Is the “Karen” Meme Sexist?
By: Shawn Laib
Tags: Racism, Feminism, Society, Culture, Internet

One of my favorite parts of the coronavirus pandemic has been watching middle-aged, privileged people get embarrassed on the internet for their childish behavior in the face of a few small inconveniences.

Having an employee at a grocery store ask you kindly to put on a mask should not result in throwing a temper tantrum and spewing your produce and toilet paper across the room (that is being hoarded, by the way, which is another stupidity demonstrated by these people).

Unfortunately, many of these instances turn racial. These types of clips on social media have created an influx of education on the slang term “Karen”. The name to call a spoiled, racist white lady has become so well-known that it is even given a definition on dictionary.com, albeit in the slang section of the site.

“Karen is a pejorative slang term for an obnoxious, angry, entitled, and often racist middle-aged white woman who uses her privilege to get her way or police other people’s behaviors.”

And while most women who are actually named “Karen” haven’t taken huge offense to the meme, there are always going to be a select few who want to get their feelings hurt.

They argue they are being personally attacked for something they themselves haven’t done, being stereotyped into a category that is obviously unflattering.

There have been hundreds of think pieces online about the scale of offensiveness that should be tied to the meme, but allow me to add just one more to that pool of articles, and with a spin.

Why are white women being targeted over white men for these types of racist tirades in public? Why hasn’t a male version of “Karen” caught on to make bigoted men just as embarrassed and accountable as women?

It doesn’t mean people haven’t tried to identify a male variant of the insult. In fact, one Reddit user performed a statistical analysis to determine that the name of men who are around the same age as most women named Karen is “Terry”. It hasn’t seemed to go viral, nor has any other attempt to masculinize the meme.

I suppose that’s what makes the internet such a crazy place. Things take off like roller coasters for no specific reason. Generalizations culminate around something, and soon you have a phenomenon.

The most concrete argument for the female-slanted insult being lit ablaze was probably the story about Amy Cooper, a white woman in Central Park in New York, calling the police and making false claims about a black man, Christian Cooper, on Memorial Day this past spring.

It was a horrible example of the ways white people wield their power over minorities, and the fact that it was a woman heading the ugliness is the reason for the female namesake in the meme. If it would have been a man in the same situation, perhaps “Steve” or “Bob” would have taken off.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Sexism and misogyny is a valid topic of discussion here when getting to the root of the problem.

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

There are plenty of viral moments that have occurred during this pandemic that involved middle-aged and racist white men behaving poorly. They are called out accordingly online, but the post usually calls the perpetrator a “male Karen”.

Why though? It’s a question that is infinitely fascinating to me. By using the female namesake as the predominant adjective in the term, we are still drawing more attention to a woman’s behavior, even when a man is the person in question.

The only answer I can come up with involves the deep-rooted psychological stereotypes about women being less aggressive than men throughout history. This expectation that a woman should never behave in such an outrightly belligerent manner is most likely the subconscious expectation that has led to the “Karen” meme.

This is a great aside from a study titled “Aggression in Women: Behavior, Brain, and Hormones” that articulates some of these long-held beliefs on female hostility.

According to biosocial interactionist perspectives, social norms become relevant because most cultures endorse warfare as a means to gain status and because most cultures are patriarchal (i.e., men hold more power and status than women). Thus, most cultures reward men for being warriors and punish women for becoming aggressive. Indeed, social norms proscribe physical aggression in women (Eagly and Steffen, 1986) and girls can vocalize these norms from an early age (Crick et al., 1996). However, when women do behave aggressively and are dominant, they often face backlash against them (Barber et al., 1999). In this way, the interaction between biologically specified sex differences and sociocultural construction interact to produce lower direct aggression in women relative to men nearly everywhere in the world.

As perfectly stated, women are not expected to be violent, either physically or vocally. This contrast between expectation and reality is what created the ultimate firestorm in meme form.

The fact that people just accept a man’s aggression as par for the course because of long-standing beliefs about masculine and feminine behavior is unfortunate and unfair.

The “Karen” meme is all in good fun. It draws attention to people who deserve to be made accountable for horrible behavior and I would never try to insinuate that women should get offended at the meme or victimize themselves after committing a wrongdoing.

What I do think they can get offended at is the lack of a corresponding male meme. Racist and privileged behavior is disgusting no matter what gender is performing those actions.

The fact that the attempts at masculine versions of the insult haven’t stuck is even more proof that female indiscretions are often honed in on much more critically. It’s part of the fabric of our culture. You can’t change someone or something’s DNA.

America is misogynistic, and we become even more so when it’s time to place all of the blame on someone for a problem. Privilege and racism is all-encompassing. The hit-back against it should be, too.

Concluding takeaways

— The “Karen” meme itself is not offensive, but the fact that there is no corresponding male version of it can be taken as sexist and misogynistic.

— The meme plays into the dangerous habit of being more critical of women’s bad behavior than men’s. While male “Karens” are recognized on social media, the lack of a name for them encourages the mind to trace the behavior back to that of a woman’s. Instead of thinking that the racist white man is horrible unto himself, the meme encourages us to think he’s mimicking a racist white woman.

— We must work to make racist white men’s horrible acts just as notable as women’s. Share videos of them, write about it to bring awareness, and don’t associate with people who act in such a disgusting manner.

— If you are a woman who feels persecuted by the meme, you should be an activist to call out all racist acts from either gender. Eradicating racism would help get rid of the internet shaming you feel you are receiving. Remember, we must not ignore racist women and the topic should never be twisted into them being the victims. This is an issue of empowering men more than discriminating against women.