chav--explain to a confused expatriate please

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think it's worth talking for a moment about "the media", which has come up a lot here. First off, without wishing to downplay the obvious effect it has on public opinion, if you think "the media" is an accurate representation of what everyone thinks about everything, then seriously, come on. If you believed everything the papers said you'd think millions of young people spent 2010 snorting "meow-meow", when no-one who isn't a journalist or reporter has ever called mephedrone that, unless they were taking the piss. And in the previous decade, lifestyle supplements decided young, urban, working-class and lower middle-class men spending money on clothes and taking care of their appearance was a brand new phenomenon, and so "metrosexuals" were invented. (Because no-one had ever done that in the '80s, or the '60s, or the '20s, of course.) Second, what even is "the media"? Are we meant to suppose that the Telegraph, the Mirror, the Sun, Guardian, Express, New Statesman, Daily Star and Morning Star can all be lumped in together on any given issue? Ridiculous.

Anyway, let's look at the proposition that "The Media" - and therefore lots of people - think 'chav' is a synonym for 'poor'. If you know even the first thing about the press in this country, you'll know that even the most reactionary of the right-wing papers, in fact especially those papers, have always distinguished between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor. Now 'chavs' are stereotypically unemployed - quite possibly claiming benefits fraudulently, in fact - whereas the great majority of poor people either work for a living, are dependent on someone with a paid job or claim a pension (which is never the benefit anyone is thinking of when they're talking about people who are 'on benefits'). So even in the most bigoted and stupid definition of the word - which, admittedly, some people hold - a 'chav' is synonymous with an unemployed person, but not with the majority of the poor, who work for a living.

And if you look at this from the POV of social class rather than income level and employment status, the proposition that 'chav' just means 'working class' is blown to pieces when you consider that it would be pretty damn weird for the Sun, a paper with an exclusively working-class readership, to slander the very people who buy it every day as 'chavs' - wouldn't it? And this is the paper that spends more ink than any other banging on about "yobs" and "benefits cheats". Or at least vies for that with the Daily Mail, whose readership straddles the working class and the less educated part of the lower middle class. It's certainly not read by many "posh middle class people", who are more likely to read the Guardian.

So no, 'chav' is not synonymous either with 'poor' or with 'working class' in the minds of any significant number of people.
 
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trilliam

Well-known member
Posh middle class people live in attractive Victorian houses on pleasant, clean streets where antisocial behaviour is not a common problem. They may be the sort who read Katie Hopkins books and who think "All working class people are 'chavs" (i.e. unemployed hooligans), or they may be the sort who read Owen Jones books and think "'Chav' is just a nasty snobbish term for working-class people" (i.e. the stance you and others here are taking). In either case, working-class people are reduced to an Other, an undifferentiated mass with a character determined entirely by their socioeconomic status.

The glaring irony here is that the people who are actually affected by the ASB, low-level crime and general aggro from those who, for the purposes of this thread, may be called 'chavs', are themselves mostly working class. They live on the estates and streets where this goes on because they can't afford to live anywhere else. I left London a few years but I've spent many years living in areas just like that, and I know many people who still do. Your assumption that you're in a position to lecture me about 'privilege' and being 'out of touch', when I'm talking from personal lived experience and not something I've read in the Guardian and taken for gospel truth, is fucking hilarious. "Bro."

Oh I dunno really, though I would take a wild guess that it's the northern part of the English county of Kent. :rolleyes:


if i was white i definitely would've been called a chav at one stage of my life, maybe even now if it was still in vogue. recently got a flat in an area thats being heavily gentrified after being on the housing register for five years

so with that being said if giving the correct definition of chav is "reducing working-class people into an undifferentiated mass with a character determined entirely by their socioeconomic status" then fair enough but thats what it is, with the background youre coming from i dont know why you disagree with it

what u gotta realise is that "liberals" (?) dont have to know the intricacies of something to be right in their general (informed) assessment, they probably got glaring prejudices elsewhere. anyway why dont u wanna call a spade a spade ?

/

I asked about North Kent because I went to secondary school in Bexleyheath, I know Blackfen, Welling, Sidcup etc kinda well first saturday job was in Bluewater etc. Anyway I don't know what area of Kent these places are in.

"I grew up in north Kent, and I'm pretty sure that 'chav' has been used on and off for a long time there. To me (and being blissfully unaware of the etymology), it was always used to designate aggressive and unpleasant people who used ignorance as a badge of honour, and I would never have applied the word to anyone who didn't fit that description."

