To think people are so mean about ginger hair!

wrong

zombie

Hogwash redhead discrimination and prejudice is rife

I'm ginger and stupidly spent my late teens early 20's bleaching and straightening it after being bullied so much in school. It's made me really determined to help my little one, who is also ginger, to love her natural self and not push herself into some narrow aesthetic box when she's older.

Over the last ten years, I let my natural red hair grow out to my waist and honestly, it's beautiful and I love it. I really don't know why I ever listened to people who told me that I was an ugly carrot top.

Oo I just remembered something interesting.
DH did a diversity course and was roped in by the instructor to make a point to the rest of the class about ginger discrimination.
He asked if he could call DH Ginge for the first hour and see if anyone objected. No one did of course. Then after the break he began to call a woman in the front row Blondie and pretty quickly several people told him he couldn't say that.
He then made the point that he'd been calling DH Ginge for an hour and why didn't they object then. DH then shared that he'd been in on it and so had the blonde woman.
Even then some people tried to say that it was different for gingers and it was acceptable. It took a while for people to accept that they had a prejudice.

DH has gorgeous red hair and people can be really awful about it. He's had people shouting insults him from a van just this week. Idiots.
Quite often when I was pregnant I was asked what I would do if the baby was ginger. What did they want me to say to that exactly. I did lose my temper one time and called a colleague a 'ginger racist' for saying she could never love a ginger baby. It still makes me cross to think about it.

I’m from the States and was baffled when I heard this was thing in the UK. I’m not ginger but the only thing I’ve heard is people saying how lovely it is!

(I clearly don’t think it’s ok to joke about)

But it’s just taken as ok to joke about, there’s a thread this very minute in active about “gingers” ffs

I don’t have much as a child and just twice as an adult.

Once I was so pissed I roared with laughter, and the second time it was two idiot men who ran away when I wheeled round and bellowed in their stupid faces ‘you what? you fucking what...???’. But then I am from Glasgow, and my accent...

Where I’m from ginger hair isnt exactly sought after and people so ridicule “gingers” and numerous times I’ve heard people say they don’t want a ginger baby. I personally have no issue with any hair colour, not sure why people would.

I'm light ginger and DS has his paternal granny's colouring - rich auburn, creamy skin with a little dusting of freckles and the most gorgeous eyes - greeny-brown and framed with lashes so long they almost look cartoonish. He's a little stunner. He will probably go darker haired when he's grown up but his granny's side of the family are all gorgeous so he should keep his good looks.

He's not got teased or bullied about it yet in school but it's a lovely small village school and they have a very pro-active anti-bullying programme, so I'd say if any teasing went on it would be nipped in the bud fairly quickly.

No it's not clear cut. I'm in Scotland and every instance of bullying that I've mentioned happened in a Scottish primary and secondary school (more so secondary).

Thank you @Mopmum35 for your kind words

Is it more of an English than Scottish thing?
No, i wouldn't say it's as clear cut as that. Someone started a thread about their son being bullied for ginger hair a few weeks ago and they were in Scotland. We are South of London and dd has never had a problem. She's in her second year of high school at the local comp.

I suffered hugely through school due to my red hair. I was both verbally and physically bullied almost every day which included being randomly punched in the face, pushed down a flight of stairs and pushed into the road into oncoming traffic. Other kids would refuse to share desks with me because they "might catch the ginger disease" and the teachers would laugh along with them. Any time I'd be anything less than relentlessly cheerful, I'd be labelled "ginger winger". I had a teacher, a grown, educated man; say to the whole class that he hated teaching gingers - we were ugly and made him feel sick. When I was 16, I was asked out by a really popular boy at school. I had harboured a crush on him for about 4 years and we had a two week relationship which made me feel like the happiest person on earth. Then he dumped me abruptly because he couldn't handle the slagging off he was getting for dating a ginger.

My teenage diaries form that time were full of how I hated myself and my life because of my hair. I once went to our year head because the bullying was too much and was told that if I really had a problem with it, then I should dye my hair. My refusal to dye obviously meant that I actually enjoyed the attention. the truth was that despite the crap I was putting up with, I actually loved my hair. I used to look in the mirror and think the colour was amazing and not understand why it provoked hatred in others. Plus my parents would never have allowed me to dye it anyway.

You would think this would stop in adult life but now I have to put up with every friend and colleague who is pregnant, making jokes about how they hope it's not a ginger and then looking at me with an embarrassed apology.

I had auburn hair and still do though at 60+ it is chemically assisted. I was never badly teased for it and in my twenties was asked more than once by strangers what colour I used! Embrace the red I say!

The dickheads who can no longer publicly be racist or xenophobic are running out of people to abuse so gingers are one of the few groups that can get abused and insulted by them and get away with it

I came on to say exactly this.

My sister had( before we both went grey) the most gorgeous dark aubergine hair. I’ve just asked her if she got hassled in the 70s at school.
She says she got lots of complements, so maybe this ginger shaming is a newer thing? But also she’s not strictly ginger , but bullies and dickheads never did get hung up on accuracy.

She has also just said that when I was about 10, I admiringly compared the colour of her leg hair to our hamster.