Don’t Call Liberal White Women ‘Karens’ — Call Them AWFLs

You’ve probably heard a lot about Karens lately.

You may have even used it to describe some obnoxious liberals. A lot of conservatives love to call Michigan’s insufferable governor Gretchen Whitmer a Karen.

But what exactly is a Karen?

According to Dictionary.com: “Karen is a mocking slang term for an entitled, obnoxious, middle-aged white woman.”

The Guardian says Karen “is commonly used in the US to refer to a strident middle-class white woman who talks down to people of colour, usually in serving-staff positions.”

Vox describes Karen “as the frontrunner for the average ‘basic white person name’ — a pejorative catchall label for a wide range of behaviors thought to have connections to white privilege.” The liberal explainer site also, for some reason, connects Karen to “anti-science” beliefs.

The Root’s Damon Young says Karen is an older and more extreme version of “Becky.” Becky, for older readers, is a popular epithet for young white women who don’t check their privilege. The Root famously published “The 5 Types of Becky” guide in 2017.

“A ‘Karen’ is basically a graduated Becky who’s extremely aware of her privilege and weaponizes it,” Young writes. “A Becky convinces herself — and attempts to convince others — that her whiteness doesn’t matter. A Karen doesn’t even bother to fake it. She knows it’s her Big Joker and plays it whenever necessary.”

He also says Karen fits the liberal caricature of a conservative: “[Y]our typical Karen is likely Republican and upper middle class, definitely a mom, maybe divorced and might even be an anti-vaxxer — which means that they’re creating little typhoid bombs and sending them to schools and churches and soccer practices.”

You’re probably seeing a pattern here. To journalists, the archetypal Karen is a white suburban mom who insists, through incredible levels of passive-aggression, that she will only allow her groceries to be put in paper, not plastic bags. She’s also conservative and abuses her “white privilege.”

Karen is definitely a real creature. I came face-to-face with many Karens when I worked at a grocery store as a teen. They weren’t exactly pleasant to deal with. It’s completely normal to poke fun at stereotypes, all great comedy does that.

However, we’re not allowed to joke about most ethnic or class stereotypes in contemporary America. The only people we’re allowed to make fun are people we perceive as “privileged” — whites, Christians, men, etc. Karen is seen as a privileged white woman, so it’s okay to mock her. There’s nothing wrong with Karen jokes, but it’s not edgy or radical. It’s Reddit-tier humor designed to make fun of safe targets. It’s like John Oliver making fun of evangelicals in the year of our lord 2020.

There is also an obvious racial element to the joke, “Anti-white” is probably a bit too far; most of the people abusing the meme are white. But you couldn’t make Karen jokes if it pilloried another race.

The Karen meme reinforces liberal dogmas and biases. It allows white liberals to distinguish themselves from the bad whites and pretend that they themselves are never patronizing. Only soccer moms with a Trump 2020 bumper sticker would talk down to a Hispanic waiter. A young urban professional would never do that — unless, of course, her caramel frappuccino isn’t brewed to perfection. Such outrages cannot be tolerated without alerting the manager!

Conservatives inadvertently reaffirm liberal prejudices when they use Karen. Conservatives obviously don’t use Karen to check white privilege or attack soccer moms; they use it to make fun liberal women such as Gov. Whitmer, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand.

There is a much better term to use here — one that has not been ruined by cringe Redditors and basic Gen X journos. It’s AWFL, which stands for affluent, white, female, liberal.

AWFL describes a major phenomenon in American politics. “The Great Awokening” has pushed the Democratic Party to the far-left, and college-educated white women are the vanguard of this development. Studies show that the majority of white liberals now support increased immigration, government ensuring “equal income across all races,” and progressive views of gender. One study found that the political positions of college-educated white liberals are more than twice to the far left than black and Hispanic Democrats. Far more white Democrats (49%) are bothered that their party’s presumptive nominee is white than black (28%) and Hispanic (30%) Democrats.

While some of these studies don’t account for gender differences, other surveys show that college-educated women tend to be more liberal than their male counterparts. Fifty-nine percent of college-educated white women voted for Democrats in the 2018 midterms compared to 47 percent of college-educated white men. A 2018 Public Religion Research Institute survey of young adults found that white females hold far more liberal views than young white men. For instance, the majority of young white women prefer the Democratic party (53%) while nearly half of young white men favor the GOP (49%).

AWFL, unlike Karen, doesn’t discriminate by age. A 23-year-old grad student and an 80-year-old politician can both be AWFLs. AWFLs are predominantly urban professionals who have power and influence in our society. Not only do they act obnoxious in the checkout line, they also work toward ensuring America is a worse country. AWFLs are also the most likely to use the Karen meme, because it signals they are not like the bad whites.

Karens aren’t working on Capitol Hill or at CNN, they’re just wondering why you haven’t mowed your grass this week. A Karen is a suburban soccer mom who wonders why there are so many homeless people around her kids’ schools. An AWFL is a female journo who writes a hit piece on said soccer mom.

Not every single AWFL has power, but, as a group, they are far more powerful than Karens. The archetypal Karen is not a corporate executive, an editor at a major newspaper, or a powerful politician. She’s a stay-at-home mom. The stereotypical AWFL is in a position of power or aspires to such a position.

AWFL also has not been ruined by the lamest people on the internet. If your liberal wine aunt is mocking Karens on Facebook, it’s no longer funny. It’s officially a dead meme.

In contrast, AWFL is fresh and subversive. Mainstream media dorks won’t use it because it mocks their own class. It’s similar to how they recoiled at the sight of “Learn to code.” Learn to code was so powerful that journos demanded Big Tech punish those who merely said it. If a meme or phrase upsets liberal elites, they will try to ban it. If these same nerds adopt a meme, it can be safely discarded as cringe.

AWFL can have the same effect as learn to code. It hits too close to home and makes the powerful appear, well, awful.

So conservatives should leave poor old Karen alone. Yes, she may have a bad hairdo. Yes, she needs to work on her manners when dealing with cashiers. And yes, she needs to gain some self-awareness. But at least she’s not an AWFL.