chav--explain to a confused expatriate please

T

trilliam

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
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.
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there was nothing kneejerk about my accusation but you're right i am predictable in my calling out of people who think you have to live in Belgravia or be the fat man on the monopoly board to be privileged :rolleyes: distancing through exaggeration i see you

what is predictable is your "i've lived on some estates before" spiel like im 99% sure i was on on point in my observations on u, in any case any comment i've made has been a direct reaction to attitudes/feelings/thoughts you've typed or expressed in here, good game.

/

what do you guys make of this hetty brou hah hah, very relevant in terms of the last few pages of discussion in here

http://www.huckmagazine.com/perspec...ives/hetty-douglas-working-class-dawn-foster/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/43942...e-workmen-mcdonalds-instagram-caption-1-gcse/
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
trilliam said:
there was nothing kneejerk about my accusation but you're right i am predictable in my calling out of people who think you have to live in Belgravia or be the fat man on the monopoly board to be privileged :rolleyes: distancing through exaggeration i see you

what is predictable is your "i've lived on some estates before" spiel like im 99% sure i was on on point in my observations on u, in any case any comment i've made has been a direct reaction to attitudes/feelings/thoughts you've typed or expressed in here, good game.
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TBH it just sounded like that trusty old rhetorical ace in the hole, "you're privileged so anything you say can be ignored". Naturally you don't apply this to yourself, because no-one ever does.

I notice you went all out and said "white privilege", for good measure. Yes I'm white, like most people who post here. The stock stereotypical 'chav' being discussed here is himself white, so I'm not sure what the relevance is.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
I think it's possible to acknowledge your privilege without getting involved with the top trumps game of student intersectionality.

I am happy to say that I earn well above the average wage for someone my age in the UK and to acknowledge that this makes me pretty damn well off compared to the majority of the global population.

Part of this is down to graft, but I am certain part of it is also down to being a white male, speaking with a Hertfordshire accent, having had parents who went to University, being over 6 foot, being verbally articulate and being largely heterosexual, being born in the UK etc. None of these things can really be described as anything other than luck.
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
john eden said:
I think it's possible to acknowledge your privilege without getting involved with the top trumps game of student intersectionality.

I am happy to say that I earn well above the average wage for someone my age in the UK and to acknowledge that this makes me pretty damn well off compared to the majority of the global population.

Part of this is down to graft, but I am certain part of it is also down to being a white male, speaking with a Hertfordshire accent, having had parents who went to University, being over 6 foot, being verbally articulate and being largely heterosexual, being born in the UK etc. None of these things can really be described as anything other than luck.
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Yeah, I hit the top trumps on a lot of these points as you know. Thank God I'm not from Herts though.

Just been reading Grayson Perry's book about masculinity and he writes very well about "default male" settings - to which we could add default whitey, default het etc. Kate Bornstein describes privilege as a multi-sided pyramid, with us all at different points on various different sides, which vary over the course of one's life, due to age, changes in circumstances, changes in social mores etc

What I often see in these threads is a confusion between personal experience and the ideas under discussion. Personal experience can obviously be adverse i.e experienced as lack of privilege (especially when global circumstances have been torpedoing everyone's income, bar the 1%) - this doesn't mean that the concept isn't very real. This is what feeds a lot of retrogressive narratives i.e. Men's Rights: "If I'm so privileged WHY DON"T I FEEL IT?!"
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
DannyL said:
What I often see in these threads is a confusion between personal experience and the ideas under discussion. Personal experience can obviously be adverse i.e experienced as lack of privilege (especially when global circumstances have been torpedoing everyone's income, bar the 1%) - this doesn't mean that the concept isn't very real. This is what feeds a lot of retrogressive narratives i.e. Men's Rights: "If I'm so privileged WHY DON"T I FEEL IT?!"
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I think part of the problem that leads to this is that, whereas the first person ever to say "Check your privilege" probably meant it as a useful shorthand for "Most of us have at least some kind of privilege that some other people don't have and it's useful to bear this in mind while critiquing structural inequality, whether purely economic or in terms of more subtle things like class, gender, culture etc." (and it may even have been taken as such by the person they said it to), it's become more usually used to mean (and is invariably heard as) "STFU".
 
