There’s a piece on CiF titled “Ban the word ‘Chav'”.
The authors of this piece reckon we should all stop using the word ‘Chav’, because it is offensive.
Well, that is the point. It isn’t about class hatred or racism or white bashing. It’s about pissing off irksome cunts who think it’s ok to be cunts.
Would we get away with saying “faggot” on the BBC? No – there are very few circumstances where that would be acceptable. Would the Guardian print the word “pikey”? Well they have done five times this year (three times were earnest discussions about the word’s racism, and the other two were, well, a bit racist). Can you use the word “gay” as a general derogative (as in “those trainers are really gay”) on Radio 1? Well yes, it turns out that you can, according to the BBC Trust. Could we use the n-word in the Fabian Review? Well probably not,
These guys have completley missed the point, all the references in the above quote (I presume the ‘n-word’ is nigger and what the fuck is the Fabian Review?) are to inalienable qualities of a person. That person may go up or down the social ladders from posh to homeless, lower class to aristocracy, but they will always be homosexual or black. Being a chav is not dependent on where you are or where you were born into society. It’s about your attitude.
It is deeply offensive to a largely voiceless group and – especially when used in normal middle-class conversation or on national TV – it betrays a deep and revealing level of class hatred.
Voiceless? The white working class? Maybe. Maybe not. Being white and working class is probably the start point of identity politics in this country. When you want to identify a white Briton, you just call them a Briton, everyone else has other monikers added. Just because there isn’t a small group of people who claim to speak for all white working class people, doesn’t mean they don’t have a voice.
And it doesn’t betray a deep level of class hatred, it reveals a hatred of wankers.
The phenomenon of the word has grown over the last five years. Initially it was purely a term of abuse
It still is a term of abuse. It’s a term of abuse in the harshest form when used to describe proper chav fuckers and mild mocking when used to describe people like Daniella Westbrook.
We have heard it increasingly used in conversation over the last year, invariably to casually describe people “not like us”
It’s used to describe people who’re “not like us” because it’s easier to say than “ostentatious, self-important, thieving, workshy cunts”. I also say it so I don’t get a slap from my mum for swearing.
middle classes have always used language to distinguish themselves from those a few rungs below them on the ladder – we all know their old serviette/napkin, lounge/living room, settee/sofa tricks
And they always will use that kind of language. Should we stop using ‘working class’, ‘lower classes’ and ‘upper classes’? After all, even if you don’t use ‘lower classes’, purely by using the ‘middle class’ tag, you’re implicity stating there is a lower class, an under class, dare I say untermenschen? By using the word chav, you’re not describing the working class, you’re describing some of the working class as well as some of the middle class.
Let’s not replace the racist or bigoted language of the past with a new set of words that are just as hateful.
Chav is not replacing any racist or bigoted words. Anyone can be a chav.
It’s no more bigoted than using the term ‘lazy, Nova driving, fag blagging, tea-leaving shit’.
