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!

No marriages are not arranged. Girls are respectful with who they choose who to marry and wouldn’t entertain a boy from a feuding family. If they want to get engaged then the boy has to ask permission from the girls father first.
Reading happens every day in life anyway and counting money ect isn’t that maths and reading?
yes they have all sorts of animals.
id say travellers have more children than gypsy’s, but it depends on the person I know gypsy’s to have 12 children.
i wouldn’t know about technology because they aren’t my kids.
i don’t know about other people but the men in my family all have legit businesses.

I had a Roma pupil who - according to her - had had two 'traditional' marriages which ended in divorce. These had taken place when she was underage according to UK law, but they'd taken place on the continent. (They hadn't been registered.)

According to her, both marriages were "because of land", so I'm assuming that they were arranged.

What about tinker ?
Is That a rude word ?
I don't give a tinkers cuss
Meaning I don't care or I'm not bothered or worried
Used to be a common saying.
Dont hear it so much now.
As a child we were told not to carry on like a pack of tinkers.
ie if being too noisy or boisterous.
I assumed from the context that tinkers were travelling musicians like minstrels who played loud.

Also is it true that men's and women's clothes are not hung on the same washing line ?

Tinker was the name given to tinsmiths and is now considered a slur.

Yes. I was shocked to hear my childminder using it as an affectionate rebuke to her mindees when I lived in England. I don't know what the connotations would be to her. When I was at school in Ireland with a lot of Traveller girls (we lived near a halting site), 'tinker' had just been replaced in officialese with the equally problematic 'itinerant'. A Traveller advocate I know slightly from a previous job, Dr Sindy Joyce, uses 'Mincéir'.

In many parts of Scotland, 'Tink' is still used as a derogatory term.

Yes I grew up hearing it, it was always a very 'cute' term, I used myself until I discovered the origin 😳

What if these girls could be neurosurgeons? They'll never find out if they aren't allowed full access to education. Not knowing what they missed doesn't count because they've been excluded from choice. That is the problem.

There is a good reason why so many people on here are going on about that. Women have been deprived of equality of opportunity for centuries, the fight to even up is still ongoing. It's great that some traveller children are staying in school and can have more choice. I also don't blame the whole community for the actions of a proportion, but the limited lives that are expected of women and girls in parts of it are not OK to us.

I also don't think that any closed community can reasonably say that abuse doesn't happen. How would you know, even forgetting the outside world?

Have a word with the council will you and see if they can build some permanent sites or pass some of our land so we can build and settle then maybe the kids can become neurosurgeons 🙄

Dont know how you expect kids to go through school when they don’t have a permanent address. Think about what you’re saying before you spout rubbish.

Why is it the council’s responsibility? If you want to settle your kids, do what most people do and pick a place, buy or rent a place, and get on with it.

I hear gypsy/traveller reels on Insta etc, they are living in either houses or caravans in England. Their children go to school. They live I believe in different parts of England.

BUT their accent seems the same. They seem to use the letter “d” where a “t” would be used.

How come they don’t pick up the local accent. What about you OP, do you know what I mean when I say this? It’s not Irish but it’s not English either.

live in a house?

the world is changing and unfortunately people need to move with it

stop making excuses and do better for your kids. traditions can be spoken about and kept in other ways, no need to deny kids a good education

I'm all in favour of decent accessible sites or people being able to use their own land.

There is at least one traveller on this thread who has said their children aren't going to school whatever because they don't approve of the curriculum. All the examples of employment you gave for women are very gender stereotyped roles. You have hit back by pointing out (rather floridly) what you think you know of the 'standards' of non travellers eg around child abuse, but can't accept any criticism of your society, however reasonable.

Stereotyping a bit here too, sorry. They seem very into labels and looking as best as they possibly can. Sometimes a bit over dressed.

Is this a means of saying “I have money and can dress well, regardless of what you think about me”?

I feel we/non-gypsies lack a sense of shame and that’s why people gone to shit in people generally not caring what they look like, not keeping the house presentable. I am presentable and tidy though

It’s not that simple. Most places you buy won’t get passed, councils aren’t being sites for people to live on and settle. Council lists are long and is you live in a trailer your not classed as homeless so you go to the bottom of the pile.

Who are you to tell people how or where to live. Some people have tried houses and it’s not for them. They can’t settle, kids miss being close to family. Some can’t live amongst non travellers because of the different cultures. People want their own places with their own kind living amongst them.

And what’s wrong with gender stereotyped roles? So what your saying is you want the women and girls to have choice and when I give examples of the women working or having their own businesses that’s not good enough because it’s too gender stereotyped 😂 save yourself the crap and admit that you don’t care about choice your just here to belittle and be sarky 👍🏼

Nothing’s wrong with them, as long as the women & girls have the choice whether they want to do beauty / fashion / catering or something like plumbing or electrics.

Some girls choose to go to work with their dad and brothers over chores so yes they do have the choice but most girls naturally want to do feminine jobs and I think that goes for all walks of life

Are you married to a relative? Such as a cousin? Do you know those who are? What is the opinion on such marriages producing children who often suffer from physical
and mental disabilities?

Does anyone here live in a trailer? If so, I've loads of questions.

I don’t but according to Insta, the folk in them don’t hoard a load of shit and they’re so simple that they look a doddle to clean. If they were freehold, and included ownership of the land (to increase in value like a house) I’d have one

Increasing thread OP.

Sorry if it's been asked already and I've missed it but do the people in your specific community cover their furniture in plastic? If so, why? Is it part of being house proud?

Thanks

Well yes that's one of my questions. Where the hell do you keep everything? Even the clothes, there isn't really wardrobe space. At Christmas I saw loads of pictures of trailers (small touring type ones) with a Christmas tree literally taking up the whole living area. Where do you sit? I love the idea of having a 'display toaster' though 🤣

A Scottish/Irish Traveller bought a plot of land opposite the high school where I worked and set it up as a site. It was originally an illegal site, but the council eventually gave it retrospective planning permission. That's happened with other plots of land in the area and there are another three council-owned sites that I can think of .

I can't speak for other parts of the country, of course, but there's certainly no barrier in our LA to Traveller children being able to stay in high school until the end of 6th Yr.

As I mentioned in a previous post there are also Traveller families choosing to stay in council houses while the men are on the road. However, they do tend to disappear at certain times during the term, notably in time to make the journey down south for Appleby.

When I was still working, we sometimes had families choosing to take the whole family to Ireland for a few months before coming back to Scotland. Accommodation was not a problem - the children had permanent addresses in the school records.

There was also the issue (not unique to Travellers) of families choosing to take the children out of school during term time in order to have holidays abroad. (They're not fined in Scotland.) We'd know because the kids would come back to school with pictures of them 'swimming with the dolphins in Florida', etc.

As with any of our pupils, we'd attempt to integrate our courses enough to allow any children who missed the SQA exam diet to achieve National 3 or 4 via the in-house assessments taken outside the SQA diet period.