(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

Teeeeeeeeeeensy bit surprised that so few people caught the tone of my posting about "chavs". I'd just been reading about the current British panic about "happy slapping". One news item mentioned a school where "chav" dress has been banned, and I immediately thought of the horror of "Goth control" in the US after Columbine. Schools will do anything to avoid having to actually tackle bullying.

It's no use citing Little Britain's Vicky as an example, any more than it would be useful citing Are You Being Served?'s Mr Humphries as an example of a gay man. They are parodies. Moreover, I've only seen Vicky briefly, but her "Yeah but no but yeah" routine made me laugh because it sounds like the Australian "Yeah no" - like much British comedy of the moment I'm afraid the local references go over my head. (Erm, I do have the right character there, don't I?)

In recent years I've become rather painfully aware of my own prejudices when it comes to class. Nice people do not speak loudly in grating accents on public transport. In fact, a good Anglo middle class woman such as myself - able to get away with not being able to find her train ticket because of her obvious respectability - attempts to become as invisible as possible. The ghastly truth is that there's a mean little voice in my head which has a go at pretty much everyone I see. I don't quite know where that came from, although I suspect the accumulated trauma of years of harassment at school.

Rather than trying to work out which box to put people in ("omg is Rose a chav???") I prefer to use more direct language. As a few folks have pointed out, the background and appearance of someone who attacks a stranger, physically or verbally, for amusement is irrelevant. They are a thug, a boor, a bully, a criminal, an idiot. I'm supposed to shrink from young men of Middle Eastern appearance and boys of any description wearing hoodies; but instead it's girls in school uniforms who, to this day, make my belly clench and my teeth sharpen.

Comments

[saltmarsh.livejournal.com]

The ghastly truth is that there's a mean little voice in my head which has a go at pretty much everyone I see. I don't quite know where that came from, although I suspect the accumulated trauma of years of harassment at school.

I have exactly the same thing, and also attribute it to being bullied at school. It's something I fight against in myself constantly, though my success rate is pretty poor.

When I sense behaviour that I associate with being bullied, doesn't matter who it's towards, it sets something off in me. Something that says 'I don't want to be like the people who hurt me.' And equally, 'I don't want anyone to be on the receiving end of that.' So the use of a term like 'chav', or indeed anything similar, to me, is coming from that place of non-empathy which causes people to hurt one another, even if done casually. Of course, when it's myself doing it, that causes a lot of inner conflict and guilt. And I'm not saying I've never done it. You do meet individuals who seem to match up to the stereotype, and they may not be very nice. But they are *not* the stereotype, because the stereotype doesn't exist.

These labels have a shaping power. It's the magick of names. Call someone a 'chav', or whatever, and bam, we've just modified both their and our reality. Even if we believe we're utterly justified in using it, the fact it's being used at all is making a reality where 'chavs' or 'dykes' or whatever exist over and above the actual reality of the human beings we're talking about. That person might rebel against that label, might act up to it out of defiance. And we are saying we want to view them through that label. Nevertheless, it's all about the label, not the actual person in front of us, no matter how stereotypical their behaviour might appear. It's giving that term more 'existence' than the people it's being applied to. Any media meltdown about ASBO kids, asylum seekers or whatever shows how this works.

(But if I say, 'I'm a dyke and proud of it,' am I reclaiming my power, or perpetuating the derogatory term and the use of it? Tricky.)

Sorry, that was a bit too long and rambly, and probably completely off the point. And it probably doesn't make any sense either.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

...Or as Jesus put it, "You have heard it said that anyone who calls someboday 'racah'(sp?), he is answerable to the Sanhedrin; But I tell you, if anyone calls his brother a fool, he is in danger of the fires of hell." (From memory - excuse any glitches.)

My interpretation: That kind of judgemental labelling of people does real and lasting damage, of the kind that gradually turns a society from something potentially heavenly into something ultimately hellish. If that's the kind of world you choose to promote, then that's the kind of world you'll inherit.

[saltmarsh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a good way to put it, actually. And shorter. :)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Though it's a thousand times uglier than anything anyone's said here, I can't help but think of the vicious Katrina email that said in part, "I would call them N******, but the actual definition of a n***** is one who is ignorant, these people were not ignorant."

[saltmarsh.livejournal.com]

That's... ugh. Just makes me very angry, actually. It's so frustrating, because it's like there's a bottomless well of human ignorance.

[saltmarsh.livejournal.com]

And I'd qualify that to *wilful* human ignorance - in this century, people do know better. That email just makes me seethe. Horrible.