Happy-slapping hoodies with ASBOs and ringtones, etc etc

[dreamer_easy]

Obviously, in a population of millions, there must be some young people who match the "feral animal" stereotype. But the danger of that stereotype is that, when you see someone who looks and sounds like a "chav", you immediately connect them to theft, violence, breeding like rabbits, etc - when in fact you almost certainly know nothing about them at all.

Previously I pointed out that statistics don't match the idea that British mothers on welfare are popping out more kids. I'm still trying to find specific information on the victims of crime committed by young people (basically, who robs whom?) But what I have managed to find so far doesn't lend much support to an image of kids "preying" on the rest of society. Britons are more likely to be the victims of violent crime if they are young, single, unemployed, live in a deprived area, and/or live in "social-rented accommodation" (council flats, etc). ETA: And here's a picture (thanks, Lance!).

Just as a side note, one of the odder comments made about "chavs" in the GB thread was the half-joking suggestion that they'd vote for the BNP because they were "first on the ballot". May as well set this one straight too. BNP supporters are more working than middle class, but by income aren't much worse off than the average Briton - and three quarters of them are older than 34. Which said, since voting isn't compulsory in the UK, you might imagine lazy, ignorant voters of any stripe wouldn't get as far as the actual ballot anyway.

Comments

[alawston.livejournal.com]

Hmm, far be it for me to fuck with the OED, but it's also been attributed to social workers' shorthand on assessment forms, where they would apparently often write CHAV on home visits, to stand for: Council House And Violence. I've never heard of the Chatham theory.

The essential thing here is that the derivation is highly unclear.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

The parallel with "pikey" is impossible to miss, tho.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

It's not exactly a parallel because there's a convergence. The whole thing's Guy Ritchie's fault. Pikey only came into mainstream use with the release of Snatch, where it's tossed around every couple of minutes. Similarly, the whole chav label arrived in the public consciousness after Ritchie and Madonna started wearing Burberry jackets and as a direct result the Sun started their bizarre 'The Sun: Proud to be Chav' campaign (they had a little banner and everything, it was tragic). Back in the carefree days of 2004, being a chav had nothing to do with the 'proles', it was more about middle-class wankers making a sad attempt at working-class solidarity through buying stupidly expensive shit clothes and pretending to be cockney. David Tennant's Doctor is actually a chav in a way that Rose can never be, because he's a Lord pretending to be a geezer. And he wears Converse trainers.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Blimey! Britain is complicated...

Here's another parallel: many words in English for "woman" have ended up being used to mean "whore". I wonder if the same is true for words which mean "working class", or perhaps just for "chav": starts off positive or neutral, inevitably decays into an insult.

[alawston.livejournal.com]

Class guilt and class snobbery come together to fudge just about every social issue in the UK. For example, a young single mother working as a doctor is a supermum, a young single mother working in Tesco is a slag.

[adrian-middle.livejournal.com]

A bit late (hardly use LJ these days), but the best link is probably this one (http://www.sarahbromley.co.uk/scally/summary.html/) which mentioned the northern variant "Charv", which is argued came first (despite continued claims that Chav means "Cheltenham Average" meaning working class girls who didn't get to go to Cheltenham Ladies' College.