our civilization. We will go back to a time when natural selection works normally and that would be a time of ignorance, war, disease, starvation and short lives. Anyway, if we use artificial selection, we can make hybridization work far better than nature can. As is, everyone is a hybrid. Even though it is costly in terms of life, evolution has always selected for the hybrid because it is stronger. (Westerners are Sumerian, Semitic, Indo-European, Celtic hybrids) We don’t need to rush into hybridization, but it just does happen and people shouldn’t be worried about it. The genetic technology will help a lot. There is another thing about it though. We are heading into an unknown future that is going to need abilities for survival that no existing race has now. Only based on the great genetic wealth of that is the Ethnic variation of all of humanity will we be able to adapt to the future. Racism is silly because your descendants are going to need the genes of other races to adapt to the future. Other races may be unfamiliar… seemingly weird or even a bit scary, but it is best to understand their relation to you. They are a plus, not a minus. The world belongs to the hybrids and the future does too. Think of the amazing genetic wealth that the U.S. has! It is the ultimate wealth and the gift that keeps on giving.
I’ve written a lot about how humans can genetically and strategically adapt to the future. I made the book on genetics into a YouTube video at Genetics For A New Human Ecology. Check it out. It might give you a whole new perspective on race. It’s not about not avoiding racism to be a nice person. It’s about self interest. The video even describes how diseases like COVID 19 naturally function to remove broken genes.
The statistical methods developed by Fisher and Pearson show their Eugenic beliefs to be false. We can at least celebrate these of their contributions.
“Educate yourself” is actually a very dangerous phrase for the left to use, as some duly do, and discover their expensive university left wing indoctrination was composed of lies and half-truths. The number of such formerly hoodwinked left wing supporting people is growing, and the nearer they were to the ‘process’ and processing the more damage they can do the the left.
Hmmm…”Karen” Ditum, a “hard leftist” lecturing on discrimination. Pathetic are some of the contributors who make UNHERD.
Congratulations, Sarah.
You’re now beginning to understand the lived experience of men dealing with feminism for the last 50 years, the same shaming and misandrist tactics now weaponized by those even more woke than you turned against women. Kind of poetic justice, don’t you think?
Or as I like to say, what goes around comes around.