Am I A Karen? Is It A Bad Thing?

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Just last week as I was entering my apartment building one of my neighbors said,

“Oh hey, Karen, what do you think about a bottle drive to raise money for a community party? Is that something you’d like to get going?”

The other neighbors who were present snickered, which confused me a little. My impulse was to correct her,

“Oh, my name’s not Karen—”

I figured my neighbor just slipped up and made an honest mistake, so I didn’t correct her. But if you’re like me, you might spend sleepless minutes perseverating over minor social interactions like this one. I run the exchange over and over through my mind. Why would I want to spearhead a bottle drive for a party? I’m the most introverted person in this building. Why did they laugh? Why did she address me as “Karen”?

person with long blond hair holds a cell phone camera in front of their face, while there are various hands pointing at them from all directions.

 Wait. Was she calling me Karen… on purpose? Am I a Karen? 

Who is a Karen, anyway? I’ll take a stab at it: She’s a middle to upper-class, older white woman, with a hairstyle that’s long in the front and spiky in the back (also known as the reverse mullet). A Karen is sometimes racist, and privileged, but ultimately, she’s any woman who acts entitled and lodges unreasonable complaints and accusations, usually wielding her cell phone, with video on record. Oh, and she likes to call the police or ask for a manager because she sees herself as the queen of what is right, lawful, and correct.

That woman sounds pretty cringe, and despicable—or, as my Gen Z child would say, skibidi. Seems like her reputation is deserved. Afterall, the label was born from some widely spread online videos of white women weaponizing their privilege by unfairly targeting people of color. Dubbing women as a Karen has arguably evolved to include any woman (though usually white) who is making a scene out of just about anything. Karen videos are quite popular on social media. 

So, why do I get a twinge of anger when I hear this trendy term? Why haven’t I been able to appreciate the humor, or adopt it into my own vocabulary? Why am I losing sleep wondering, am I a Karen? 

To understand where my reluctance is rooted, I first had to admit that I think I am Karen.

Eventually, it dawned on me that my neighbor’s “slip up” of calling me Karen was no accident. Turns out, word had spread that I complained to the property manager about a fellow tenant’s aggressive dog, who bit me. 

There’s loyalty in the collective struggle, in this social stratification where poor folk have each other’s backs when it comes to conflicts with “the man”—or property management, especially when it relates to jeopardizing someone’s housing. I’d violated an unspoken code in this community by complaining about the dog.

But I was still scared of the dog. And I was angry. I was afraid this unleashed animal would attack my child, or my puppy, as it had me. If the dog’s owner, my neighbor, was open to feedback, if she was agreeable to take some safety precautions, that would be different. But she denied that her dog was aggressive. Was I wrong for reporting her? Maybe. Maybe not. Would I have been called a Karen if my daughter had been attacked? Am I a Karen because I was the one bitten by the dog?

Who gets to be the judge of whether a woman’s anger is valid? 

Where is the line drawn between a reasonable complaint and a “hysterical” one? Drawing unspoken, subjective, and shifting rules about where that line is, and who is, and isn’t, allowed to cross it, is a slippery slope. How much emotion is too much? Under what circumstance is asking to speak to the manager acceptable? What makes a woman cross the line into being called a Karen?

A man who makes demands or becomes disruptive is generally forgiven. Whereas a woman behaving the same way is scorned. One person is viewed as assertive, and the other unhinged. There’s the ‘ol double standard. (Maybe she’d be more effective if she were very demure, very mindful.)

By associating a whole minority group or type of person with negative attributes, we silence, and then control the story about those people, preserving the power of the oppressor. Think about stereotypes of the BIPOC community, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, etc., and how those stereotypes serve to demonize, mock, and control how people view them.

Individuals, and groups of people, are more nuanced than our culture allows. Stereotypes are used to deny that nuance to keep the status quo. 

It’s important to take a dialectical approach to most things. There are some women who are distracting in public, whose behavior is unfettered by restrictive negative stereotypes, and who can even be abusive towards others because they are so self-righteous. There are also women who express their discontent in a way that is assertive, and firm, but non-abusive. Are these women the same? Is the outcome of their actions the same? Are women not allowed to express concern, fear, or anger? 

An angry woman should not automatically be labeled a Karen, but I’m afraid that’s a habit we have fallen into. When I wonder “Am I a Karen,” where does this thought even come from?