So with that in mind to me this description sounds kinda mad. Some people from the areas I mentioned might prescribe to that kinda airy thinking but some/most definitely don't. areas are middling to affluent, there's worse places and better in Kent but assuming the worst in that "North Kent" is a super snobby area, why is your qualified view point in line with someone from there?
 

trilliam

Well-known member
I think it's worth talking for a moment about "the media", which has come up a lot here. First off, without wishing to downplay the obvious effect it has on public opinion, if you think "the media" is an accurate representation of what everyone thinks about everything, then seriously, come on. If you believed everything the papers said you'd think millions of young people spent 2010 snorting "meow-meow", when no-one who isn't a journalist or reporter has ever called mephedrone that, unless they were taking the piss. And in the previous decade, lifestyle supplements decided young, urban, working-class and lower middle-class men spending money on clothes and taking care of their appearance was a brand new phenomenon, and so "metrosexuals" were invented. (Because no-one had ever done that in the '80s, or the '60s, or the '20s, of course.) Second, what even is "the media"? Are we meant to suppose that the Telegraph, the Mirror, the Sun, Guardian, Express, New Statesman, Daily Star and Morning Star can all be lumped in together on any given issue? Ridiculous.

I'm talking specifically about the Mail, Sun, and papers of that ilk, you could say those kind of outlets are controlled by "the poshos" and explicitly insult while simultaneously being marketed to and loved by the working class who love it. It'd be wrong of you to think intelligent middle class people who read The Guardian or whatever don't prescribe to some of the baser sentiments being echoed in the papers they don't read


Anyway, let's look at the proposition that "The Media" - and therefore lots of people - think 'chav' is a synonym for 'poor'. If you know even the first thing about the press in this country, you'll know that even the most reactionary of the right-wing papers, in fact especially those papers, have always distinguished between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor. Now 'chavs' are stereotypically unemployed - quite possibly claiming benefits fraudulently, in fact - whereas the great majority of poor people either work for a living, are dependent on someone with a paid job or claim a pension (which is never the benefit anyone is thinking of when they're talking about people who are 'on benefits'). So even in the most bigoted and stupid definition of the word - which, admittedly, some people hold - a 'chav' is synonymous with an unemployed person, but not with the majority of the poor, who work for a living.

we could go into the exact definition of a chav but lets be honest does it really matter? like you yourself said chav was used as a blanket term that could insult the benefit cheats and as well as the nine to five worker who lives next door to them? if the most bigoted stupid definition of the word is what is being applied then its being applied liberally whether its factual or not

And if you look at this from the POV of social class rather than income level and employment status, the proposition that 'chav' just means 'working class' is blown to pieces when you consider that it would be pretty damn weird for the Sun, a paper with an exclusively working-class readership, to slander the very people who buy it every day as 'chavs' - wouldn't it? And this is the paper that spends more ink than any other banging on about "yobs" and "benefits cheats". Or at least vies for that with the Daily Mail, whose readership straddles the working class and the less educated part of the lower middle class. It's certainly not read by many "posh middle class people", who are more likely to read the Guardian.

So no, 'chav' is not synonymous either with 'poor' or with 'working class' in the minds of any significant number of people.

i think i touched on the points you're making here in my above paragraphs so lets just leave it at you're educated enough to know the truth but too scared of not appearing educated to say it

to summarise^
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Can we take it as read that baboon is one of the more notably left-wing regular contributors here? At any rate a bit more left-wing than that awful reactionary old Mr. Tea? OK, good. He said:

Most people, if asked to define the word, would probably say something more or less along those lines. So to say that it's simply synonymous with being poor, or being poor and white, is to equate being poor with being aggressive, unpleasant and ignorant.

And if that's supposed to be the progressive stance to take on the word 'chav', then I really don't know what to say.

To clarify, I was talking about how the word was used in 90s Kent, not how it started to be used across the UK in the 2000s. My point was that it was bizarre to see a word that was not often used when I was young, suddenly have a 'second life' as a word routinely used to bash working class people who acted in a way middle class people deemed vulgar.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I asked about North Kent because I went to secondary school in Bexleyheath, I know Blackfen, Welling, Sidcup etc kinda well first saturday job was in Bluewater etc. Anyway I don't know what area of Kent these places are in.

"I grew up in north Kent, and I'm pretty sure that 'chav' has been used on and off for a long time there. To me (and being blissfully unaware of the etymology), it was always used to designate aggressive and unpleasant people who used ignorance as a badge of honour, and I would never have applied the word to anyone who didn't fit that description."

