Spare A Tear For Oppressed Billionaire Conservatives
"Karen" and "Cis" are now racist, misogynist slurs!
by Justin Rosario
There is precious little ideological consistency on the American right. Yesterday they loved law enforcement. Today they want to defund the FBI. Last week they were terrified of Czars and anything with the faintest hint of Russia. This week, they can’t stop praising Vladimir Putin and his nation of kleptocrats. This is what happens when your core organizing principle is “owning the libs.” The ground beneath your feet is sand that can shift at a moment’s notice. You believe in nothing. You stand for nothing.
But there is at least one fixed point in what passes for right-wing ideology: They are the eternal victims of oppression and persecution. This is their North Star. Even as they spend every waking moment hurting the people they hate, they obsess over the idea that they live in a country where white cisgender men and women are a powerless, oppressed minority. These are the same people who still control the bulk of the wealth, dictate the majority of the culture, and wield political power like a battering ram against vulnerable children. But, sure, they are the victims of relentless persecution.
One of the more recent, and definitely one of the more curious, subplots of the ongoing melodrama that is “My Oppressed Life” is the attempt to create new slurs in order to appropriate oppression. It hasn’t been going well, leading to much mockery of the painfully privileged people sobbing about their laughably performative anguish, but it has been highly instructive. Short of physically nailing themselves to a wooden cross, this is about as transparent (no pun intended) as it gets for self-martyrdom.
I want to speak to the manager!
Last month, Fox News talking head Will Cain was trying his darndest to fill in the pointed hood-shaped hole left in the propaganda channel’s primetime lineup by the truly unfortunate departure of Tucker Carlson. Cain blurted out that “Karen” is, and I swear he really said this, a “racial slur for white women.” Cue the white victimization and sad, sad music.
I feel bad for women actually named Karen, I really do. It’s a little (a lot) unfair to them. But for “Karens?” The obnoxious middle-aged white women who abuse their privilege? They’re not the victims of anything but their own arrogance. If that arrogance drops a nuke into their life and disrupts their sheltered little world? They have no one to blame but themselves.
Karen has been a part of our cultural vernacular for a little less than a decade although it’s not entirely clear where it came from or exactly when it “popped.” It is, however, not a new idea. White women have been weaponizing their whiteness for generations.
Racism like this is the intersection of prejudice and power. Accordingly, white women figured out a long time ago that their tears have an immense amount of power over Black skin. One of the most egregious recent examples of this is the 2020 Karen in Central Park angrily threatening to call the cops on a Black man who dared to challenge her. She burst into fake tears on the phone and although this isn’t the full video, her dramatic tears and the terror in her voice vanished the second the call was done:
Amy Cooper was very secure in her belief that the police would rush to her rescue. Keep in mind, all the offending Black man, Christian Cooper, did was to remind her that she couldn’t have her dog off of its leash. She was so outraged that she knowingly placed his life in jeopardy. Whether she was hoping for Christian Cooper to be gunned down on sight is not clear but in a country where the police regularly kill unarmed Black men it’s impossible she didn’t understand the potential consequences.
The fact that everything she was doing was being recorded offended her even more but didn’t seem to register as a potential problem as she blatantly lied to the police. As if literal video evidence of her dishonesty wouldn’t matter. That’s the kind of arrogance and privilege that makes a Karen.
So what is it about “Karen” that infuriates the right so much? Why are they trying to get us to stop using it? Is it really a racist slur? Well, no. Remember, racism requires prejudice and power. Specifically, a systemic power that only one party benefits from. For instance, being able to call the police with the assumption that they will hurt the mean ol’ Black man that asked you to leash your dog.
The right wants “Karen” to be a slur because it does one of the few things the right lives in mortal fear of: It makes whiteness visible.
I see you
Let me clarify. There are two kinds of people on the right. The first is the out and proud racist. The KKK. The Neo-Nazis. Patriot Front. The Proud Boys. They’re perfectly happy to acknowledge their racism or “Western Chauvinism.” But then there’s the other kind of right-winger. They tend to be just as racist but they don’t want to admit it. They’ll fly their Confederate flag and call Obama a Kenyan Muslim commie but how dare you call them a racist?! You’re the real racist!
It doesn’t matter if they really believe they're not racist or if it’s a cynical ploy, the results are the same. This group, which comprises the bulk of the right, is deeply racist. This means they are all in on white supremacy. That, in turn, requires their whiteness to be absolutely invisible.
When we “see” whiteness, when we acknowledge that it even exists, it fundamentally changes the conversation about race and privilege. Suddenly, there’s more people of color on TV and in movies because for far too long, there’s been too many white people on the screen. Sure, “Friends” is a funny show but it takes place in New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the world. Because whiteness was invisible at the time, the show was consequently almost entirely white. It didn’t reflect reality. It reflected white supremacy. Not in a mean or malicious way. It was just the air we breathed.
The right, of course, wants to keep things nice and white without actually calling attention to that fact. When whiteness is the air you breathe, the privilege that comes with it is supposed to be unspoken. Of course the manager is white. Of course the CEO is white. Of course the president is white. Why, that’s just the natural order of things! White people are in charge because white people are…well, we don’t actually say white people are better but we all know the truth, right? Wink wink.
But when whiteness becomes as visible as everyone else? It stops being special. When white privilege gets called out? It stops being exercised as frequently. When there are social and literally legal consequences to being a Karen? Maybe white women will stop trying to weaponize their tears at the expense of the Black community.
To the oppressor, losing power is oppression. That is how you should understand the right’s crocodile tears over “Karen.” It’s not much different than last week’s meltdown over their latest invented “slur.”
Stop calling me “not trans!”
