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Apr. 29th, 2006 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyTeeeeeeeeeeensy 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.
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.
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Date: 2006-04-29 09:34 pm (UTC)