So with that in mind to me this description sounds kinda mad. Some people from the areas I mentioned might prescribe to that kinda airy thinking but some/most definitely don't. areas are middling to affluent, there's worse places and better in Kent but assuming the worst in that "North Kent" is a super snobby area, why is your qualified view point in line with someone from there?

As the author of that comment...in 2005, so I'm not exactly tied to it... I guess if you want to understand what someone is saying, then read the original context. I was talking about the 90s, and I'm guessing your youth came a bit later than that?

I only mentioned north Kent because there was a long-time story that the word 'chav' originated from Chatham, which is in north Kent (so yeah, not really that super snobby)...may well not be true, but it's a pretty widespread story, and I never heard anyone else from any other parts of the country use it until much later (tho I'm sure someone will contradict me on that)...

Slothrop's comment from 2006 convinces me I'm not entirely mad and not entirely misremembering:

"I'm originally from east kent. Looking back, 'chav' has always had a bit of a dual meaning depending on the context and, I suppose, on the chav in question - partly it's a youth tribe seen from a neutral point of view as being another set of fashions and styles, and partly a youth tribe as seen from the rather partisan point of view of a member of a different youth tribe somewhat further down the food chain as being some violently conformist tendancies. The parts of chavviness that you objected to weren't the trainers and trackies so much as the tendancy to heave bricks at you in the park.

It was never entirely a class thing, either - a lot of the chavs I knew at school were from very nice middle class families. I get almost as bothered by the Burchillesque argument that ignorance and stupidity are exclusively working class qualities so objecting to ignorance and stupidity is class prejudice as I do by all the media people who've just discovered that 'the chav phenomenon' gives them the chance to exhibit their prejudices and be thought clever for it."


To be clear, I'm saying that the usage changed when the word 're-emerged' in the 2000s and spread like wildfire because of the internet.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm not reading back through all that. I just want to reiterate that, in the time and place I grew up, townies were called townies before they were called chavs. We thought they listened to shit music and had shit hair and clothes, and they thought the same thing about us, because that's what teenagers are like. The difference is, they were the ones who'd yell abuse at, and perhaps try and beat up, anyone who was different from them. Yes they were mostly working class, but this is a red herring, because most of everyone was working class, including many of the kids they picked on. And as others have noted, kids with much the same attitude sometimes came from quite comfortable families.

I have no real interest in what "the media" may or may not have said about "chavs", because the opinions of upper-middle-class journalists who live in lovely big old houses in leafy parts of inner London - be they clueless reactionaries who think of working class people simply as grubby ignorant plebs, or clueless liberals who romanticize them as the noble, honest salt-of-the-earth (but who in either case doesn't interact socially with anyone outside their own class from one year to the next) - are completely irrelevant from the lived experience of 95% of people.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Posh middle class people live in attractive Victorian houses on pleasant, clean streets where antisocial behaviour is not a common problem. They may be the sort who read Katie Hopkins books and who think "All working class people are 'chavs" (i.e. unemployed hooligans), or they may be the sort who read Owen Jones books and think "'Chav' is just a nasty snobbish term for working-class people" (i.e. the stance you and others here are taking). In either case, working-class people are reduced to an Other, an undifferentiated mass with a character determined entirely by their socioeconomic status.

The glaring irony here is that the people who are actually affected by the ASB, low-level crime and general aggro from those who, for the purposes of this thread, may be called 'chavs', are themselves mostly working class. They live on the estates and streets where this goes on because they can't afford to live anywhere else. I left London a few years but I've spent many years living in areas just like that, and I know many people who still do. Your assumption that you're in a position to lecture me about 'privilege' and being 'out of touch', when I'm talking from personal lived experience and not something I've read in the Guardian and taken for gospel truth, is fucking hilarious. "Bro."

In fact middle class people, in London at least, increasingly do live on council (or former council) estates.

Did you live on an estate in London, Tea? You probably remember that I did for ten years, because you came to my flat. You may or may not remember that a group I was involved in regularly knocked on every door on every estate in one of the wards in south Hackney in noughties. One of the things that came up at my estate TRA and through door knocking was anti-social behaviour. (The word "chav" didn't funnily enough, but I suspect that was down to good manners rather than anything else).

In both instances I was involved with campaigns to resolve anti-social behaviour, which were mildly successful. No doubt with your huge range of experience on this issue you can "lecture" us all on the strategies you have developed in this area.

In fact Marx was already bang on this with all his stuff about the lumpenproletariat. I.e. a subsection of the working class which is anti-social and unproductive. So it's not the case that the working class is seen (here at least) as undifferentiated.

