Refering to females as "ladies" is dangerous in workplace

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I like men and women better because it goes with my casual hippie philosophy.

We just don't address people as 'lady' directly in Britain. We say 'that lady' or 'those ladies' or something when referring to women. We'd say 'madam' or 'miss' as a direct address.

Just one of those differences in types of English I suppose

What's wrong with having negative views of racist white women? We should be hostile towards women who seek to use the damsel in distress card to cause problems for members of minority groups going about their day-to-day lives.

You can have whatever views you want, you just can't always air them (frustrating I know).

You are moving the goalposts there. I've read that K A R E N S are not always racist or white they are generally entitled so I whole heartedly agree with CF that it is a generalization attempting to create a hated sub-class of women

I also don't think you should be hostile to anyone on WP as it is against the rules, if you have beef with someones attitude report them to a mod. I know this is difficult and have been guilty of hostility myself but I'm working on it.

As for Karens if they're "racist white women" then wouldn't it be sufficient to call them out for being racist?

I'm not sure the subset of being white or being female add to the stereotype in a meaningful way.

Being racist is bad enough on its own.

Calling a person racist when and if they are should suffice, without making a trope of their race or gender.

People can be called out for making racist remarks. We don't need to resort to sexist slurs.

I can't say that I've seen anyone pulling the "damsel in distress card."

Racism does not justify sexism.

I don't refer Karens as racist white women, I refer them to anyone who makes a big ado about a word that originally isn't supposed to be offensive.

Lots of words which weren't originally "supposed to be offensive" are now. Living languages evolve over time. They aren't static. Meaning and shades of meaning change over time.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 24 Jun 2023, 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think I'm being hostile, I'm merely criticizing a bad policy for being a bad policy.



Keep in mind how the term Karen was used before it started to get used to describe any woman who made a fuss. As long as there's people of privilege who rely on playing the damsel in distress card to target minorities there's going to be a term to describe those people.

A term to describe that sort of behaviour will exist because it's distinct enough to identify as a specific problem.

The problem isn't the existence of the word Karen (or whatever will replace it), instead it's a) that that behaviour exists in the first place and b) that term became viral and for many people lost all connection to what it was initially used to describe.

There's a reason tropes about white tears/white women's tears are common. I'll leave a few articles for you to consider:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... untability
https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/28/the-dest ... -13944822/
https://www.theroot.com/white-tears-exp ... 1822522689

We should be able to call out people who rely on crocodile tears to appear like the victim when they're actually the aggressor. We should be able to call out women who rely on that strategy to get away with racial harassment, they're not victims, they're cry-bullies.

That's exactly what Amy Cooper tried to pull.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_P ... g_incident

You can call out behavior without resorting to sexist slurs.

I think the word Karen is offensive to people called Karen.

No, you said we should be hostile to 'damsel in distress...............' , I said that was a bad idea.

In this case sexism is interwoven into the behaviour being called out and there's nothing wrong with calling it what it is.

It isn't just racist bullying, it's a specific form of racist cry-bullying that only women can successfully engage in. Because only women can engage in it, there's no way to discuss it without at least acknowledging that.

I agree these people exist and some of them are motivated by entitlement. That's the whole point. That's why racism exists, because some people think they should be more entitled to whatever it is they have or they think than other people. Using gender specifically, I just don't understand why we need to differentiate between a racist white man and a racist white woman, assuming all other things are equal and they both act like cry-bullies (good term, btw.) Removing gender and focussing on race we also have entitled people from non-white backgrounds who are racist against other ethnic groups who may be non-white. We could have a man and woman (let's say husband and wife), from one cultural background being entitled or elitist and racist toward another husband and wife from a different non-white cultural background.

Aren't all of these people equally racist and entitled, and don't they all deserve to be called racist?

I suppose all Karens aren't racist either. Some of them are called that word just because they complain to a manager or they go loco on social media about whatever's bothering them in their supposedly privileged lives, but it's not always about race. The people acting that way aren't always cis female or white either, although it does add to the stereotype and general mystique when they are.

Disappointing.