Guest post: The origin of “Karen”
Originally a comment by Freemage on But which people, which Americans, whose bodies?
“Karen” didn’t originally mean “aggressive female racist”. It originally (as used by the male black comedian who coined the term) was mostly about class-privilege (in, of course, a gendered way), about upper-middle-class women who made life tough for front-line service industry workers by complaining incessantly and immediately demanding to ‘speak to the manager’. So not about feminists specifically, and mostly focused on class, but with that sexist tag-along.
It didn’t really have anything to do with race until the New York Central Park incident, where the white woman calling the cops on a black man as a threat was considered the ultimate form of ‘speaking to the manager’. So then it became about racism, too.
And then, it took about 60 seconds to transform into ‘any woman, anywhere, who does something I want to criticize, and imply that the behavior is because she’s a woman, specifically’. (The term “Mary Sue” did a similar transformation–it started out as a critique of a specific form of self-insert fanfiction character, then got applied to female characters who were protected by plot armor–with the occasional slightly more aware critic pointing out that this also applies to Batman, etc–and then finally, “any fictional female character who does something I don’t like”. It’s almost like these gendered epithets are meant to be ultimately expanded to apply to all women, or something.)
And, of course, the original coinage of the term is, in addition to being misogynistic in design, also dead wrong. The reason a lot of service people encounter a specific behavior coming from white, middle class women is simple–women still do most of the shopping, and upper-middle-class women (who are disproportionately white, since this country is racist as fuck), specifically, are the bulk of people who round out their shopping by going to a cafe or whatever. I work retail–but since it’s home improvement, we have a much more gender-balanced customer base. And the behavior originally attributed to “Karens”? Yeah, it’s pretty much universal, as a small percentage of any human sampling will include people who are overly entitled, and seeking an edge in some way or another at the expense of the hourly wageslave who is just trying to make it through the end of their shift. Most of the folks demanding to speak to my manger, frankly, are named either Sergei or Patel (the home improvement contractors in my store’s area are mostly either Indian or Eastern European men).
I point this out to people, and I usually get some form of “Well, men can be Karens, too.” My rejoinder is usually, “Well, then, why don’t we use the word ‘asshole’, instead? That’s nicely non-gendered and really would apply to everyone.”
Aw, I’m honored.
Also, forgot to mention one other reason the whole “Karen” thing rankles me so badly–of the four Karens I’ve known, two were absolutely wonderful black women in my parish church, who would absolutely not tolerate the sort of behavior that the name has become associated with.
My best friend in our high school years is Karen. I resent the whole thing on her behalf, along with other reasons.
Don’t forget the catch-22 of the whole thing: If you object to being called a Karen, then you are clearly a Karen and deserved the name-calling.
Beth @3 Maybe just a coincidence, but Dane Cook also makes that point. From a 2008 video >> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J_kg0W3AeIU&feature=emb_title
See also Raylan Givens >> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LG4hOjJ9tEs
I don’t know if Elmore Leonard actually wrote that, but it seemed worth pondering when I first heard it. ;)
Well, that’s part of the whole trope of “white cis women should step back and not talk, and recognize that they’re privileged Karens, damn it.”
GW, nowadays it seems to be more about the “cis” than the white. Some men will find any excuse to call a woman names, and this one gives them freedom to call women names without being called out for being misogynists, because almost everyone seems to agree with them (except us ‘Karens” of course).
I wasn’t aware of this, perhaps because I don’t frequent the typical online cesspools of “conversation”. When I see or hear a character called Mary Sue, it’s always in the sense of a character whose only flaw is excessive perfection, who is automatically the bestest ever, whom existing characters immediately adore, to whose beatification paltry things like internal consistency, causality, and catharsis are sacrificed. You know, characters Rey in the Star Wars sequels. On the other hand, I guess I’ve seen apologia for such characters of the form, “Well, you can’t say Rey’s a Mary Sue, because then you’d have to say Luke’s a Gary Stu,” which demonstrate a failure to understand the term.
I seem to remember reading that the term originated with an MRA setting up a social media (reddit?) account specifically to rant and rave about his ex-wife whose name was Karen? If so, that suggests to me that the term was entirely misogynistic and anti-feminist from the outset.
The first time I remember hearing the slur was (as is often the case) right here on B&W after some alt-left jackass applied it to Anne Frank, hardly the epitome of privilege and entitlement.
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/over-some-karen-in-europe/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7965IyoSXs&list=PLJrTdKdDFMcP4Ozt5e5x9xXQDs2rqk-JW&index=2 Here’s the video where he claims ‘credit’ for the original coinage; it hits at the 4:20 mark.
He does acknowledge that Dane Cook also used the name Karen for some of his bits of similarly stereotyped humor–so yeah, either way, it traces back to male comedians.