But anyway I have made the point upthread that chavs are a subsection of the working class, which is Owen Jones' position too. The further away you are from working class communities, the less likely you are to see the tensions within them and the more likely you are to stereotype. Which is where your precis of Katie Hopkins' position comes in. When posh cunts dress up as chavs for their fancy dress parties they essentially are taking the piss out of what they see as thick poor people who live on estates, no? Who all wear garish clothes and cheap jewelry and are on benefits and have six kids.

So the word "chav" can mean different things to different people, depending on how close to the phenomena they are.

Obviously when I lived on an estate I was better off than many other people who lived there. That didn't stop parents at my daughter's school making snarky comments about where I lived though, or being reluctant to come round. Did they think we were chavs? Possibly not. Were we being stereotyped based on where we lived? Yes we were. Were we being lumped in with lumpen types? Probably by some people yes.
 
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trilliam

Well-known member
@baboon

didnt know chav had history tbh, that slothrop quote you brought is right in breaking down chav to it's core essence which is basically thuggery, thing is people don't tend to go into that much detail when you using chav they just throw it out there and it hits people who you could say aren't it's "true" target audience,

@ mr tea

this stuff about 95% of the media being irrelevant or having no impact is bullshit but anyway

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/b..._robbery_and_criminal_damage/#comments-anchor

have a look at the comments, turns out i was wrong about 'chav' being out of fashion, i wonder if these people are using the word as shorthand for "shit music, shit hair and clothes," an "aggressive and unpleasant people who used ignorance as a badge of honour" or poor white criminal youth from council housing

"So no, 'chav' is not synonymous either with 'poor' or with 'working class' in the minds of any significant number of people."

i was half joking when i said you were out of touch but your refusal to accept what chav meant in the wider scheme of things, along with that tripe about knowing people who know what their talking about does mark you out as kinda suspect

anyway im definitely in a position to lecture u so consider it done

/

what do u guys think those comments would've been like if he was of african/carribean descent
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
@baboon

didnt know chav had history tbh, that slothrop quote you brought is right in breaking down chav to it's core essence which is basically thuggery, thing is people don't tend to go into that much detail when you using chav they just throw it out there and it hits people who you could say aren't it's "true" target audience,

that's true, the word has become an all-purpose insult to throw at working class people deemed to be 'uncouth'.

a lot of middle class energy has always gone into denigrating the poor (usually assuming that everyone in earshot agrees with their attitudes). and especially since racism, homophobia etc have become more cloaked and disguised, then the catch-all term of 'chav' was manna from heaven for people eager to prove their status in society and luagh at the supposed lack of 'sophistication' of others ('pikey', its forbear in the places where I lived, always having been too close for comfort to anti-Romany racism to be used by a certain kind of m/c person).

but of course there are still a million ways to disguise denigration based on class as well. the attitudes seem to get worse/more unreconstructed, the more that the people concerned feel they are model citizens in other ways
 
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firefinga

Well-known member
So all micro-analysis aside, is "Chav" then structurally the same (or something very similar) to what is being referred to as "White Trash" in the USA?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
John - yes, I remember when I came to your flat, and I'm well aware you don't live in a Georgian mansion in the Cotswolds, which is part of the reason I'm having trouble understanding your position here. To answer your question, yeah I did live on an estate for a while some time ago. It was kind of noisy at times but an OK place to live for the most part. I make no claim to have grown up in the ghetto but I have lived in some fairly grotty places where shitty behaviour was pretty common and where much more serious shit occasionally went down too, which is why I have to laugh at trilliam's predictable kneejerk accusation of 'privilege', because the position I'm taking here has come from personal experience I'd never have had if I'd spent my whole life in Belgravia or some twee chocolate-box village. And it was perfectly obvious that this behaviour came only from a minority of people in these uniformly low-income areas, which is why the idea that 'chav' just means 'poor' rings so false for me. Which I see even you've revised in the last couple of pages, John.

Rich people playing at being 'chavs' is gross and only one step removed from vileness like 'colonials & natives' parties, but most people aren't rich. So while this attitude certainly exists, I think it's a lot less widespread than several of you are making out.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I make no claim to have grown up in the ghetto but I have lived in some fairly grotty places where shitty behaviour was pretty common and where much more serious shit occasionally went down too, which is why I have to laugh at trilliam's predictable kneejerk accusation of 'privilege', because the position I'm taking here has come from personal experience I'd never have had if I'd spent my whole life in Belgravia or some twee chocolate-box village. And it was perfectly obvious that this behaviour came only from a minority of people in these uniformly low-income areas, which is why the idea that 'chav' just means 'poor' rings so false for me.

