Karen
I was half minded to put this in Hell, but I shall try to make it Purgatorial, not least because I've not seen any evidence on the Ship of the behaviour that is making me so angry.
That behaviour being, that lots of people have decided to take the name of a close relative of mine and turn it into a form of insult. Referring to a certain kind of woman (who is, amongst other things, white and middle-aged) that they do not like. With opinions and attitudes that they don't like. I'm not going to attempt to encapsulate the characteristics of a "Karen", suffice to say they're not good characteristics.
What truly staggers me is that the people who are perfectly happy to do this kind of stereotyping are almost always my most politically engaged, left-wing "woke" friends, who are regularly up in arms about unfair treatment of minorities, cultural insensitivity and other sins of not treating the oppressed and downtrodden on their merits. They would be outraged if someone, for example, used a generic Italian-sounding or Chinese-sounding name to refer to a person of that ethnicity.
It seems that they're not against such behaviour, they just want to choose their preferred targets. It's bad if the right-wing does it. Apparently it's fine if the left-wing does.
I don't understand this at all. And I say this as a person who leans a bit left. I'm struggling to comprehend how many of these friends don't accept that they're engaging in the same type of behaviour that they condemn in others, and what in their head makes it okay so long as the target is white.
And female. A friend of mine pointed out how there's a streak of misogyny involved, in that it's more popular to make fun of white women complaining about things or having opinions in comparison of making fun of white men for doing the same.
Apparently the Karens of the world have varying reactions to having the name that belongs to them being turned into a meme and an insult. Of course they do, same as any group affected by stereotyping will have individuals with different reactions. I haven't asked "my" Karen what she thinks of it. But my own reaction? Is that "my" Karen is someone I love, and who has had quite enough shit to deal with lately without this, and that I don't want to see her name thrown around in this way by people. It's offensive, and it's painful, and it's not okay just because you think you can justify your target as coming from a privileged class and from a different political "team".
That behaviour being, that lots of people have decided to take the name of a close relative of mine and turn it into a form of insult. Referring to a certain kind of woman (who is, amongst other things, white and middle-aged) that they do not like. With opinions and attitudes that they don't like. I'm not going to attempt to encapsulate the characteristics of a "Karen", suffice to say they're not good characteristics.
What truly staggers me is that the people who are perfectly happy to do this kind of stereotyping are almost always my most politically engaged, left-wing "woke" friends, who are regularly up in arms about unfair treatment of minorities, cultural insensitivity and other sins of not treating the oppressed and downtrodden on their merits. They would be outraged if someone, for example, used a generic Italian-sounding or Chinese-sounding name to refer to a person of that ethnicity.
It seems that they're not against such behaviour, they just want to choose their preferred targets. It's bad if the right-wing does it. Apparently it's fine if the left-wing does.
I don't understand this at all. And I say this as a person who leans a bit left. I'm struggling to comprehend how many of these friends don't accept that they're engaging in the same type of behaviour that they condemn in others, and what in their head makes it okay so long as the target is white.
And female. A friend of mine pointed out how there's a streak of misogyny involved, in that it's more popular to make fun of white women complaining about things or having opinions in comparison of making fun of white men for doing the same.
Apparently the Karens of the world have varying reactions to having the name that belongs to them being turned into a meme and an insult. Of course they do, same as any group affected by stereotyping will have individuals with different reactions. I haven't asked "my" Karen what she thinks of it. But my own reaction? Is that "my" Karen is someone I love, and who has had quite enough shit to deal with lately without this, and that I don't want to see her name thrown around in this way by people. It's offensive, and it's painful, and it's not okay just because you think you can justify your target as coming from a privileged class and from a different political "team".

Comments
Karen is not the name of a behaviour.
Here are some possible names for behavioural traits: arrogance, acting entitled, uncompromising, belligerent, selfish, complaining. Why the hell use "Karen" as a synonym or shorthand for these?
It seems pretty fucking natural to associate Karen with a person’s name.
So, eg. if you think someone is behaving like the dog-walker in New York who threatened to call the cops on the black guy who was asking her to follow the leashing laws, be creative and say something like "Hey, look, it's the twin sister of Leash Lady!" Rather than just repeating somebody's given name over and over again, as if that's clever.
