I come from a gypsy / travelling family AMA

[TowerTumble]

I have name changed for this. I see so much misconception and ignorance around the travelling community and towards families like mine. I've started an AMA so if you have any questions to try and stop this misconception I'll answer everything I can!

Do you approve of the dressing up fashion for the young girls? Especially the very OTT make up and revealing outfits? Will you be allowing your daughter to dress in this way?

Don’t feel like shows that highlight the traveller communities are good/bad (such as my big fat gypsy wedding, the fury’s reality show etc)

It's interesting you should say this because my experience of gypsy/travellers in Scotland (I know not precisely the same as Irish but I understand there to be overlap) is that the men refuse to speak to women visiting them in a professional capacity.

Do you think anti Irish sentiment is still 'a thing' in the UK? My in laws are Irish and they say they experienced some discrimination when first arrived in 70's, but by 90's it was no longer an issue.

My daughter now tells me it's 'trendy' to be Irish and she is quick to say she is half Irish to anyone who asks 😂

I'm sorry but hardly surprised that the OP had enough.

What were the questioners asking why Travellers 'always X' - over and over - hoping to achieve? That she would decide to disown her community and change identities out of shame? Or that she would apologise on behalf of a whole community, and promise to feed back the Mumsnetters' complaints?

Individuals aren't responsible for a whole social group. And our own individual experiences and perceptions of other groups are usually very, very partial.

She was trying to show us the ordinary reality that most of us wouldn't see.

So another AMA where the OP flounces off. Why do people have AMAs if they don’t have a thick enough skin to just answer the questions. AMAs are like an interrogation, if you’re too sensitive don’t do them. Only a few day’s ago the I’m very intelligent ama also flounced. Nearly all of them do.

Racists are going to be racist

For someone asking for people to reconsider their prejudices, you seem quite prejudiced against this other group and fairly happy to spread stereotypes about what they are like.

What is your opinion on hare coursing?

I asked a question that I thought was quite interesting but didn’t get a response.

Agreed.

I bet the posters who stereotyped her wouldn’t dream of asking similar to a Muslim person, or a black person a question that stereotypes a whole ethnic group.

Do you associate the word "chavvy" with the traveller community specifically?

It is a word that gets used on these boards, it isn't a nice word, but I think for a lot of people it isn't something they associate with Travellers particularly. Yet from time to time someone pops up and says they are a traveller and they consider it a very specific slur. Is that a common view?

It was definitely an issue in the 90's when I was there but not as bad as the 80's when it was more aggressive. A lot of it tended to be "slagging" rather than being referred to as an IRA member or told to f off home.

You just have to look at the anti-Irish racism on MN to realise that it is still definitely a thing. It seems to be more acceptable as we are predominantly white. That said, most of my encounters with English people have been positive and it is certainly trendy in certain demographics.

How unpleasant are you?

Being on the receiving end of multiple aggressive racist (yes they are racist) and prejudiced comments isn’t “not having a thick enough skin”.

What a truly awful way to describe a very open person who just wanted to answer people’s curiosities without being stereotyped or shamed.

It originates from the Romany language, from the word for boy. Wider culture has adopted the word for a Romany boy to mean someone of low social status, who is coarse and brash. Yes, that's racist.

@TowerTumble , there is a lot of trouble where I live from children of the local traveller community causing damage to property and death and suffering to wildlife with catapults. We know they are traveller children because we have approached them and they have accused us of racism against travellers, also they have quite distinguishable accents (of Irish decent like yourself).
Is the use of catapults encouraged within your community and would your children shattering patio doors causing hundreds of pounds of damage or killing swans and other wildlife be acceptable to your community? If not what does your community imagine they are doing with the catapults they carry with them?

These traveller threads always end the same way sadly. The ‘rubbish thing’ is probably the one area that comes up time and time again as many many people have unfortunate experience of it. But heaping responsibility on councils that these communities don’t contribute toward is not really an answer. And let’s be clear - it’s not just a few cans and crisp packets we are talking about - it’s often gas canisters, old furniture, plastics and human waste.

A friend moved into a house that had been owned by a Traveller family before and said there was very little storage space compared to what she would have expected and the family only had one pair of shoes each, one coat each etc. Do you still keep to these kinds of standards if you have been housed Travellers for a couple of generations? (and how do you stop your kids spending their pocket money on loads of tat???!)

Thanks for this. It’s so interesting. My father in law is a very strait laced man who worked his way up in engineering and worked for the same company all his working life. He is really family oriented and values family above everything.

He was born a gypsy (lowland Scottish) and did lots of the typical men’s work as a young boy/ young adult. He can “jan the cant”, went to horse fairs every year etc but won’t ever answer questions or teach us the cant. He can spot a scam (lots of types) in no time and can scout funfairs/ point out thieves etc really well. But is so closed about his old life that it’s nice to find out more general information.

Any gypsy magazines/ texts you’d recommend? Thanks again.

I think that's a fair point, @Screamingabdabz because it's a very visible issue for many of us. I'm sure that the OP and her family aren't like this at all, but unfortunately, it's all too common. Rightly or wrongly, the community do get a bad name.
Perhaps it's just a few rogue families?

I work in a supermarket in Ireland. Why do 95% of traveller women do their shopping wearing pyjamas and dressing gowns?

Why does anyone want someone knocking on their door trying to sell them anything? People are quite capable of looking for their own companies if they want something done , that goes for charities who are knocking after donations too
And Jehovah's witnesses . Ive put a sign on my door saying no sales calls and still the idiots knock.maybe these people just cant read 🙄

I asked a question that I thought was a good one but it didn’t get answered. I was genuinely interested in what the answer would be. OP could have ignored the questions about litter or whatever if they have already been asked and answered a dozen times and focused on other ones.

I have a query, and apologies in advance if I don’t phrase this well.

We have a large group of Irish Travellers near where I live, and the young people seem to socialise in large groups on a Sunday afternoon. The teen boys are always very well dressed and smart, and the teen girls are very fancily dressed too - but the girls are often in extremely revealing clothing, with very short skirts, low tight tops and lots of “cut outs” meaning lots of skin on display.

My mental image of Traveller girls is that they are typically brought up in a more “old fashioned” way, in terms of limited mixed-sex mixing and constraints on things like dating and pre-marital sexual relationships, compared to settled people. I can’t make this square with the very sexy, revealing clothes that the girls seem to wear to go out in!

Don’t get me wrong - they look very glamorous and as though they’ve made a big effort with their appearance, but it seems at odds with (what I thought were) more conservative values around relationships. Can you shed any light please?

Thank you!

Oh sorry - I’ve just seen that the OP has quit. I don’t blame her - some of these questions were awful!

Why are you wording this as if the entire traveller community does this, instead of asking "why do some members of the traveller community do this?".