john
06-08-2007, 08:34 PM
From MSN News UK http://news.uk.msn.com/gingerism_to_singletonism.aspx
It begins in the playground. A joke here, a taunt there; harmless words really. But when does a childhood jibe cross the line from being just that to an underlying and potentially damaging belief?
Prejudice is top of the agenda right now because of the huge row that flared up over Big Brother contestant Emily's use of a racist term. This was swiftly and quite rightly acted upon, highlighting that Britain as a nation will not tolerate this kind of derogatory racism. But what about the other, less serious but more covert, forms of discrimination?
Since the story broke last weekend that a ginger family had been hounded out of three homes in Newcastle by mobs objecting to their hair colour, the question of what constitutes a prejudice has once again arisen. It was not quite fully addressed though – partly because few take this kind of intolerance seriously and partly because it is discrimination without a name.
The antagonists in the Newcastle case were not simply school bullies, but grown-ups who should have known better. It is the prejudices that escape the politically incorrect radar – such as judging someone by their hair colour or life choices - that grow into accepted beliefs. Through the portrayal of stereotypes on TV, in newspapers and magazines and even by politicians, new forms of discrimination have evolved.
Nestled conveniently between freedom of expression and good-natured humour, some of these beliefs go unchallenged because they are disguised as rages against common targets of ridicule or criticism. None of these are tantamount to the extremes of racism, sexism, or disability discrimination this country has seen. However, in a bid to expose and debunk some of these irrational beliefs and assumptions, five are identified below.
Can you say you have never been guilty of at least one of them?
Gingerism
Key assumption: that ginger people are somehow DNA-mutated beings sent from God (or possibly the Vikings) to pollute the gene pool.
Ginger, auburn, titian, red, strawberry blonde – no matter which way you style it, it amounts to the same thing; an invitation to ridicule. It’s almost taken as red (if you’ll excuse the pun) that ginger people have to endure mockery throughout their youth, but it does not stop when you leave school.
I had the misfortune to encounter a particularly arrogant paparazzi photographer a couple of weeks ago, who was falling over himself to talk about his shots of Girls Aloud, concluding: “of course photos of Nicola don’t get as much money – no one cares about her because she’s a ginger.” No problem with that, you may think, except I am “a ginger” myself . The photographer was oblivious to the fact he was being prejudiced.
It doesn’t stop there. Look at the message boards of women’s magazines and you’ll find posts from expectant mothers desperately trying to work out the odds of having a child “cursed” with ginger hair. Even successful redheads have to put up with the tag. Frank Skinner once jokingly asked Charles Kennedy if he thought people might not vote for him because he was ginger. Kennedy was quick to quip back, but many people watching knew there was some half-truth to the joke.
Having red hair isn’t something to be ashamed of. It is just a hair colour like any other. Shouldn’t mothers who fear being burdened with the “ginger gene” let nature do its work, celebrate diversity and worry more about whether their child is healthy?
Scousism
Key assumption: that Scousers are self-pitying and live in a city full of theft and crime.
OK, so the “watch your wallets” and “your car’ll end up on bricks” jokes are about as hackneyed as they come, but anti-Scouse propaganda extends way beyond pub banter and comedy circuits.
Step forward Boris Johnson, one of the most recent propagators of the “self-pity city” tag. The MP was forced to go to the area and apologise when he labelled Liverpudlians as having a victim culture and accused them of wallowing in their grief after the beheading of hostage Ken Bigley in Iraq. Yes, he apologised for his comments, but because he was in his political interests to do so. He’s an intelligent man with opinions to air, but should he have been quite so crass in his approach? There were plenty of commentators at the time who stood by his sentiments.
From the Sun’s disastrous coverage of the death of 96 Liverpool fans in Hillsborough to scathing editorials about the city after the death of toddler James Bulger, Liverpool can be forgiven for thinking anti-Scouse propaganda is more reality than paranoia.
It is a great place. Yes, it has its fair share of problems – like all large cities do - but its vibrancy, culture and strong sense of identity more than makes up for it. Isn’t Liverpool merely guilty of pride in itself and its people?
Teetotalism
Key assumption: that people who choose not to drink alcohol are either recovering alcoholics or puritan lunatics.
Peer pressure is a sneaky thing. It arrives in the school classroom and is by our sides forever more, influencing what we do, how we behave and what we think. “Teetotalism”, that is the discriminatory assumptions one makes about a person based on the fact they abstain from drinking, may seem a minor form of prejudice, but is rife in workplaces across the country.
