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A brand new villain has emerged in right-wing discourse: the Prosperous White Feminine City Liberal, or AWFUL.

Speaking heads on Fox Information and right-wing YouTubers describe AWFULs as smug, entitled, and even “a most cancers on the nation.” AWFULs, their argument goes, are the rationale that ICE actions in Minnesota have develop into so violent. These ladies are pushed by their sexual frustration; their lack of actual issues; their empty, childless lives. ICE Watch is filled with them. Renée Good was one, which is why her loss of life, whereas tragic, is finally not the fault of the person who shot her.

The acronym seems to have emerged across the finish of the Biden years. In 2024, the Washington Examiner was bemoaning the affect of AWFLs (no U) on the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, and musing over whether or not this demographic was “so annoying and repulsive that they’re driving centrist voters, significantly males, away from the Democratic Occasion.”

The thought seemed to be that wealthy white liberal ladies had gotten too preachy, too virtue-signaling. They wished folks to put on masks and get vaccinated in the course of the Covid pandemic. They marched and protested over the loss of life of George Floyd. They stored speaking concerning the local weather disaster. How annoying!

Liberal males did that too, however that wasn’t the purpose. The purpose was that each one of this conduct felt female; it reminded folks of their mothers, who, by their nature, aren’t cool. The Washington Examiner cited the Democratic strategist James Carville, who theorized that Democrats have been dominated by “too many preachy females.” The celebration’s speaking factors, Carville advised the New York Instances in 2024, have been all, “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch soccer. Don’t eat hamburgers. This isn’t good for you.’ The message is just too female: ‘Every thing you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve acquired to eat your peas.’”

The AWFUL label emerged into the mainstream in January, after the capturing of Renée Good. Conservatives rushed to place not simply Good, but additionally her complete demographic, because the villain of the encounter. There was, right-wingers agreed, one thing about how smug these ladies have been; they wanted to be taken down a peg.

Fox Information’s David Marcus described Good and different liberal white ladies as “organized gangs of wine mothers,” including, “The video of Good and her accomplice heckling and, let’s be sincere, goading ICE officers with an obnoxious smugness that makes most individuals’s pores and skin crawl, is only one of many. We see these self-important white ladies doing it in video after video after video, taunting cops, insulting journalists and even bystanders, usually with a bizarre and disturbing glee.”

That there’s no equal time period for the white liberal males resisting ICE factors to the truth that misogyny is on the core of the best’s downside with AWFULs. However it’s additionally price noting that they acquired this playbook from the left. The AWFUL script is a direct copy of the progressive disdain for white ladies previously decade.

The appropriate goes after white ladies as a result of the left confirmed them the way to do it. Right here’s how they acquired right here from there.

How Karen acquired deradicalized

The AWFUL’s fast antecedent is the Karen: equally white, feminine, and entitled. A meme that emerged round 2018, earlier than exploding in 2020, confirmed a parody of the sort of lady who’s impolite to service staff, racist to folks of shade, and all the time needs to talk to the supervisor.

The Karen meme was, partly, utilized by folks of shade to explain an actual downside with white ladies utilizing the duvet of their race to be abusive towards Black folks, an evolution of the Miss Ann and Becky tropes. It was used to confer with ladies like Amy Cooper, who known as the cops on a Black chook watcher, and Lisa Alexander, who known as the police a couple of Black man writing “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on his personal home: inarguably racist incidents that deserved to be known as out and named.

However there’s one other layer to the Karen meme that’s rooted in a disdain for girls usually.

As Aja Romano laid out for Vox in 2020, a part of the rationale Karen is named Karen is due to a Reddit person who turned internet-niche-famous for posting lengthy, bitter rants about his ex-wife, Karen. Different Redditors compiled the Karen lore into the subreddit r/FuckYouKaren, which then overlapped with the independently growing Karen meme to develop into a spot the place folks posted tales about ladies they deemed to be Karens misbehaving in public. On the root of the meme, then, is one man’s invective towards his ex-wife: not precisely somebody punching up.

Because the Karen meme grew to be extra fashionable, it started to lose its edge. A lot of those that unfold it did so not as a result of they cared about racial politics, however as a result of they have been excited to have a brand new phrase they may use to insult any lady they discovered annoying, irrespective of her race or politics or whether or not she ever tried to speak to the supervisor.

Within the Guardian in 2020, Hadley Freeman described posting on what was then Twitter that she thought there have been sexist, ageist, and classist undertones to the Karen meme. Quickly, she mentioned, her replies have been full of “males gleefully calling me a Karen (‘OK, Karen’) and telling me to make them a sandwich.” Freeman added, “Do I actually need to spell out the sexism of a meme a couple of lady’s title that took off from a person griping about his ex-wife and has develop into a means of telling ladies to close up?”

Progressives activate the feminist within the pussy hat

As Karen rose in prominence, so too did her shut cousin: the white feminist.

Criticism of white feminism, like criticisms of Karen, originated in communities of shade. However whereas Karen was brazenly terrible to Black folks, the white feminist was extra susceptible to microaggressions.

The central critique was that mainstream feminism prioritized the experiences and desires of white ladies. White feminists, specifically, had a historical past of ignoring the methods through which a number of axes of oppression intersect and exacerbate one another.

“White Feminism exists to advertise the consolation and security of middle-class and prosperous White ladies,” wrote Black feminist educational Monnica T. Williams in 2019. “At its core, it’s a racist ideology that claims to talk for all ladies whereas ignoring the wants of ladies of shade and suppressing our voices when our agendas and priorities don’t align.” Amongst different issues, Williams known as out the failure of mainstream feminism to struggle for higher well being look after Black ladies, who die in childbirth at thrice the speed of white American ladies, or acknowledge the way in which the felony justice system disproportionately impacts ladies of shade.