There’s a long history of society’s intolerance for women expressing anger or acting “out of place”. One extension of that is the Angry Black Woman (ABW), a racist phrase that characterizes all black women as hostile and aggressive. There’s a collection of essays (edited by Lily Dancyger), authored by women writers, called Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger. It’s worth checking out to hear diverse voices on the topic. Intersectional feminist and poet, Audre Lorde, suggested that anger can be a unifying instrument across the lines of race, a powerful tool rather than a divisive force.

“…for Black women and white women to face each other’s angers without denial or immobility or silence or guilt is in itself a heretical and generative idea. It implies peers meeting upon a common basis to examine difference, and to alter those distortions which history has created around our difference. For it is those distortions which separate us. And we must ask ourselves: Who profits from all this?”

(The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism; Audre Lorde, 1981)

Accusing vocal women of being Karens is a modern-day witch hunt. 

Women have long been controlled by the threat of public scrutiny or even violence. Think of asylums in the 1800s and early 1900s for people deemed “mad”, often inhabited by women who were only asking for basic rights, and equality, or considered to be too emotional. (See Time magazine’s article by Kate Moore: Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women through Psychiatry). 

Person with back to camera, head bent down against a decrepit wall, adjacent to a window.

There’s also a long history of society silencing women through means such as the right to vote, reproductive control, and physical and sexual violence. A great read about silencing women is Rebecca Solnit’s book, The Mother of All Questions.

“Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind–even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants.” – Maggie Kuhn

In patriarchy, individual men, women, trans and non-binary individuals, can participate in policing women’s bodies and behaviors, but it’s women and nb or trans people who are hurt by it. Anyone can reinforce sexism and misogyny, but only cis men benefit from it.

What if a teenage girl, working her after-school job, was being sexually harassed by one of her coworkers? It’s a no-brainer, right? We’d tell her to ask to speak with her manager to report the abuse. But what if that girl didn’t take the directive for fear of being called a Karen by her peers? That’s different, you say. She should know this situation is different.

People’s reluctance to report sexual abuse is not uncommon or unheard of. The underreporting and dismissal of sexual assault cases is extremely pervasive. There are many reasons women are afraid to report; public shaming is one very potent one. And now we have a new tool in our misogynist toolkit: Call her a Karen. And this tool is trendy, supposedly funny, and accepted by all genders. 

picture of a young person with long hair looking sad; behind them is a group of other young people appearing to snicker and stare.

You say that’s unrealistic, an exaggeration, not how the term was meant to be applied? Therein lies the problem with that slippery slope of making fun of vocal women: no one knows where to definitively draw the line, especially children.

I was talking to a group of people recently and one woman wanted to relay a story, but she prefaced it with a disclaimer,

“I don’t want to sound like a Karen, but…”

She self-censored because she didn’t want the public shame of being a dissatisfied woman with something to say.

Why can’t the characteristics associated with a Karen simply be qualified as uncool behavior—on anyone’s part, without having a gendered label for it? Why are only women Karens anyhow? 

By perpetuating a stereotype that defines any woman who expresses emotions, especially anger, as whiny, privileged, racist, entitled, and generally unpleasant, we’re creating inhibition and censorship of all women who may fear public shaming. That fear and shame serves as a mechanism to control women’s choices and silence their voices.

Being called a Karen is like being accused of having Resting Bitch Face (RBF). The word, bitch, is well known as an insult to a woman, especially when being assertive. Resting Bitch Face suggests that a woman’s facial expression is in a fixed state of anger, boredom, or dissatisfaction/annoyance. 

Society doesn’t like angry women. Women, according to patriarchy, exist for men’s pleasure and entertainment; they are not entitled to their own needs, opinions, and agency. I can’t tell you how many times a random man has told me to “smile.” That propensity for men to tell women to smile is about their discomfort, not mine.

Female presenting person staring to their right toward a speech bubble, which comes from someone out of the frame. Speech bubble caption reads: "Smile!"

Bottom line? Am I a Karen? If Karen is a woman who addresses injustice as she sees it; if she uses her voice to express herself, regardless of how emotive; believes she has the right to feel safe, and to be treated equally; calls it out when someone is being hurt or exploited; then I am Karen.

Does that give me permission to behave in a way that is abusive or harassing, to engage in hate speech, or be racist? Absolutely not. But the fear of being called a “Karen” should never be the reason to stay silent.

“Your silence will not protect you.” –Audre Lorde

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1 COMMENT

  1. I have been trying to put my thoughts about the “Karen” phenomenon into words for a while and your essay did such a good job of articulating what I’ve been thinking and feeling for a while. Thank you!

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