M

martin

----
trilliam said:
what do you guys make of this hetty brou hah hah, very relevant in terms of the last few pages of discussion in here

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/43942...e-workmen-mcdonalds-instagram-caption-1-gcse/
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If it's not fake, my first thought's at least she's being honest. I mean, she's an indolent, ugly pig but at least she knows it and hasn't spent three years playing the 'ACAB' card on Twatter before calling for cops to tear-gas football fans because they're making a noise in the carriage while they're trying to read their Semiotexts, etc.

No snark, but is height really seen as a form of privilege now?
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
martin said:
If it's not fake, my first thought's at least she's being honest. I mean, she's an indolent, ugly pig but at least she knows it and hasn't spent three years playing the 'ACAB' card on Twatter before calling for cops to tear-gas football fans because they're making a noise in the carriage while they're trying to read their Semiotexts, etc.

No snark, but is height really seen as a form of privilege now?
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  • Height is strongly related to income for men, after controlling for other social psychological variables like age, sex, and weight[1].
  • Again for men, a 1.8 per cent increase in wages accompanies every additional inch of height[2].
  • These pay disparities are apparently similar in magnitude to the race and gender pay gaps[3].
  • Ninety percent of CEOs, according to The Economist, are of above average height[4].
  • In China, again reported by The Economist[5], height requirements are routinely specified for jobs which seem to have no need of them. The height premium is most pronounced for women: each centimetre above the mean adds 1.5 to 2.2 per cent to a woman’s salary, particularly among middle- and high-wage earners

http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/news/heightism-unacknowledged-bias
 
M

martin

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Well yeah, Tea - I wouldn't have typically classed JohnE or DannyL as particularly privileged over most of us, save for their ability to spy on the neighbours sunbathing. Or to do credible Big Bird impersonations at child hospice parties.

That's just tough shit/evolution sucks stuff, though, isn't it, rather than a political problem? I mean, you couldn't really agitate for a revolutionary 5ft4-9 movement and propose offing everyone over 6ft (PS- I'm 5ft10 and a half).
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
also used to be that, in addition to all being white males, the top executives at fortune 500 companies were all clean shaven. you very rarely saw a CEO or chairman with mustache or beard, aside from maybe the old robber barons from the 1800s/early 1900s. perhaps there was some sense of untrustworthiness associated with facial hair. maybe the internet is changing that, although the shitworker engineers and programmers tend to be the weirdy beardy ones, not the babyfaced zuckerbergs.

carry on.
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's funny, I've got a mate who must be about 5'2" and I'm fairly sure he's shagged more women than anyone else I know. Not that that overturns the observation that women generally prefer taller men, of course.

Martin's right though, this is pressing up against the limits of what's a societal privilege and what's just genetic luck of the draw. You can imagine a utopia in which men and women have absolute equality of opportunity in every respect and where racism and homophobia don't exist, but without going into heavy sci-fi genetic engineering territory, there's never going to be a society where everyone's equally intelligent, healthy and attractive.
 
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john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
It's more a question of identifying the inequalities which exist.

Being black or a woman is also a matter of genetic chance, for the person who has been born. I would agree that the inequalities which result from that are more of a pressing problem.

I don't like the idea of unearned wealth from inherited money, so it also seems worthwhile at least thinking about unearned wealth in terms of genetics too.

Also worth mentioning that people's ideas of what is "intelligent, healthy and attractive" are social constructs.

I mean, I am a boring marxist and think that these things will mainly be resolved through the class struggle anyway, but it's not completely pointless, this stuff.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
john eden said:
Also worth mentioning that people's ideas of what is "intelligent, healthy and attractive" are social constructs.
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People in different cultures might interpret these inherent inequalities differently and attach different weights to different markers, but the inequality is still there. Ideals of beauty vary of course but there is never going to be a society that doesn't have a concept of attractiveness that ranks some people higher than others. There are valid criticisms of the IQ test but there are never not going to be clever people and thick people, and I'm pretty sure having limbs and organs that work properly is universally seen as a good thing.

john eden said:
I mean, I am a boring marxist and think that these things will mainly be resolved through the class struggle anyway, but it's not completely pointless, this stuff.
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I can imagine a utopia where people aren't judged for accidents of birth but again the underlying variation in the species is still there.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
The point is surely that it is very easy to imagine a society based on a fixed idea of physical beauty, on genetics, on hierarchy. There are perhaps some examples from the mid 20th century that come to mind.

It isn't utopian to oppose that.
 
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