For some time now, the prefix “cis” has been working its way into common usage. I don’t personally use it nor do I bother with “he/him” as my pronouns. That wasn’t the culture I was raised in and I don’t feel any particular need to change as a soon-to-be old fogey. On the other hand, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest if other people use it and, here’s the really important bit: I really don’t care if someone were to describe me as a cis male.
Being called a cis male is like someone calling me tall or hairy or commenting that my eyes are hazel or my hair is brown. It is simply a statement about my person. Nothing more, nothing less. There’s no judgment involved. To be offended about such a thing would be sheer stupidity motivated by equal amounts of ignorance and hate.
My dear readers, I give you Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling:
These are two billionaires who cannot stop lamenting their oppression by roughly 5% of the population, the majority who couldn’t care less about what Elon Musk or J.K. Rowling are doing on any given day. But let’s say 10% of the population identified as trans or nonbinary. Hell, let’s say 20% did! Musk and Rowling are still among the richest people to ever exist in the history of the human race. The idea that either of them is oppressed is beyond farcical.
Musk and Rowling can go anywhere, do anything, meet anyone, at any time. The list of the things they can’t do I can probably tattoo on my forearm in two inch font and have room to spare. They are as far from oppressed as one can imagine and yet, they live their lives in a cloud of victimization by choice. Musk is obviously far worse than Rowling but both have made their performative oppression a defining chapter of their life.
So what is it about “cis” that has sent them, and so many of their fellow bigots, into spasms of rage? Why is it now a “slur?” It’s not very complicated. “Cis” normalizes “trans.” That really is the extent of it.
The entire point of the anti-trans movement is to deny the existence of trans people. To varying degrees, the right wants to erase them. Some want to drive them back into hiding, others openly want to murder them. But all agree that trans people are not “real” and should be erased from public existence.
The growing acceptance of “cis” is an existential threat to this agenda. Words have power. If “cis” becomes ingrained among Millennials, Zoomers, and Gen Alpha, so, too, will “trans” and nothing in the world will change that. No amount of laws passed by Republicans, no number of restrictions passed by corrupted school boards, nothing. The bigots will have failed in their mission to erase trans people and the law of diminishing returns will begin to apply.
That doesn't mean they’re not going to give it their best shot. The right has everything to lose if they can’t rewrite the English language.
The boring vanilla people
Part of being a right winger is supposed to be being afraid of change. But that’s a really narrow view. The right is perfectly fine with huge sweeping changes as long as it’s in a certain direction and benefits certain people. The Republican Party making a huge lurch to the right and abandoning almost every single “sacred” belief it held in favor of white nationalist fascism was met with lusty cheers from the Republican base. Political violence and instability are now quite welcome among GOP voters. Clearly, change is not the issue.
It turns out that what white cisgender heterosexual conservatives are truly afraid of is a) equality and b) the possibility they will be treated the way they’ve always treated others. If I were them, I’d be worried, too.
White people in America are at the top of the pecking order because of centuries of racism. If we’ve learned anything from watching the “cream of the crop” on social media for the last decade and change, it’s that there is absolutely nothing special about the majority of the wealthiest and most powerful white people. Elon Musk is not particularly bright. Donald Trump is a fucking moron. So many of our “best and brightest” turn out to be…ordinary, owing their status to opportunities not afforded to the rest of us.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t make the most of their opportunities. Musk took great advantage of his and made billions. So did Bill Gates. And Steve Jobs, etc. etc. But if you start on third base, it’s a lot easier to score a run, isn’t it? Race absolutely plays a role in this, even all the way down here in the middle class and working poor. Redlining kept Black families from buying homes and building equity. Systemic racism denied Black soldiers college educations and home ownership via the GI Bill after WWII. Resumes with white sounding names get called back more often than resumes with black sounding names. That all adds up over time. That’s why white households, on average, hold 4 times as much wealth as Black households.
But if that goes away (over time), the very justified fear is that we’ll all find out that white (cisgender) people are not, in fact, special. That without the built-in advantages from centuries of exploitation and a rigged system, the majority of them are mediocre, no different from everyone else. If one of your foundational beliefs is that you are superior because of the color of your skin, this is an existential threat.
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Now, for non racist white people, that’s no big deal. What do I care if Black people are successful? How does that affect me? Why would it affect me? Which, of course, is the other problem. What if white people, no longer protected by white supremacy and white privilege, are suddenly subjected to the same kind of abuse they’ve subjected everyone else to for literally centuries? This is a deeply ingrained fear on the right.
You would think that maybe, just maybe, that possibility would make racist white people rethink their abusive behavior. Instead, the right has doubled and tripled down on being the absolute worst versions of themselves. It’s almost like some part of them understands they may not be able to be assholes much longer so they’re squeezing in as much assholery as possible before it’s taken away again.
Meanwhile, they can’t stop wailing about how everyone is abusing and oppressing them. They know they’re the monsters they claim others are. Every Republican accusation is a confession, after all. That’s why we can expect the tedious list of “slurs” the right cannot abide to keep growing. The victimization of the American right wing is an endlessly renewable resource and they have an unlimited appetite for it.
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“To the oppressor, losing power is oppression.”
Exactly. We see this very clearly when (to give just one example) the right whines about “The Gay Agenda” and how they want “special rights”.
And what exactly is that agenda? What rights do they want? To have exactly the same protections and opportunities as everyone else. To be able to visit their loved ones in the hospital and able to marry just like everyone else.
No more than anyone else. Just no less.
The Karens of the world (and there are LOTS of male Karens, too) aren’t worried about others getting “special” rights. They’re terrified about losing theirs.
(Aka, The Syndrome Syndrome. 😉)
“But, sure, they are the victims of relentless persecution.”
Of course! What else would you call it? People are telling them they can’t do the things they want to do. That they can’t control the lives of others or lynch or call for genocide.
How are they not the victims?