Sometimes, for sure, but that’s not my name. 
Dick Tingler’s parents must’ve been…idk if they had an absurd sense of humor or were just mean.
How anyone came to the idea that “Dick,” makes sense as a shortened form of “Richard” has never made sense to me.
Wonder if they ever made an X-rated version of this film?
We had a dentist where I trained named Richard Head. Yup, went by “Dick.” Cluelessly, I might add. Knew another guy named Richard Burns. Again, went by Dick. I have to suspect that “dick” as slang for penis is relatively recent? I mean, see all the 1930’s noir “private dick” movies?
My wife’s name is Karen. She is an amazing human being, and does a lot of good in the world. I’m sure that she knows that she’s not “a” Karen, but it still hurts her every time someone uses that name in this way.
Then she’s not a “karen” and doesn’t have to worry about being lumped into that group. I also have an aunt who is a Karen, and is an outstanding human. No one accuses her of being shitty just because of her name. 
It’s about someone’s actions, not someone’s name.
I know that, and she knows that, but her pain still exists.
So, by “hurts her” you mean it “hurts her feelings,” right? That’s the part I’m trying to get at.
I’m not neglecting your wife’s hurt feelings, but saying people are “hurt” by something has a huuuuge range of meanings.
As someone who has a very common first name I long ago disassociated the use of that name with myself unless it’s in a context referencing me. I hear my name a lot. There was a second person with my name, if not 3 (or 4 in 2nd grade) in every class in school. There are 2 others at my office of 50 people. I really dislike one of them, actually. I would encourage your wife to attempt to engage in that same disassociation.
If the pain of hearing her name used occasionally to reference bad people who are nothing like her is so singular in her life that it registers acutely, perhaps she could concentrate on what a lucky and privileged life she’s been given.
How much, though?
Does it hurt her as much as a billy club to the face, a boot the neck, or a bullet in one’s back?
Does it hurt as much as living with the knowledge that one has less rights just because of the color of one’s skin?
Does it hurt as much as every news story telling me yet another POC has been shot and or killed by the police; because once again, some nosy-ass power-trippin’ busybody actively decided to weaponize LEOs’ already egregious propensity for lethal violence?
By all means, please do enlighten me as to how terrible “the pain” really is…
We spend a lot of time here telling people that there isn’t only one issue to focus on at any moment, that there isn’t any need to play oppression Olympics, that pain is valid. Of course feeling upset that your name has been linked to an unpleasant stereotype isn’t the same as those examples. Nonetheless, telling people that they don’t get be upset by something because you think it’s trivial sounds an awful lot like saying “fuck your feelings”. Being upset about something on the personal level doesn’t diminish your ability to feel upset about societal issues, or to work on them.
In fact, I would guess that it amounts to a kind of micro aggression, because people *will * have that image run through their minds when they hear your name, even if they don’t really think you’re like that.
I do know that this is a relatively silly thing to be bothered about, but it still does bother me. Maybe it’s on the same scale as actually caring about sports.
In the interest of not getting myself flagged, I’ll just reiterate what I have already said countless times before, and I’ll keep repeating it until POC stop being oppressed and killed:
Maybe if I repeat myself often enough and loudly enough, the message might finally sink in…
Moaning about sharing a nickname with a meme?
Fuck their feelings.
Yep, that’s totally on par with hundreds of years of White supremacy, institutionalized racism, stochastic terrorism, and everlasting oppression and exploitation.
Nah, I think not. Pretty much anyone can separate a meme about Karens from say, being introduced to a person named Karen.
To call this a microaggression trivializes an entire, and extremely valid and insightul way of identifying damage wrought by the ongoing reality of, you know, actually damaging stereotypes.
The problem with that is, from what I’ve observed, there’s an inverse relationship between how loud someone named Karen complains about the use of the label for women who weaponize their whiteness and actions to make a tangible improvement in the lives of Black people in America.
It comes off as a verse of Weird Al’s Why Does This Happen To Me:
I just get depressed about the “you can have basic human rights when every white woman born in forever can expect to never be teased about anything and not a moment before” because the short way of saying that is “never.”
Also saying this as some one who spent most of her childhood getting made fun of for my name and it’s not even a meme… Just kind of an ugly/memorable name and people are like that.
Frankly, it rather pisses me off that a certain sect of folks actually seem to believe that people of privilege being indirectly taunted or teased is somehow anywhere near equivalent to the real and ongoing persecution that BIPOC have suffered since time out of mind…
Same here, though it was my surname.
