Karen

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  • RicardusRicardus Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    Ricardus wrote: »
    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.

    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?

    Well, the post to which I was responding took it as axiomatic that people get teased on the basis of the unfortunate implications of their name, and so it seems logical that if you increase the unfortunate implications then you are likely to increase the teasing.

    If you want to argue that people don't get teased if their name has unfortunate implications, then I can't actually point to a specific sociological study that will refute you, but it seems somewhat contrary to my experience of life.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    I have see a few jokes on face book where a pet refers to their female owner as Karen. It has not occured to me that it is insulting all ladies named Karen.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Felicia.

    Ahhh, now you're taking me back.
  • My much loved great aunt Frances was always Fanny, a common name at one time. I hate to see it degraded by idiots who can't handle their own language well enough to find the words they need.
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    My much loved great aunt Frances was always Fanny, a common name at one time. I hate to see it degraded by idiots who can't handle their own language well enough to find the words they need.
    The slang was in use before she was born.
  • Is this an American thing? I've never heard it in the UK. Then again, Shipmates constantly show me how little I know about my own country.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Is this an American thing? I've never heard it in the UK. Then again, Shipmates constantly show me how little I know about my own country.

    Are you asking about Karen or Fanny?

    "Karen" is an American thing, originating in that country. As for the other one...

    Left alone with big fat Fanny/She was such a naughty nanny

    ...is from a British song, though one where the singer is arguably adopting an American voice. "Fanny" to mean the posterior is definitely used in the US.
  • stetson wrote: »
    Is this an American thing? I've never heard it in the UK. Then again, Shipmates constantly show me how little I know about my own country.

    Are you asking about Karen or Fanny?

    "Karen" is an American thing, originating in that country. As for the other one...
    It may indeed be an American thing, but this American had never heard it until this thread.

  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    Is this an American thing? I've never heard it in the UK. Then again, Shipmates constantly show me how little I know about my own country.

    Are you asking about Karen or Fanny?

    "Karen" is an American thing, originating in that country. As for the other one...
    It may indeed be an American thing, but this American had never heard it until this thread.

    Well, regardless of how well known it is in absolute terms, it originated in the US and, I would guess, is used more there than in any other country, even adjusting for population.

    Granted, I think I only started hearing about it in the last month or two, so as an example of time-honoured Americana, it's probably not up there with mom, the flag, or apple pie.

  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    edited July 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Felica. Ain't nobody complaining about 'Bye Felicia being harmful to Felicias. Hmmmm...

    Indeed. And Karens can stop being called Karen if they stop being Karen. Problem solved.

  • Amos wrote: »
    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'?

    I can't agree because I don't know what you're claiming. Are you saying white middle-class women ask to speak to the manager because the name "Karen" has come to mean a white middle-class woman who is the sort who asks to speak to the manager? No, I don't think so.

    And as to what you mean about the thread eating its tail, I have no idea.
    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.

    Well yes that attitude is part of what drives this use of the name.
  • stetson wrote: »
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    Is this an American thing? I've never heard it in the UK. Then again, Shipmates constantly show me how little I know about my own country.

    Are you asking about Karen or Fanny?

    "Karen" is an American thing, originating in that country. As for the other one...
    It may indeed be an American thing, but this American had never heard it until this thread.

    Well, regardless of how well known it is in absolute terms, it originated in the US and, I would guess, is used more there than in any other country, even adjusting for population.

    Granted, I think I only started hearing about it in the last month or two, so as an example of time-honoured Americana, it's probably not up there with mom, the flag, or apple pie.
    Yeah, I wasn’t disputing at all that it originated here or is used more here, just that it was new to me. If it’s primarily found in social media, that would easily explain why I’d not encountered it sooner.

  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    It's silly to think that every woman named Karen is being referred to.

    What's silly is going around calling people a Karen and then immediately apologising to all the people you know called Karen.

    Which I've seen at least 3 times in recent days. In other words, people know, despite your comments about how silly it is, that there's an obvious association there, and think they can just solve it by acknowledging the 'accidental' association and proceeding to behave like a jerk anyway.

    Your denial that this near-automatic and subconscious association exists is absurd.

    You wouldn't get away with making a joke that's a little bit racist and then immediately saying "with apologies to all of my black friends". You're basically saying that any woman named Karen is supposed to attach a subconscious "oh honey, I don't mean you" to every time they hear their own name used as an insult.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Addendum: to be frank, I find it completely bizarre that you seem to be saying that “it’s confusing me that you associate the word Karen with a person’s name when it’s being used to describe a behaviour”.

    It seems pretty fucking natural to associate Karen with a person’s name.
    You've never called anyone a dick?

