What is a Karen?
Calling out pride, prejudice, privilege, and power
“What a Karen!”
This expression is almost automatically accompanied by an eye roll. Unless you’ve been hibernating for the last three years or so, you’ll know that the term is used almost ubiquitously for a woman — generally white and over 30 — who complains loudly.
She’s often unjustifiably railing against visible minorities or anyone she considers beneath her. That often includes those in the service professions, regardless of race.
But more disturbingly, the trope has been applied to any woman who complains, even when there is an appropriate cause for it. Indeed, yours truly — despite being Asian — has been called a Karen on a few occasions.
The trope, as all tropes go, has naturally encountered pushback, with some claiming that it’s misogynistic. That there is no counterpart for men while conveniently forgetting the double-entendre in the form of “don’t be a dick” or “that man is such a dick.”
So what precisely constitutes a Karen? And why is the claim of misogyny a misleading one?
As a scholar of rights and an author of a book that addresses the history of rights in the West, I think it’s high time to delve into the use of this term.
