I have pretty-much only just arrived in the UK and I have been horrified by tthe “just joking (only not)” attitude towards people with red hair.
Mainly it’s jokes—and those with actual red hair that I’ve met do the same sort of jokes in a slightly self-deprecating, slightly cringing way. Sounding like they’d obviously been singled out for victimisation all their life. I’ve also heard actual discrimination talk. Of the sort that contains phrases like “oh, well he’s ginger, you know what they’re like.” That kind of attitude is quite astonishing over such a nonsensical physical attribute.
Now that you mention it, the idea that redheads are hot-tempered and irrational (which is itself a vestige of the “Irish temper” myth) does have a certain purchase on this side of the pond (U.S.)… though I mostly think of that as an artifact of mid-20th-century genre fiction, and in that context it mostly seems to apply to women, often coupled with a certain “you’re so cute when you’re angry” dismissiveness.
I have pretty-much only just arrived in the UK and I have been horrified by tthe “just joking (only not)” attitude towards people with red hair.
Mainly it’s jokes—and those with actual red hair that I’ve met do the same sort of jokes in a slightly self-deprecating, slightly cringing way. Sounding like they’d obviously been singled out for victimisation all their life. I’ve also heard actual discrimination talk. Of the sort that contains phrases like “oh, well he’s ginger, you know what they’re like.” That kind of attitude is quite astonishing over such a nonsensical physical attribute.
Now that you mention it, the idea that redheads are hot-tempered and irrational (which is itself a vestige of the “Irish temper” myth) does have a certain purchase on this side of the pond (U.S.)… though I mostly think of that as an artifact of mid-20th-century genre fiction, and in that context it mostly seems to apply to women, often coupled with a certain “you’re so cute when you’re angry” dismissiveness.