    The fact that you wrote that with a lower case 'd' tells you everything you need to know about your failed attempt at equivalence.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    ECraigR wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Felica. Ain't nobody complaining about 'Bye Felicia being harmful to Felicias. Hmmmm...

    Indeed. And Karens can stop being called Karen if they stop being Karen. Problem solved.

    Please explain how my sister can stop being called by her name. She's been Karen for about 50 years now. Her being Karen has nothing to do with her behaviour.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    edited July 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Felica. Ain't nobody complaining about 'Bye Felicia being harmful to Felicias. Hmmmm...

    Indeed. And Karens can stop being called Karen if they stop being Karen. Problem solved.

    Please explain how my sister can stop being called by her name. She's been Karen for about 50 years now. Her being Karen has nothing to do with her behaviour.

    It’s shorthand for a kind of behavior well described on this thread. She shares a name that’s used for that shorthand, so do relatives of mine, who cares. It’s a fad, it’ll pass. Advise your sister to not be a dick (sorry Blumenthal et al), and it won’t matter. It’s impossible to have dictatorial control over language, and fads like these occur regularly.
  • ZappaZappa Ecclesiantics Host
    ECraigR wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    Felica. Ain't nobody complaining about 'Bye Felicia being harmful to Felicias. Hmmmm...

    Indeed. And Karens can stop being called Karen if they stop being Karen. Problem solved.

    Or at least if you stop testing for it
  • orfeo wrote: »
    You wouldn't get away with making a joke that's a little bit racist and then immediately saying "with apologies to all of my black friends". You're basically saying that any woman named Karen is supposed to attach a subconscious "oh honey, I don't mean you" to every time they hear their own name used as an insult.

    So you really think that women named Karen incur as much systemic injustice as black people do? You've got to be kidding.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    mousethief wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    You wouldn't get away with making a joke that's a little bit racist and then immediately saying "with apologies to all of my black friends". You're basically saying that any woman named Karen is supposed to attach a subconscious "oh honey, I don't mean you" to every time they hear their own name used as an insult.

    So you really think that women named Karen incur as much systemic injustice as black people do? You've got to be kidding.

    You've got to be kidding if you think that's what I said. The comparison was to the attitude of doing something while simultaneously apologising for it / requiring a person to carry around the mental qualification on your behalf.

    I'm not trying to get a high score on the table of the Suffering Olympics, and it's hardly a good justification of treating someone badly to say "well they're not being treated as badly as THAT person". That's just what-aboutism.

    I mean, really, this attempted defence along the lines of "just because I use your name as an insult doesn't mean I think less of you" blows my mind. But you're a strong advocate of it.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    Addendum to Mousethief: not least because I seem to recall that if anyone uses your real name on the Ship, you reportedly go nuts about it. And yet here you are saying people shouldn't take the use of their name personally.
  • Whoa talk about non sequitur. Outing somebody's real life identity versus a name used as an insult? Really? Good shit man.
  • orfeoorfeo Shipmate
    I didn't say they were identical. But if you can't see the connection between caring about how your name is used (and how is just using your first name "outing your identity"? There are millions of people with the same name), then that's yet another failure in your empathy circuits.
  • My sympathies to your sister, Orfeo.

    I have a name which spiked in popularity in the early 1960s; my parents thought that it was slightly unusual when they named me; two years later it was in the top 5 most popular names for baby girls. It went out of fashion just as quickly; most women with my name are now in their early 50s.

    I don't know if my name is similarly associated with a narrow age group in America, but I have been thanking my lucky stars that "Karen" has become the go-to name, and not my name.

    Both my children have bog-standard names which have been around for ever, specifically to avoid the risk of picking a name which would be characterised as the defining name for a small age range. (They both have more unusual middle names, to give them options).

    As others have said, this has happened to other names - Trac(e)ys struggled to be taken seriously for years, after it became short-hand for "airhead." The Times Ed. has carried articles on "heartsink names" - the names which cause a teacher's heart to sink when they appear on the list of new pupils, before the teacher has even met the child.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    Okay. Here's a fairly close equivalence...

    Suppose that [your name here] starts being used to mean "Men who hang around playgrounds leering at the kids."

    "You hear the cops had to kick a Stetson out of the park last weekend? He was blowing kisses at the kids on the swing set."

    How sanguine would you be about this? And that's not a rhetorical question, since I'm not sure what I think of it, either.

    (And note that I have deliberately described behaviour which, while subject to severe social disapproval, is not, in most places, criminal.)
  • Tarquin or whatever for overly-mothered posh kids.
    Don't you mean Milo or Hugo? Tamsin perhaps for girls?

