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Comment by brobdingnagians | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time? I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago, and now it seems everyone is using it to refer to a certain kind of "middle class white woman". A term like that to describe a certain kind of middle class asian or black man would be very offensive. Are the days where we try to exercise civility and empathy gone? It feels like society has gone from "let's tolerate people" to "let's ridicule people we don't like, without logical argument".

Blaming the disappearance of tiny businesses in residential neighborhoods by saying "It's all those middle class white women" seems both very shallow and specious.

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It’s both racist and sexist but the people advocating it’s usage don’t actually care about either issue. I think it’s filed under the general hypocrisy that you cannot be racist against white people.

Using a name meant to paint a picture of a suburban white woman is no different than describing someone as a Jamal, Yousef, Goku, Carlucci, Vladimir, Shenequa, Herschel, or Juan. If a news outlet used any of those names to describe a person in a news story they’d be immediately flagged as racist. And yet we see the term used to describe white woman gracing articles on the front page of even the NY Times.

> Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time?

It is. There are plenty of decent people named Karen who do not deserve to have their name appropriated as an insult.

Better to say "entitled jerk" or something similar. That way, the only person you're insulting is whomever you're calling a jerk.

It's definitely sexist and racist. I think usage of the term shot up following the incident a couple months back where a white woman explicitly tried to use faked fear to weaponize police against a black man telling her to leash her dog in Central Park. Combined with the current prominence of Black Lives Matter and some older similar incidents of white women calling police on black people, the racist sexist meme has really taken off.

I've always seen it as referring to a certain kind of insufferable, entitled customer that demands to see the manager. Usually presumed to be a middle-aged white woman, yes, but the weight was on insufferable behavior, not demographics, at least originally. Suddenly people have started complaining about it as being heavily about race/sex and being bigoted, when the original was just codeword for asshole.

There are too many people named Karen for it not to become offensive to those people at least.

Amen. Childish name-calling like this and "ok boomer" are being used to dismiss anything a person says because they're older.

You are really tempting fate with this comment...

> Can anyone explain how the term "Karen" isn't both racist and sexist at the same time?

Because it’s tied to behaviour. Stop behaving like an a-hole and you stop being called a Karen.

You can’t stop being black or a woman.

That’s the key difference.

> Because it’s tied to behaviour.

We wouldn't call illegal gardeners a Hernandez, or terrorists from the middle east Mohammeds. Those are behaviors too.

What makes it wrong is picking an ethnic name to associate with that behavior. Karen is a euphemism for suburban, white, female.

Except for the second part: you’ve never been discriminated against for being white.

The sexist part doesn’t really fit for me either, as we generally reserve insults for genders too. Bitch vs bastard are prime examples.

By the way, the male version of “Karen” in my part of the world is much worse.

Middle-class white women also suffer the Karens. They might suffer less on a per-encounter basis but they have lots more encounters with Karens so it might even out.

If you haven't suffered the Karens, you might be a Karen...

When could society ever be characterized by an ethos of "let's tolerate people"? ISTM that now anyone might receive for criticism for objectionable behavior, not just poor black young men.

I don't disagree that this hazard is real, but I also see the term used in non-racist, non-sexist ways too, sometimes with disclaimers that "obviously this isn't just white women and not all white women are like this". I realize I am likely in the minority thinking that context matters, but I want to provide my sincere stance that I think it's sometimes reasonable to call someone a Karen, assuming proper care is taken not to imply anything sexist or racist. I understand the term as meaning "busybody" more than anything else; in fact, you can use it to describe a person of any race or sex but you cannot use it for a non-busybody.

The problem is, people used to have non-gender, non-racial terms for people. For example, a person might be called an 'asshole' or 'bonehead', and this could be a person of any colour, any sex, age, etc.

Yet now, it seems all sorts are labeling people based upon sex, colour, ethnic background, etc. It is, quite literally, the definition of sexual, racial, age discrimination. It is linking "external characteristic" with "way a person acts".

I don't care what anyone's political stance is, but if you are using terms like 'Karen', you are 100% contributing to sexism, racism, etc.

Just call someone what they are. "Asshole" has worked fine for millennia.

From what I understand the specific behavior is actually and intrinsically linked to the idea of a white woman in America and has historically existed for quite a while among black circles (from the 1800s at least). Discussing Karen as if it’s new belies the actual history of it. [0]

0. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/891177904/whats-in-a-karen

What a weird assertion, when you link to an article that asserts something entirely different.

The above NPR, states that a Karen is a new label, started in the 2010s (which is just last year, even). It also shows how the Karen label is different from other, prior labels.

It delineates how a Becky is different, a "Miss Ann" is different.

We've historically had labels like this for people, which are racially linked. But this is 2020, this is a NEW label, and other NEW labels keep popping up.

We need to collectively STOP this. No more racist, sexist, ageist, anything-ist labels. It's all wrong.

(Not saying you were defending label use... just clarifying my position)

I’m arguing that the idea of a karen is not new, sorry to be unclear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs

Slurs are not new. And as I mentioned, what you showed were not Karens, but 'white women who act poorly in certain ways'.

"Kaben" has unique connotations, a specific meaning. While I agree that "white women have had slurs" before 'Karen', I'm going to have to disagree that it's germane here.

I agree that the term "Karen" has its genesis as an insult, and one designed to effectively aggravate the people it describes. It's not surprising to me that it's a word people reach for when they want the impact that words like "asshole" have lost. I don't know why you would call someone an "asshole" if you want to be genuinely mean.

"Asshole" is as common as salt in our everyday language, but "Karen" is the spice.

> Just call someone what they are. "Asshole" has worked fine for millennia.

Except that Karens and assholes are different. Karens can be assholes, sure, but a Karen is a specific type of asshole. Football hooligans may be assholes but they're generally not Karens. It means something different, and there isn't another word that means the same thing.

Unless a 'Karen' can be an elderly aging Asian man, it's sexist, ageish and racist. Here's a few other such terms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs

A lot of these terms link specific behaviour, to specific ethnic/sex/cultural groups. I guess they're OK too?

I find it utterly disgusting, that some people think some things are 'one way'. That racism is OK, but only "one way". Sexism is OK, but only against men. The list goes on.

Let's see how long you last, if you see a lazy black person (they exist, like lazy people exist everywhere)... and you spout out "Bluegum!" Is that OK?

No?

Then why is it OK with 'Karen'?

You'd don't cure social ills by creating more of them.

"An eye for an eye, leaves the whole world blind." is highly accurate, I think.

For what it is worth I have seen Karen used as aggressively agender and aracially like referring to an obnoxious customer who was a black man as a "Karen".

https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/karen/ https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Karen

Maybe you're seen this. I haven't, and many people seem to have the specific definitions listed above.

An elderly Asian guy can totally be a Karen. We don't have another single word at the moment to convey the same behaviour in a different way. You can propose one and try to convert the usage though.

> Unless a 'Karen' can be an elderly aging Asian man, it's sexist, ageish and racist.

Well then it's a good thing that it can.

> Let's see how long you last, if you see a lazy black person (they exist, like lazy people exist everywhere)... and you spout out "Bluegum!" Is that OK?

That is a racial slur. Its meaning is defined by race.

A Karen is defined by behavior.

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