Apeloverage
I think you're missing an important distinction. Yes, insulting someone by calling someone gay (or nigger or whatever) does insult all the members of whatever group you're comparing your victim to. As - obviously - it's not true that any group of this sort is fundamentally stupid/evil/otherwise unfluffy, it's wrong to imply that they are by using the as an insult. I agree with the point of your post (if I understood correctly) that doing so is bigotry.

However, chav is a descriptive term meaning something like "someone who gets on the bus reeking of beer and hash, sits behind me, pokes me in the back of the head and asks me to 'Check ra nick! Dis yer ma still dress ye, ya pure brainboax?" while "wear[ing] bright white tracksuits and three kilos of gold jewellery". It's a description of someone's behaviour and personality which has nothing to do with how riches, race, orientation or anyother factors outside of their control. People don't dislike chavs becaude they're associated with an unfairly disliked group, or through blind prejudice. One can only gain the label of chav by being consistantly rude, often agressive and refusing to engage the (sometimes excellent) brains they're blessed with. Insulting someone because of prejudice is detestable. Insulting someone because of easily changed antisocial behaviour may be unpalatable, but it's not even in the same league.
/rant

Overheard stuff:

In the wing of Windsor castle that was gutted by fire there was (and possibly still is) a moleste display covering the walls of a room showing extensive pictures and information about the fire and the subsequent restoration work. When I went there, the only way to access a particularly impressive restored hall in this wing was by spending about ten minutes queueing along these eight-foot-high display boards with their moleste brightly coloured photos and headlines.

Inside the hall, an american tourist was proudly telling his family that he didn't reckon this was the original plasterwork, and that the tourist office's plan to decieve people by passing it off as antique was disgraceful.

This in turn reminded me of another (American again) tourist at Stonehenge, who reckoned that because we'd let the stones get so tatty we should take them down and put up new ones. We should build it better than last time because "it hasn't lasted well", and while we're at it she didn't think much of the pattern. That's us told, eh?

lenghth/girth etc...
(Not very much gravitas at all, Wed 12 Jan 2005, 11:42, Reply)