  • Tarquin or whatever for overly-mothered posh kids.
    Don't you mean Milo or Hugo? Tamsin perhaps for girls?

    No, definitely Tarquin. And Jemima. Not overly-mothered though. We get them on holiday up here and you can tell the parents haven't looked after them without a nanny or school since the previous summer.
  • Seems to me this will rise and fall as quickly as OK Boomer.
  • "Sharon and Tracy" are still defined in the Oxford Learners Dictionary as defining "women with poor taste who speak English badly"
    https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/sharon-and-tracy

    There is no guarantee that "Karen" will rise and fall quickly.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    It's a negative term used for women who are assertive. It may have been originally used for women who were punching down, but that horse has predictably bolted. The stable door is wide open; it was never there to begin with.
    It's not as if assertive women never get death threats or face systemic injustice.

  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    Dafyd wrote: »
    It's a negative term used for women who are assertive. It may have been originally used for women who were punching down, but that horse has predictably bolted. The stable door is wide open; it was never there to begin with.
    It's not as if assertive women never get death threats or face systemic injustice.
    It is not a term for women who are assertive. Every single instance I've seen are white women punching down..

  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    Okay. Here's a fairly close equivalence...

    Suppose that [your name here] starts being used to mean "Men who hang around playgrounds leering at the kids."

    "You hear the cops had to kick a Stetson out of the park last weekend? He was blowing kisses at the kids on the swing set."

    How sanguine would you be about this? And that's not a rhetorical question, since I'm not sure what I think of it, either.

    (And note that I have deliberately described behaviour which, while subject to severe social disapproval, is not, in most places, criminal.)
    No one is saying that having one's name associated with a slur is a wonderful thing. What many of us are saying is that it is not the equivilant of the racsim associated with the slur that the OP implies.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    There is a San Francisco alderman who has introduced a bill now outlawing false emergency calls that are racist in nature, like the incident in Central Park. He is calling it the CAREN Act, (Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies).
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    Suppose that [your name here] starts being used to mean "Men who hang around playgrounds leering at the kids."

    Well, my name is Thomas and I'm called Tom. The common associations with my name are Doubting and Peeping. AFAIK, neither of those facts is responsible for my being as warped as I am.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    With some alterations:
    stetson wrote: »
    Okay. Here's a fairly close equivalence...

    Suppose that [ your name here ] starts being used to mean "Men who hang around playgrounds leering at the kids." [ Someone who betrays their country by collaborating with a hostile power ]

    "You hear the cops had to kick a Stetson [ Quisling ] out of the park [ FBI ] last weekend? He was blowing kisses at the kids on the swing set [ selling secrets to the Russians ]."

    How sanguine would you be about this? And that's not a rhetorical question, since I'm not sure what I think of it, either.

    While this may be unfair to other people named Quisling, it is kind of unavoidable.
    tclune wrote: »
    Well, my name is Thomas and I'm called Tom. The common associations with my name are Doubting and Peeping.

    Or Uncle, if you're of a certain ethnic background.
  • tclunetclune Shipmate
    Crœsos wrote: »
    tclune wrote: »
    Well, my name is Thomas and I'm called Tom. The common associations with my name are Doubting and Peeping.

    Or Uncle, if you're of a certain ethnic background.

    Indeed.
  • Ok

    Could I just ask

    If your child was called Karen, and they were upset In This Current Climate coz other kids teased them

    How would you deal with it?


  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    I’d want to talk to school and/or other kids parents to understand how they intend to teach said kids not to bully.

    (Plus you might want to consider the development of a nickname of choice.)
  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    In addition to what @Doublethink said, I'd be investigating whether my child was involved in racial-relating bullying herself, since that would be the most logical reason children were calling that name.
  • To use an actual name ( of many people) as an insult.........

    And then expect those people to be ok about it?

    Beggars belief.

    Because that is what I meant, when I asked that question just back there. Child whose given name at birth is Karen. Now what?

    But then
    What do I know
    It’s not My name.


    Maybe every Karen in the world is perfectly happy about their given name being used as a..... what was that word again... ah yes
    “Perjorative Term”.
    thanks for the link @lilbuddha


    Anyway........ why do we (lots of us I think) resort to name calling?
    In this context A Karen. In other contexts De Piffle Johnson. Are we all loosing the ability to use language?

  • @mousethief , your argument back there about women named Karen incurring as much systemic injustice as black people do......

    .......no one was saying that.


  • MrMandidMrMandid Castaway
    orfeo wrote: »

    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 am suprised you are "staggered", left wing "woke" people are still people and are just as capable of vile, unkind, prejudiced behaviour as others. The only difference is they think they are not.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited July 2020
    Ethne Alba wrote: »
    To use an actual name ( of many people) as an insult.........