But you are privileged, as am I -neither of us would ever be called a 'chav', because we present as middle class with all the privilege that that entails. What you're saying here is not about privilege, but just that where you've lived has given you a certain amount of observational experience - two completely different things.

No-one (so far as I've read) has been saying that 'chav' is equivalent to 'poor', rather that you would only be called a 'chav' if you were deemed to be working class - people who present as middle class simply aren't called 'chavs' (since the emergence of 'Chav' Mark II in 2002-2004 anyways - what happened before is lost in the mists of time, even though I admit I've spent some time discussing it). It's about potentiality as much as what actually happens. People of a particular socioeconomic status/perceived status (accent etc always comes into play) are at any moment vulnerable to being derided/dismissed as a 'chav' by a middle class person who wants to exert social power, if they act in any number of ways deemed inappropriate. Like other stigmatising words, 'chav' is infinitely malleable to the whims of social power, which is precisely why it's difficult to say exactly what it means. (and also precisely why it's such a useful 'divide and conquer' tool vis-a-vis working class people en masse - deserving and undeserving poor, cultured and uncultured poor, law-abiding and violent poor, hard-working-salt-of-the-earth and feckless-benefit-cheating poor, ad infinitum).

[To my mind, this mechanism is the way that racism (and misogyny, homophobia) also works - power and the constant potentiality to exploit it/be exploited by it. And why the talk of someone being a 'racist' or 'not a racist' is to me overly simplistic outside of extreme cases like actual Nazis - more to the point is that at any given moment, any white person can choose to use or not use hundreds of advantages conferred to them by their designated skin colour. Which is why the solidarity of someone who doesn't face discrimination with someone who does, is such a complex and constantly shifting thing, so often subject to comprehensible accusations of betrayal].
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
John - yes, I remember when I came to your flat, and I'm well aware you don't live in a Georgian mansion in the Cotswolds, which is part of the reason I'm having trouble understanding your position here. To answer your question, yeah I did live on an estate for a while some time ago. It was kind of noisy at times but an OK place to live for the most part. I make no claim to have grown up in the ghetto but I have lived in some fairly grotty places where shitty behaviour was pretty common and where much more serious shit occasionally went down too, which is why I have to laugh at trilliam's predictable kneejerk accusation of 'privilege', because the position I'm taking here has come from personal experience I'd never have had if I'd spent my whole life in Belgravia or some twee chocolate-box village. And it was perfectly obvious that this behaviour came only from a minority of people in these uniformly low-income areas, which is why the idea that 'chav' just means 'poor' rings so false for me. Which I see even you've revised in the last couple of pages, John.

Rich people playing at being 'chavs' is gross and only one step removed from vileness like 'colonials & natives' parties, but most people aren't rich. So while this attitude certainly exists, I think it's a lot less widespread than several of you are making out.

Well I'm not sure why you've had a problem understanding my position but I hope you will see that I've gone to reasonable lengths to try and flesh it out.

It seems that you have reigned in your initial enthusiasm for chavs owning sports cars and the word being more to do with behaviour rather than the behaviour/style/lifestyle of people of a particular class/income.

I have little idea about how widespread mocking chavs is amongst the ultra rich but I have had to tear into a public school boy in the workplace for trying to engage in "banter" about it and have also suffered some painful conversation with former oxbridge types of a more cerebral nature about this sort of thing. So it certainly exists and I don't think there is anything to indicate that I have happened to meet the most extremely bigoted upper class people, so presumably there is a lot more out there than that (especially when you factor in the general climate of demonising benefit claimants and people who live in council flats).
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah yeah, I get it, I come across as a fairly standard-issue lower-middle-class person. My point about privilege is that I'm not part of the stratum of actually posh people for whom the working class as a whole might as well be a different species. If John's experiences are anything to go by then the sort of unpleasant attitudes several of you have described here must be pretty widespread among people of that class - at the same time, most people are not 'posh', by definition.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
it's such a useful 'divide and conquer' tool vis-a-vis working class people en masse - deserving and undeserving poor, cultured and uncultured poor, law-abiding and violent poor, hard-working-salt-of-the-earth and feckless-benefit-cheating poor, ad infinitum).

One folk etymology doing the rounds for a while was "Council House and Violent" which seems to pack in the entirety of the British class system's assumptions into one useful phrase.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
One folk etymology doing the rounds for a while was "Council House and Violent" which seems to pack in the entirety of the British class system's assumptions into one useful phrase.

Pretty sure that's a 'backronym' but yeah, telling in itself, as you say.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
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