Insider provides another explanation for its origin. https://www.insider.com/karen-meme-origin-the-history-of-calling-women-karen-white-2020-5
Ooops! 😊
I'll get me coat...
Isn't all this about ego, as usual? Something performative about the protest, which dies away when it no longer serves to flatter the protester?
Arguably, anybody named "Richard", who chooses to go by "Dick", when "Rich", "Rick", or just plain "Richard" are available, is doing so at his own risk. Not quite the same thing as when the standard version of your name just becomes an insult overnight.
(In junior high school, I found out that my childhood nickname, bestowed upon me by my parents, was regarded among my peers as incredibly vulgar sexual slang. So I got rid of the t-shirt that had the moniker emblazoned on the back, and stopped calling myself by that handle.)
However, "Karen" is also used in the American bar scene to describe any woman who thinks she is entitled to better service.
Dick is also a name, btw.
Better pejoratives may be, "Bastard, or Bitch."
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy?
(Also unfair on female dogs.)
I never really heard "Clint" as a synonym for Democrats, or now "Don" as a synonym for Republicans, eg. "That guy's a right-wing asshole. Total Don." And people refering to an infectious individual might say "He's the Typhoid Mary of the flu at our office", but not the name "Mary" alone.
You are saying that they should change or just suck it up and deal.
If a woman named Sheila moves to Australia, she should change her name then? Or will a continent change its slang?
Speaking as someone with a vested interest in that question, I think most people would tend to regard 'dick' = penis and 'Dick' = Richard as two separate words, regardless of etymology (which I had to look up on Wiktionary). The fact that you write dick in lower case kind of illustrates the point. Whereas Karen is quite clearly the name Karen.
The funniest one I saw was a lady, about 70 years old, who was asked nicely by a worker to please wear a mask.
She refused.
The worker then said, please tell me you have a respiratory problem and you cannot wear a mask (in other words, the worker was giving the lady and excuse)." The lady began to say yes but then said no.
The worker then politely told her she had to leave, but the worker did invite her to come back another day. The lady said she was not going and demanded to see a manager. She then threw a tantrum like a three-year-old and sat on the floor in front of the exit line. The worker then politely asked her to move away from the line so the other shoppers could leave. The lady did consent to that but stayed on the floor until a manager who could have been her grandson came up and asked her what he could do for her.
Another video I saw yesterday was a man, about 35, who went into a rage when another shopper asked him to please put on a mask.
Goes both ways.
I think there is a difference:
1. A name which is a reference to a specific individual, and which could therefore be understood as shorthand for that individual -- e.g., 'Mrs Robinson' as short for 'the character called Mrs Robinson in The Graduate who has an affair with a much younger man' . It is drawing a comparison with a specific Robinson: it is not passing judgement on the sort of person who has the name Robinson.
2. A name which just seems to be describing a pattern of behaviour associated with the sort of person who might be called by that name. 'Karen' isn't a popculture reference to some annoying sitcom woman called Karen. Karen seems to me to mean 'the sort of behaviour you would associate with someone called Karen, or which is more prevalent among people called Karen' -- which is an implicit judgement on the sort of social background where people are likely to be called Karen.
People named Karen might well be teased for the same reason.
But that is still not the same thing as condemning the reasons someone is being called a Karen, which is what the OP seems to claim.
It is the same as using names like "Kevin" and "Tracey" to refer to council-estate-dwelling white youths, or Tarquin or whatever for overly-mothered posh kids.
Yes, but that's more 'hahaha, your name sounds like penis'.
No-one thinks: 'I'm going to call my penis a dick because people called Richard are right penises'. There seems to be rather less separation in the case of 'a Karen', though.
Yeah, that's basically what I'm saying. No one has to change their nickname, if they're really attached to it. I could have continued calling myself a lewd synonym if I had wanted, and in fact, after junior high, most people would probably have stopped ribbing me about it. But, if the slang expression is a pre-existing thing, I can't really complain about hearing it used with the obscence connotation.
In the case of Sheila moving to Australia, yeah, as an outsider, she would be the one who has to make whatever adjustments she deems neccessary to feel comfortable there. The current case of the "Karens" would be more comparable to someone in Australia given the name before it became an insult, and then having to endure the transitory period when it took on a negative meaning. I guess they might have had good reasons to object, AT THE TIME. Not so much the immigrant moving there now.
