Consuming chavs: The ambiguous politics of gay chavinism

Abstract

Paul Johnson's (2008) article 'Rude Boys', published in an earlier issue of Sociology, scrutinizes critically the commodification of the male chav for consumption by middle-class homosexual men. This phenomenon, which Andrew Fraser (2005) calls 'chavinism', takes a number of different forms: pornography, sex lines, club nights etc. In part as a response to Johnson's arguments concerning the ways in which chavinism 'further devalue[s] the individuals and groups' it depicts, creating a form of 'symbolic violence' (2008: 67), our article speculates further on the ambiguous implications of this minority consumer culture. To do this, we develop Connell's (1992, 2002; Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005) concept of 'hegemonic masculinity' to discuss what gay chavinism might mean for 'hegemonic homosexuality'. © The Author(s) 2010.