pete75 wrote:Cugel wrote:pete75 wrote:
Yeah but if deriding a group such as cyclists was to be made illegal or non grata the same might well apply to deriding "motrons" as a group.
There's some hypocrisy in this thread about derision of cyclists when a poster uses terms of abuse like Ned(Glaswegian for chav) and Jakey - an abusive Scottish term analogous to the English Pikey but directed against people even lower down the social order. I guess there's also hypocrisy from those who deride motorists here when they are themselves car owners. I don't share their anti car prejudice but if I did wouldn't have a car and adapt life accordingly.
A Ned is any person who .... behaves like a Ned. The status is voluntary and therefore a legitimate state for mockery should one find Ned behaviours egregious. Anyone can be a Ned or not-be a Ned.
"Jakey" is Weegie for "a habitually drunken person actually or bordering on being an alcoholic, with associated egregious behaviours resultant" and nothing to do with that other unpleasant term you mentioned. Again, the choice is made by that person, who may choose the alternative and thus become not-a-jakey.
Motons are not so much car owners as those who drive them like morons - another definition based on egregious and highly dangerous behaviour, not some involuntary condition; or even the voluntary condition of owning and driving a car (which may be done considerately and carefully).
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I feel you need to get a better grasp of these taxonomies and nomenclatures so that you can differentiate those that are defined by voluntarily bad behaviour from those that refer to involuntary conditions such as sexual orientation or skin colour. They are not the same sort of names and they are not used to express the same sort of derision or disapproval.
So there.
Cugel
I was unaware what teh term jakey meant so I looked it up. According to the Oxford living dictionary a jakey is a homeless person or tramp especially one who habitually drinks large quantities of alcohol. As I said someone even lower down the scale than those some call a pikey. They may drink a lot which may well be a result of their living conditions. You really think many homeless people choose to be so.
The same source describes a Ned as a stupid or loutish boy or man. People have no choice over either their birth sex or level of intelligence.
Both are derogatory terms used to describe certain groups of people.
Using your definition of choice it would be fine to use the term pikey as applied to travellers. That lifestyle is a choice is it not?
It's an interesting point, isn't it, as to whether we have free will or not; whether we can choose or not to behave this way or that. I admit to an inclination to see we humans as not nearly so able to choose as we believe. We are indeed driven by dark inner forces that often overwhelm the small control of ourselves we seem to have.
Nevertheless, our whole society and it's modes of interaction, co-operation, control and other features necessary for living together in an association that's in some fashion civilised is based on the idea that we do have some degree of choice and therefore some degree of responsibility for our actions. Moreover, even if we don't have as much as we think, that doesn't necessarily remove the usefulness of controls like mockery-by-name-calling for changing the behaviour of those who are a serious nuisance or worse.
The Weegie notion of a jakey is not so much about being homeless as being a drunkard. The sometimes-homelessness is regarded as possibly one consequence of being a drunkard - along with the other consequences such as being pestilential to everyone else. It doesn't refer to people who are homeless but sober. It doesn't refer to what used to be known as tramps. Jakey is a term of disapprobation reserved for the habitually drunken who go about committing minor crimes to get their grog-money; who perform low-level abuse or assault on passers-by; who cost the rest of society not because they've also become homeless but because they are drunks.
Did they choose to be drunks or is that outside their human apparatus of self-control? That's a good question with a difficult and partial set of answers - which might be wrong. In all events, mocking their behaviour is one potential method of persuading them to change. It would be preferable if the mockery were also accompanied by practical help and means to change. But don't dismiss the power of mockery.
You raise a straw man with your "pikey" comment. That's a term applied to travellers of any and every sort by those who enjoy stereotyping groups they have made pariah or scapegoat for some angst they suffer. Travellers, like the rest of us, come in all kinds and are not really a group except in their inclination to be peripatetic. There are some very nice ones about - I know because I have various relationships with various people who you might call "pikey". There are some nasty ones too. There are nasty folk (some very nasty) who look the epitome of "respectability".
And whilst I'm here ... As you have now noted yourself, a Ned is not the same thing as "chav" - another derogatory term used by Daily Hate Mail readers and their ilk to demonise those who have been degraded and abandoned by our current socio-economic hegemony. "Chav" generally equates to a combination of "the underclass" and those who dress in a certain crude fashion. Of themselves they are not a nuisance to the rest of us even if their shell suit and inclination to talk loudly is distasteful.
A Ned is a young hooligan who delights in small crimes (sometimes large ones) against all and sundry, especially the weak and defenceless of their own community or locale. A bit like that "journalist" with his cyclist-hating article.
Cugel