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DiscussionThe phenomenon of calling women "Karens"
Hey all.
So something that's been really grinding my nerves lately is the calling of any unruly woman a "Karen". As you all know, the joke started about middle age women who have unreasonable demands/expectations about workers in the service industry. I have found a couple of videos on this funny within this context (the one by Viva la Dirt League is my favourite), but somewhere along the line, the joke has morphed into demeaning women.
Take this post on reddit for instance. It shows many strong willed and self assured young cartoon women (e.g Debbie from the Wild Thornberries, Helga from Hey Arnold, DW from Arthur, etc) and labels them as "future Karens". This has really woken me up to this sly method of devaluing women's opinions and reactions as "over the top" or "unreasonable" and, dare I say, "hysterical".
For our whole existence, women have been struggling to have our opinions heard and to react to things without being labelled as emotional which we all know, means illogical and therefore, not worth listening to. I'd say within the last couple of decades, with the rise of feminism, that we were slowly clawing some recognition for being human and having a right to speak. Now, through the meme, we're slowly losing that ground. Whereas before the meme had solid boundaries, I think I'm right to say it has transcended those boundaries to just refer to any woman who raises her voice, questions her lot, or anything else that's against how we're supposed to be. I don't like it and it shocks me how long it's taken for me to recognise what's happening.
Love to hear your opinions on this!