Williams argued that the 2017 Ladies’s March was significantly responsible of ignoring the considerations of ladies of shade, and he or she was not alone in that evaluation. Whereas some described it as “probably the most numerous march for girls’s rights ever,” many ladies of shade mentioned they didn’t really feel welcome. Even the pink pussy hat — the march’s most enduring icon — turned a logo of division (as a result of not all pussies are pink, and never all ladies have pussies).

Because the criticisms of white feminism entered the bigger dialog, they — very like the concept of the Karen — misplaced their political edge. If anybody wished to speak that they thought the women in pink pussy hats protesting towards Trump have been sort of annoying, the phrase “white feminist” was proper there.

“Let’s discuss white ladies, we could?” comic Invoice Burr mentioned in his Saturday Evening Dwell monologue in 2020. “The best way white ladies one way or the other hijacked the woke motion, generals all over the world must be analyzing this. Simply to refresh your reminiscence, the woke motion was speculated to be about folks of shade not getting alternatives, the advance that they deserved, lastly making that occur. And it was about that, for about eight seconds. After which one way or the other, white ladies swung their Gucci-booted ft over the fence of oppression and caught themselves on the entrance of the road. I don’t know the way they did it. I’ve by no means in my life heard a lot complaining from white ladies!” Burr burst into fake sobs. “‘My life is so laborious with my SUV and my heated seats. You don’t have any thought what it’s wish to be me.’”

The preliminary criticism of white feminism was supposed to attract consideration to the way in which each misogyny and racism have an effect on ladies of shade. However it additionally gave cowl to loads of individuals who have been delighted to make use of it to dismiss any lady involved about her personal oppression as oblivious and annoying.

As Democrats headed into the 2024 election with a lady of shade as their candidate, they discovered themselves in an odd place: Feminism, which had appeared such a political win circa 2017, was now a legal responsibility. It was too blinkered and tame for the progressive left, and too radical and threatening for the best. Who wished to be like these terrible ladies with the pink hats? Everybody knew they have been cringey and retro, complaining over nothing.

The Karen-AWFUL switcheroo

The AWFUL meme pulls off one among conservatism’s favourite tips, what you would possibly name the “reverse racism” maneuver: It takes critiques utilized by the left to explain a structural energy dynamic, after which reverses the ability dynamics to assert that, actually, it’s the proper who’s being oppressed by these snobby elitists on the left.

The Karen meme is rooted in an unkind stereotype of a conservative white lady: suburban, retro, anti-vax, impolite to service staff, with numerous annoying youngsters. The AWFUL meme, in flip, is rooted in an unkind stereotype of a liberal white lady, pulling from each the white feminist and the sooner period of anti-feminist critique: shrill, indignant, virtue-signaling, both childless or only a dangerous mom.

In every case, the meme’s leftist roots supply cowl to the people who find themselves utilizing it. It was high-quality to make enjoyable of the Karen as a result of she was impolite to working-class folks and abusive to folks of shade. Ostensibly, you weren’t mocking her for being a lady; you have been mocking her for her racism and classism. When progressives take jabs at white feminists, they’re ostensibly not mad as a result of these are ladies complaining about their issues, however as a result of they’re oblivious to the struggles of individuals of shade.

In flip, the folks now deriding AWFULs aren’t explicitly bothered that they’re ladies protesting in public. They’re merely making enjoyable of those ladies for being liberal scolds who lord their wealth and social capital over the courageous blue-collar ICE staff they’re protesting towards. It’s the identical kind of social cowl that the Karen meme supplied, appropriated and rejiggered to help a conservative worldview.

In every case, we’re meant to imagine that it’s only a coincidence that the annoying, clueless, and bigoted folks being mocked simply occur to be ladies. However it’s notable that Karen’s male counterpart, Ken, by no means acquired as a lot consideration as Karen did. And whereas conservative commenters don’t appear thrilled about white liberal male protestors, they’ve but to present that demographic a catchy little acronym. They smeared Alex Pretti as a violent radical, however they confirmed maybe much more disdain of their smearing of Renée Good as an annoying radical.

The overlap in all of those memes about white ladies is entitlement. If used sincerely by individuals who genuinely care about racial justice, the memes may very well be taken as a significant critique of white feminine complacency. When utilized in dangerous religion, they begin to look much more like discomfort with seeing ladies have opinions in public.

None of that is to say that white ladies are past reproach, or that they will by no means be complicit in classism and racism. However it’s notable how continuously authentic criticism of white ladies coming from communities of shade turns into an excuse for left-leaning white males (or different white ladies) to inform ladies to close up and cease complaining — all of which supplies cowl to conservatives after they wish to inform ladies to return to the kitchen with out sounding like chauvinists. That doesn’t really assist the folks of shade, whom everybody claims to be so outraged on behalf of.

What could be most useful right here is to show again to Kimberlé Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality, or the concept that folks from totally different id teams expertise oppression in several and generally overlapping methods. Crenshaw initially developed intersectionality as a authorized idea, to push courts to grasp that ladies of shade expertise discrimination each on the premise of their intercourse and on the premise of their race, fairly than only one or the opposite. In different phrases, intersectionality was meant to present us a language for speaking about extra types of oppression, to not inform some oppressed folks to be quiet.

So the following time a enjoyable new phrase about how annoying a sure sort of lady enters the zeitgeist, maybe take into account: Is your aim in utilizing this phrase to make a critique of structural racism within the US? Is utilizing this phrase the one means you present up for folks of shade? Or are you extra considering telling a lady you don’t wish to shut up?