No. 'Shithead', on occasion, but it's never necessary to abuse a name any more than it is to abuse a skin colour.
It's true that calling someone a Karen is not a pop culture reference in the same way but that seems irrelevant to me. And yes some Karens are that type and some are not. I will be concerned if being named Karen becomes a longterm problem for people. For instance, "I don't think we would hire anyone named Karen. She's would probably be racist who asks for the manager." Or failing those words, for instance, if people named Karen got fewer jobs than those named Joan, etc.
As it is, being named something that implies you are Black is much worse for job chances than being named Karen. So I would guess Karen is fine.
If you're a white woman living in the U.S. and call the police to intervene in a non-violent personal dispute with a black man about something like whether grilling is permitted in the park or whether your dog should be leashed, you do that with the knowledge that there is a non-trivial chance that the police will murder that black man. If you falsely claim to have been threatened that chance increases. That seems like a bigger problem than the exact word used to describe such behavior.
Seems to me that these days it is everso easy to name call.
Lazy
It should be, but here we are. Euphemising it as "complaining about things" or "having opinions" probably doesn't help either.
Isn't the phrase "name call" a shorthand for a certain behavior, exactly the same thing you consider to be "lazy"? Shouldn't you use a wordier phrase like "using a shorthand phrase as a descriptor of something commonly regarded as worthy of criticism"?
OK - sorry. I couldn't quite understand the point you were making, but that's probably My Bad.
It's inevitable that the president has to be called something, and (almost) inevitable that other people will have that name, and inevitable that this will create opportunities for teasing.
It's not inevitable that the name Karen has to be used as an insult. It is not inevitable that the associations of the name Karen have to create occasions for teasing. People who use Karen in this way are going out of their way to create opportunities for teasing.
Clint is also one of the names/words you try to avoid if you're drawing an all-caps block-lettered comic. Another one to avoid is 'flick'. This isn't a problem if you use mixed-case lettering.
My pet peeve is related, and I think we have common ground here: when people first started calling people a Karen, they were saying said woman was likely to call the police on a black person. That is a very specific criticism, but in going viral it became "annoying privileged white woman" and there are many more annoying privileged white woman than women who are likely to call the police on a black person, so the phrase is over-used. I think that if the term had stayed with only meaning woman was likely to call the police on a black person, it would be less viral and more useful.
So I don’t think it is the case that such labelling is only directed at women. I am also aware that, in the U.K. at least, people have also attached unflattering overtones to various male names - be that Dominic, Nigel or Gary.
Nice try, but no!
Seems to me what's "inevitable" or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is what happened. The word "Karen" got associated with a certain type of behavior. It's silly to think that every woman named Karen is being referred to. Americans are plenty stupid on the whole, but is there any report from anywhere that some woman named Karen was being mistreated merely because of her name? Or is this just a high-blown hypothetical that serves no purpose but to stoke dudgeon?
As for the male version, that is still being sorted out, but I have seen people write, "What's the male version?" and no doubt in time a consensus will be reached, especially if a particularly obnoxious (in that way) white man hits the news soon.
(PS should men named "Bubba" wring a hanky about the use of that name as a stereotype for a certain type of Southern male?)
Do we automatically assume that anyone named Reuben is stuffed full of sauerkraut and Russian dressing?
Mousethief, would you agree that in this thread at this point the snake is eating its tail as people act out as Karens because of the slang use of the name 'Karen'? And your question about 'Bubba' suggests this: there's a class issue here. 'Karens' is generally (though not exclusively) a middle-class white name. You're supposed to treat someone named Karen with respect, dammit.
"Karen" I've not really been aware of at all, until the last couple of weeks. The stereotype described in the OP appears to be what former OZ Prime Minister John Howard dismissed as "suburban doctors' wives," which, though I loathe the supercilious toad, was, I acknowledge very clever at a whole lot of levels.
Yes, my reaction is probably driven by having seen 'Karen' mostly used in the viral sense, which seems to me class-based but in a rather flailing and undirected way. Whereas I can accept that in the original sense, the use of the name does make a valid point about the class distinction between people who call the police and people who have the police called on them.
(I suppose it's a bit similar to the British Army use of 'rupert' to mean an officer - drawing attention to the class background of the officers relative to the Other Ranks.)