Chronicling the ongoing intersectional struggle to liberate women — inclusively defined as the legacy kind and the transgender individuals — from the Patriarchy™, one microaggression at a time.
HOA Karens Gone Wild!
Whereas the Karen isn’t the least bit shy about getting passive-aggressive with retail managers, she is most comfortable asserting dominance on her home turf: homeowners' association meetings.
A homeowners association meeting — a summit of Karens, if you will — offers the Karen an irresistible opportunity to enforce that unique brand of nanny-state micro-totalitarianism that she is otherwise only able to perpetrate against her husband, children, the help, and the occasional minimum-wage customer service worker.
Related: 'Shout Sisters': Feminists Meet in Parks to Scream Together, Rage Against Patriarchy
HOA Karen complains about landscapers taking breaks in her presence
One interesting and counterintuitive quirk of the Karen is that, whereas power-hungry men tend to seek to maximize their power on a macro-scale, for the Karen, the pettier and more narrowly focused the power-trip, the greater the thrill.
For instance, with her protein smoothie sippy cup in hand in preparation for her upcoming spin class, this Karen expresses her long-simmering beef with the local landscapers in the neighborhood, eating their lunches in her sight:
I don’t want to have to be the one to say it*, but I can’t be the only one who’s noticed the landscapers eating their lunches in our common areas. I mean, residents use those spaces and, at a certain point, it’s just,,starts to feel like they’re just hanging around.
HOA Karen voices her disgust at landscapers in the neighborhood allowed to eat lunch in public pic.twitter.com/v1WFK0t4aK
— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) May 21, 2026
*As a seasoned Karenologist fluent in Karenese, I can assure that “I don’t want to have to be the one to say it,” translated into standard non-passive-aggressive English, really means “I can’t wait to be the one to say it; I’ve been fantasizing about this moment for weeks, stewing over my box wine, peering through my window at over these filthy subhumans thinking they can take breaks on my HOA property with impunity.”
The Karen always wants to have to be the one to say it.
Having to be the one to say it is the Karen’s raison d'être.
Without having to be the one to have to say it, she would languish in a world devoid of purpose or pleasure.
You might also note the furrowed brow of confusion mixed with the ever-so-slightest hint of disgust from the gentleman in the row in front of the Karen as she explains her resentment against landscapers allowed to eat in public in her eyesight.
The Karen’s husband may have flashed that look once — or twice, at most — but paid such a price for his insolence that all he does now when she gets going, for self-preservation purposes, is look down in silence at his lap.
Related: 'HuffPost Personal' Cancer: A Tragic Tale of One Husband's Total Emasculation
You know, like Katie Porter’s ex-husband, who allegedly, according to court records, got scalding mashed potatoes dumped on his head when he got out of line.
Katie Porter dumped scalding mashed potatoes on then-husband’s head, resurfaced divorce docs reveal https://t.co/j031yEhLbx pic.twitter.com/svdM55tz8z
— New York Post (@nypost) October 10, 2025
HOA Karen issues no-splashing fatwa
This Karen, wearing a sun visor inside (a little on the nose, perhaps), expresses her grievance against children in the pool being allowed to splash freely.
Apparently invoking some fine-print HOA regulation regarding “shared activity,” she explains that “when splashing becomes continuous, it stops being play. It becomes activity. Activity at that level is shared.”
HOA Karen denounces children splashing in pool: “When splashing becomes continuous, it stops being play. It becomes activity. Activity at that level is shared.” pic.twitter.com/BpCKpiCTc8
— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) May 21, 2026