If people do not drink alcohol, particularly if they are employed in an industry where entertaining clients is a big part of it, they may be considered somehow not part of the team or “unsociable”. Not drinking, for many, is a health and lifestyle choice, but few of us see it as this. When someone has told you they abstain from alcohol, can you honestly say the thought they may be a recovering alcoholic never crossed your mind?
One teetotaller explains: “There's always a point in the evening when it comes up in conversation. It happens every time. Comments will invariably fall into one of two camps: a) the something-must-be-wrong-with-you camp, or b) the something-must-have-happened-to-make-you-stop camp. The latter comes with the added implication that you used to be an alcoholic.”
Single parentism
Key assumption: that single parents are unable to love and care for children as well as married couples, and that they will eventually erode the moral values of the nation.
It has been the question of debate on the nation’s lips since the media coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance reached its crescendo – would the case have been given the same amount of sympathy and attention if Madeleine had been part of single parent family? Of course, this is something we will never know the answer to, but it’s pretty safe to assume, from evidence of single parent prejudice elsewhere in society, that critics would have been quicker to judge had this been the scenario.
Britain is getting a greater percentage of single parents, whether through broken marriages, teenage pregnancies, or women choosing to get pregnant without a partner, so why is there still an assumption that they are responsible for the breakdown of “traditional values” and modern life as we know it?
Singletonism
Key assumptions: if you are single and over the age of 30 you are desperate, a loner, unsure of your sexual orientation, or possibly a combination of all three – and are therefore unhappy.
In the film Bridget Jones’s Diary, when Bridget is forced to explain why she’s still single to a group of “smug married friends”, she concludes it is because under their clothes, singletons’ bodies “are covered in scales”.
The stuff of fiction it may be, but this is often how the archetypal singleton is treated; as if they have some unmarriable defect. But with one in three marriages now ending in divorce, a ring on the finger is no longer the Holy Grail it once was. Many people are staying single well into their 30s now because, aside from careers, travelling and ambitions to pursue, they are exercising their right to wait.
Now men and women can be financially independent and have no need to settle down early, shouldn’t it be celebrated, not ridiculed, that people can choose to marry – or not – for all the right reasons?
It begins in the playground. A joke here, a taunt there; harmless words really. But when does a childhood jibe cross the line from being just that to an underlying and potentially damaging belief?
Prejudice is top of the agenda right now because of the huge row that flared up over Big Brother contestant Emily's use of a racist term. This was swiftly and quite rightly acted upon, highlighting that Britain as a nation will not tolerate this kind of derogatory racism. But what about the other, less serious but more covert, forms of discrimination?
Since the story broke last weekend that a ginger family had been hounded out of three homes in Newcastle by mobs objecting to their hair colour, the question of what constitutes a prejudice has once again arisen. It was not quite fully addressed though – partly because few take this kind of intolerance seriously and partly because it is discrimination without a name.
The antagonists in the Newcastle case were not simply school bullies, but grown-ups who should have known better. It is the prejudices that escape the politically incorrect radar – such as judging someone by their hair colour or life choices - that grow into accepted beliefs. Through the portrayal of stereotypes on TV, in newspapers and magazines and even by politicians, new forms of discrimination have evolved.
Nestled conveniently between freedom of expression and good-natured humour, some of these beliefs go unchallenged because they are disguised as rages against common targets of ridicule or criticism. None of these are tantamount to the extremes of racism, sexism, or disability discrimination this country has seen. However, in a bid to expose and debunk some of these irrational beliefs and assumptions, five are identified below.
Can you say you have never been guilty of at least one of them?
Gingerism
Key assumption: that ginger people are somehow DNA-mutated beings sent from God (or possibly the Vikings) to pollute the gene pool.
Ginger, auburn, titian, red, strawberry blonde – no matter which way you style it, it amounts to the same thing; an invitation to ridicule. It’s almost taken as red (if you’ll excuse the pun) that ginger people have to endure mockery throughout their youth, but it does not stop when you leave school.
I had the misfortune to encounter a particularly arrogant paparazzi photographer a couple of weeks ago, who was falling over himself to talk about his shots of Girls Aloud, concluding: “of course photos of Nicola don’t get as much money – no one cares about her because she’s a ginger.” No problem with that, you may think, except I am “a ginger” myself . The photographer was oblivious to the fact he was being prejudiced.
