When We Call Both Men and Women the B Word, C Word, or Karen

Awhile back, Donald J. Trump was called a whiny little B word.

It kinda stuck, but also kinda did not.

It’s not that he isn’t whiny, or petty, or weak. He is all these things, but is he changed, or improved at all by being called all that and worse?

No, it just cemented his increasingly cruel behavior. He began to use people’s slurs against him as proof of how tough he is. How he can get away with crimes. How he can lie and be rewarded. Rape, and be exposed. Commit felons and come off as tougher than ever.

We have all witnessed this phenomenon.

We have seen entire resistance movements rise and fall.

Has Trumpism doubled down on the most toxic aspects of male aggression and stereotypes? Are his primary targets women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and our most vulnerable people? Most would say, yes.

I think many of our woes can be traced back to how toxic behavior, and just old-fashioned unkindness has undermined our ability to find solidarity.

Divide and conquer is the oldest technique ever used against any outgroup of targeted people.

Since 2020, the term “Karen” applied generally to any woman expressing dissatisfaction, and who complains about it. Especially on the internet. The “Karen” became a stereotype applied to women who are white, privileged, dissatisfied, and of Northern European descent. The name “Karen” is a shortened version of the name popular Scandinavian “Catherine” or “Katherine.”

In Mean Girls, the movie, the main character Cady, (often spelled Katy) is questioned as to her race, being as she is from South Africa.

Our culture, as it evolves socially as all cultures and language do, finds way to very conveniently supply scapegoats to any group of people who are considered blameworthy as targets.

What began as a way to call out racism has also evolved. We can call out racism with mean girl words, and there IS a place for ridicule, but we also should make every effort to see when it helps elucidate the issues, and when it backfires.

It’s no big surprise that no one want to be called a Karen. But I wondered about all the easy racism and scapegoating we collectively fall prey to, because many people want mean-spirited, tribal “membership” more than they wish to promote public politeness, consideration, or kindness.

Calling anyone a whiny little B word, or Pussy, or anything that reveals our cultural prejudice against females also says something about all of us.

There is, in fact, a type of constantly complaining, privileged woman, and the term “Karen” is usually understood as an easy way to call out her type.

There are plenty of works out there descriptive of how we social humans have been altered and influenced — for the worse — due to our cultivated addictions to social media. We’re wired with a reflexive ability to speak out with name-calling and trolling.

A second social signal is at play: a woman should not speak out, or say what is on her mind.

In fact, most women are socially conditioned to never say anything about unfairness, even in the face of assault, rape, pay gap, motherhood, or anything negative regarding her gender role.

Today, in fact, we have a “Troller in Chief” and the very reality of this helps to normalize our impolite methods of communication.

Racism is very real. It’s painful inequality is not in a competition for who is oppressed the most. At the same time, the term “Karen” primarily targets women of a certain age, ancestry, and assumed middle-class status.

(There are exceptions of course. No one would call Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass a “Karen,” although in fact she literally IS a Karen — and very often a hero.)

By dividing people by race and gender, a terrible reality for culture, we can see how we all fall prey to “racism”. And sexism! Our division by skin color or culture when unity and diversity are far better methods of making progress, hurts all people regardless of their assumed (and genetically impossible) separate race. The very idea of race is very new, and is historically described to assume “race” as in contest, to try to describe why white people, were ahead of BIPOC people just over 200 years ago. Extreme bias, “racism” arose.

Gender plays into it, also. We don’t call ever-complaining male whiners, or trolls, “A Karen,” or do people often report that “Our POTUS is too emotional,” his primary affect being angry and vengeful.

Let’s look at a deep history of the ever-evolving Etymology of names, particularly the name “Karen.”

It is derived from almost 1,000 years BC to associate the Greek goddess Hecate. To honor Hecate, goddess associated with power, household, witchcraft and crossroads, girls were honored with the name “Hecaterine.”

The “ine” suffix survives in many words, such as feminine, or caffeine (from Cafe). It simply means pertaining to a specific trait.

In northern European regions, Caterine, or Katherine, was shortened to Karen. This happens in languages quite often. As a result, most women named “Karen” have Northern European ancestry. Whiteness becomes an identifying trait, as does assumed privilege, and often age.

But why is it wrong to call anyone a “Karen?” For the named Karen, name-calling is hurtful. And counterproductive. In general culture, it has been very normalized. To the degree that we use terms such as whore, slut, Nasty woman, bossy (as in girl boss) and of course, the ubiquitous B-word; it is deliberately sexist. However, when normalized in everyday speech, we speakers are seldom consciously aware of this.

For many years, African American women called a racist, bossy white woman a “Miss Ann” which evolved into “Becky,” but these have largely fallen out of usage as women sought solidarity.

The pejorative name once popular for what we now call “A Karen” was a scold. A woman who spoke out, complained, reported unfair abuse, or suffered domestic violence had to wear a caged helmet over her head with an iron bit that pressed her tongue to silence. This device was often called “a scold,” or “scold bridle.”

Historically, some women who followed Hecate (Hecaterine women) were burned as witches, because once Christianity arrived, most goddess culture died. By this time, Hecaterine was associated with magic, witchcraft, and the underworld. The underworld in Christian culture came to mean Satan and Hell, although this idea was entirely removed from its Greek origins.

Later still, afterward, many Catholic saints and heroes were named St. Katherine and St. Catherine, as well as the shortened version. “Karen” became quite popular in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Germanic regions. It especially gained popularity by the 20th century, even as most people knew little of how a “Katherine” became a “Karen.”

Reclaiming an insult

Many insulting slurs we have today can be traced to both gender and race identity. No matter how much a marginalized community tries to reclaim such a designation, if it is still in use linguistically, it is still connotative of a perceived outgroup, less than, or insulting meaning in much usage.

Culturally, we are learning to avoid use of the “N-word” for example, but rappers and other artists tried hard to reclaim it. The same thing happened with the B-word. Even publications and popular music has endeavored to make the B-word reclaimed to show power, competency, and womanhood. Yet, when the POTUS, or other person uses it, English speakers know it’s not meant as a compliment. We know how the LGBTQ+ community also tried to reclaim, but it remains derogatory, even here.

If nothing else, calling someone a “Karen” displays low emotional intelligence. Yes, we should not be racist, or sexist, but no, we cannot solve any of our social inequalities with name-calling.

When a woman has a legitimate complaint with a business, or purchase, the phrase “Don’t be a Karen,” errs on the side of the invisible, and often gigantic corporations that exploit any selling advantage.

Although “Karen” may feel less harmful than other stinging slurs it’s not. Words gain power as language evolves. To see how this term is used on hateful social media sites is revealing about both racism and sexism.

In a world where we need more compassion, not less, let’s not use bigoted slurs to designate either race, or gender.