    And then expect those people to be ok about it?

    Beggars belief.

    Because that is what I meant, when I asked that question just back there. Child whose given name at birth is Karen. Now what?

    But then
    What do I know
    It’s not My name.


    Maybe every Karen in the world is perfectly happy about their given name being used as a..... what was that word again... ah yes
    “Perjorative Term”.
    thanks for the link @lilbuddha


    Anyway........ why do we (lots of us I think) resort to name calling?
    In this context A Karen. In other contexts De Piffle Johnson. Are we all loosing the ability to use language?

    I grew up up with a first name that can be shortened to slang for genitals - I did get bullied but, oddly enough, not about my name. I seriously doubt that adults on twitter using Karen in a passing zeitgeist, to refer to a specific kind of behaviour, is going to have the impact folk on this thread are catastrophising about.

    I do think it is a problem when adults in a child’s life allow them to believe that bullying other children is OK, whatever that child’s name is.
  • I'm sure parents who called their kids Isis or Alexa have the same problem.
  • EliabEliab Shipmate, Purgatory Host
    Dafyd wrote: »
    It's a negative term used for women who are assertive. It may have been originally used for women who were punching down, but that horse has predictably bolted. The stable door is wide open; it was never there to begin with.
    It's not as if assertive women never get death threats or face systemic injustice.

    This.

    I don't know if it was intentionally designed as a sexist meme, but it will inevitably be disproportionately applied to women (and to whinging men with the sexist connotation that whinging is behaviour associated with women). And while the 'proper' use of the insult might be overly-entitled obnoxiousness, it's inevitably also going to be used dismissively of women with legitimate complaints.



  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    I'm really just puzzled about this because almost everyone I know had something embarassing about their name. How is this different? I suspect kids and adults named Karen find it annoying like they find split ends annoying, repeatedly but not very seriously.
  • ECraigRECraigR Castaway
    Dafyd wrote: »
    It's a negative term used for women who are assertive. It may have been originally used for women who were punching down, but that horse has predictably bolted. The stable door is wide open; it was never there to begin with.
    It's not as if assertive women never get death threats or face systemic injustice.

    It is by no means a derogatory name for assertive woman, unless you think middle class white woman telling teenagers to go back where they came from, or threatening to call the police on black people for being black, is just being assertive.

  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    ECraigR wrote: »
    It is by no means a derogatory name for assertive woman, unless you think middle class white woman telling teenagers to go back where they came from, or threatening to call the police on black people for being black, is just being assertive.

    Well, she's certainly asserting something.
  • RicardusRicardus Shipmate
    Gwai wrote: »
    I'm really just puzzled about this because almost everyone I know had something embarassing about their name. How is this different? I suspect kids and adults named Karen find it annoying like they find split ends annoying, repeatedly but not very seriously.

    But the fact that there's lots of shit in the world doesn't mean it's OK to add a little bit more, even if it's only a little one and not very stinky at all.

    I think for me 'Karen' is grating on a number of different levels, and although each level is not in itself all that serious and can be handwaved away, it's the cumulative effect that's rather unpleasant.

    So one level is the collateral damage to people called Karen. Which may not be the worst problem in the world but is a problem that doesn't need to be there. It's perfectly possible to find a word to describe unpleasant behaviour that isn't someone's name. 'Gammon' was mentioned above for a different kind of behaviour.

    Secondly there is the implicit sexism - either that white women are more likely than white men to overreact to black men, or else that punching down is more distinctively bad when done by women than by men. Again it's just an implication and it may or may not be in the unconscious minds of people who use the word, but it's there.

    Thirdly I don't really like broadbrush ways of dismissing people. I have the same objection to the word 'gammon'. I accept that the original definition of Karen is not broadbrush.

    Fourthly I think there is a degree of double standards in a.) insisting that you should be sensitive to possible unfortunate implications of your words, even if you don't yourself intend those implications and your audience would not necessarily infer those implications, and b.) insisting that Karen should only be interpreted in the way you intend it to be interpreted, and that anyone who draws any different inferences from the use of the word is overreacting. I kind of have the impression that many people who assert (b) would also assert (a).
  • lilbuddhalilbuddha Shipmate
    MrMandid wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »

    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 am suprised you are "staggered", left wing "woke" people are still people and are just as capable of vile, unkind, prejudiced behaviour as others. The only difference is they think they are not.
    This is idiotic. Seriously. Using the make Karen as an insult is not prejudice. Nor is it comparable to the vile and potentially deadly behaviour it calls out.
    A woman called Karen who is a kind person might feel insulted. A black man attacked by the women pejoratively called Karens might die.
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