It doesn’t stop there. Look at the message boards of women’s magazines and you’ll find posts from expectant mothers desperately trying to work out the odds of having a child “cursed” with ginger hair. Even successful redheads have to put up with the tag. Frank Skinner once jokingly asked Charles Kennedy if he thought people might not vote for him because he was ginger. Kennedy was quick to quip back, but many people watching knew there was some half-truth to the joke.
Having red hair isn’t something to be ashamed of. It is just a hair colour like any other. Shouldn’t mothers who fear being burdened with the “ginger gene” let nature do its work, celebrate diversity and worry more about whether their child is healthy?
Scousism
Key assumption: that Scousers are self-pitying and live in a city full of theft and crime.
OK, so the “watch your wallets” and “your car’ll end up on bricks” jokes are about as hackneyed as they come, but anti-Scouse propaganda extends way beyond pub banter and comedy circuits.
Step forward Boris Johnson, one of the most recent propagators of the “self-pity city” tag. The MP was forced to go to the area and apologise when he labelled Liverpudlians as having a victim culture and accused them of wallowing in their grief after the beheading of hostage Ken Bigley in Iraq. Yes, he apologised for his comments, but because he was in his political interests to do so. He’s an intelligent man with opinions to air, but should he have been quite so crass in his approach? There were plenty of commentators at the time who stood by his sentiments.
From the Sun’s disastrous coverage of the death of 96 Liverpool fans in Hillsborough to scathing editorials about the city after the death of toddler James Bulger, Liverpool can be forgiven for thinking anti-Scouse propaganda is more reality than paranoia.
It is a great place. Yes, it has its fair share of problems – like all large cities do - but its vibrancy, culture and strong sense of identity more than makes up for it. Isn’t Liverpool merely guilty of pride in itself and its people?
Teetotalism
Key assumption: that people who choose not to drink alcohol are either recovering alcoholics or puritan lunatics.
Peer pressure is a sneaky thing. It arrives in the school classroom and is by our sides forever more, influencing what we do, how we behave and what we think. “Teetotalism”, that is the discriminatory assumptions one makes about a person based on the fact they abstain from drinking, may seem a minor form of prejudice, but is rife in workplaces across the country.
If people do not drink alcohol, particularly if they are employed in an industry where entertaining clients is a big part of it, they may be considered somehow not part of the team or “unsociable”. Not drinking, for many, is a health and lifestyle choice, but few of us see it as this. When someone has told you they abstain from alcohol, can you honestly say the thought they may be a recovering alcoholic never crossed your mind?
One teetotaller explains: “There's always a point in the evening when it comes up in conversation. It happens every time. Comments will invariably fall into one of two camps: a) the something-must-be-wrong-with-you camp, or b) the something-must-have-happened-to-make-you-stop camp. The latter comes with the added implication that you used to be an alcoholic.”
Single parentism
Key assumption: that single parents are unable to love and care for children as well as married couples, and that they will eventually erode the moral values of the nation.
It has been the question of debate on the nation’s lips since the media coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance reached its crescendo – would the case have been given the same amount of sympathy and attention if Madeleine had been part of single parent family? Of course, this is something we will never know the answer to, but it’s pretty safe to assume, from evidence of single parent prejudice elsewhere in society, that critics would have been quicker to judge had this been the scenario.
Britain is getting a greater percentage of single parents, whether through broken marriages, teenage pregnancies, or women choosing to get pregnant without a partner, so why is there still an assumption that they are responsible for the breakdown of “traditional values” and modern life as we know it?
Singletonism
Key assumptions: if you are single and over the age of 30 you are desperate, a loner, unsure of your sexual orientation, or possibly a combination of all three – and are therefore unhappy.
In the film Bridget Jones’s Diary, when Bridget is forced to explain why she’s still single to a group of “smug married friends”, she concludes it is because under their clothes, singletons’ bodies “are covered in scales”.
The stuff of fiction it may be, but this is often how the archetypal singleton is treated; as if they have some unmarriable defect. But with one in three marriages now ending in divorce, a ring on the finger is no longer the Holy Grail it once was. Many people are staying single well into their 30s now because, aside from careers, travelling and ambitions to pursue, they are exercising their right to wait.
Now men and women can be financially independent and have no need to settle down early, shouldn’t it be celebrated, not ridiculed, that people can choose to marry – or not – for all the right reasons?