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!

Whenever there; s a programme on TV about the gypsies/traveler communities the houses/caravans are always absolutely immaculate. It this pretty much normal in the communities you know or has the programme specially chosen to zone in on these homes?

I’m sure many people know this, but the vast majority of evident travellers tend to be those small clusters who move from town to town causing chaos, leaving filth, fighting, stealing etc, so people don’t realise that the majority go about their lives without issue.
I lived on the edge of an area as a child where lots of travellers had been housed in a local council area, and there were some roads you just wouldn’t dare go down, and people you wouldn’t dare cross, but the vast majority were unrecognisable as travellers, schooled as usual, had jobs etc
how do the minority of chaos causing travellers integrate with the wider traveller population? Also what has made them become like this? Do your community know/understand the history? Thanks

Hi OP
I 100pc agree that the travelling community are subject to negative stereotypes and prejudice.
Thank you for the thread

What's the most normal thing for you/your family lifestyle that others usually consider to be odd? Except for the travelling!

Romani are actually Indian, if you go back far enough.

This is an incredibly narrow minded way to look us. People from all backgrounds and communities shop lift and lay with counterfeit notes. Believing in god has nothing to do with shop lifers they come from all walks of life. I have never robbed anything in my life or paid with counterfeit notes. Some travellers commit crimes but the difference between you and I is that I don't judge a whole community of people based on a minorities actions. Perhaps try and have a conversation with a gypsy and educate yourself on what we do for the local community

Hi OP - thank you for such an interesting AMA!

I have so many questions - I remember Travellers being treated as subhuman in Ireland in the 1980s.

Which of your parents was from the Travelling community and do you think more men or women tend to marry out?

Do you speak any Pavee?

Do you describe yourself as Traveller on Census forms etc - would you ever describe yourself as Pavee or Mincéir?

Are you proud of the community members beginning to earn PhDs and so on? I used to follow Dr Sindy Joyce on Twitter before the Musk takeover.

What proportion of your friends & social circle are Travellers, would you say?

Do you feel much in common with people of Romany heritage or are they culturally and socially very different?

Did you ever hear of Grange Hill having a character who was a Traveller? This was the early 1990s I think! She was called Mary, a 'clever girl'.

Thanks for the thread OP. I work in healthcare and have always wondered how you access GP/medical care when travelling around?

I also find it fascinating to read about different cultures and practices. Apologies, but this might be specific to Roma and not Irish, but do you wash underwear separately to other clothes due to beliefs about hygiene?
If you are settled, do you have a toilet inside the house? (I believe this was never done in a caravan)
Any taboos/beliefs around menstruation/sanitary products? Can you cook meals when menstruating etc?

Do the boys learn to cook, clean & rear children too? I saw you said that homosexuality & divorce are less frowned on than they used to be so is there also less emphasis on sex-role stereotypes?

Thank you for doing this. It’s awful that people (including some on this thread) think it’s absolutely ok to say the most racist things about the travelling community that they would never dream of saying about any other group.

What do you wish people knew about your community and your culture?

Men as a whole are very respectful of women. We are well looked after and protected in the community.
Sex work is discouraged in our community heavily as it can be seen to bring shame and embarrassment to the family as well as the woman being disrespectful to her husband and not setting a good example when rearing children

I understand that there is and always has been people who want to live a different life to the rat race that most of us find ourselves in and I have absolute respect that there ARE those that do so whilst also respecting everyone else.

I know a few bad apples doesn't mean the entire cart is bad but everytime I try to feel neutral something happens which makes me judge the travelling community.

Just last week, my DCs school has been disrupted because travellers illegally moved onto the school car park and it required police and a court order to get them off. Traffic was carnage for days and the buses had to drop kids off on a busy main road instead of the school car park.

That's just fucking selfish. They now moved on, breaking in somewhere else.

Friends of ours had their pickup stolen with their dogs inside on their farm. It was eventually recovered, known travellers, dogs never found.

A few other instances of friends having dogs stolen by travellers and a few brave souls getting them back from the sites.

Driving down a dual carriageway, two poor trotting ponies pulling carts going full pelt on the tarmac followed by travellers in vehicles. As if the cruelty wasn't enough, they think they have the right to hold everyone up for 20 minutes. You can't tell me the ponies are bred to trot that fast on tarmac. Absolute total bastards.

On the news the other day about the travellers that smashed into one another killed a young boy. I mean Wtf?

That community need to do a better job of policing themselves and teaching the next generations to respect the rest of us poor sods and animals and then maybe they'll get some respect back. Until then, nope, you get respect when you earn it.

Do you think that generations below you will step away from the cultural expectations of their elders if they are growing up in settled communities rather than travelling?

Also it was often portrayed that girls are encouraged to leave school early rather than continuing with their education. Would you say that is an unfair representation?

I suppose I’m wondering if the girls and young women of today are getting all of the education and opportunities available and choosing to remain within the community. I know many of my friends distanced themselves from their religious / strict families post uni.

I have lived in Ireland for many years but actually haven't come across that many travellers. Or maybe I can't tell the difference. Seemingly native Irish people can tell if someone is a traveller or not - is that the case in the UK? Can you see if someone is a traveller just by appearence?

How closely do you identify as Irish? Do you travel back to Ireland a lot? Why do so many travellers live in the UK? (its not like the climate is better lol)

Thank you ☺️
We don't actually class our accent as Irish. It's very hard for outsiders to hear but our accent is actually different from a typical Irish accent and we tend to maintain a separate ethnic identity altogether.
Even us who go to school and integrate outside of the community have strong accents due to spending most of our time heavily within the community

We teach our children to cook, clean, rear children, how to work hard from a very young age, how to farm and grow our own vegetables

curious as to why only the females are expected to cook and clean? Surely if - as you do, lots of traveller woman hold down jobs, there’s no reason why the have to take on all of the housework too?

Mental health isn't spoken about too freely in our community. The travelling community can have a big lack of trust in the health services and police due to the judgement and prejudice we experience
There are some organisations that offer mental health support to minority groups but it's not spoken about freely and is dealt with more in the home

Final question! When you're out and about, do you ever identify other people as likely to be Travellers based on how they carry themselves/dress/style - how good is the radar, or is it increasingly hard to tell?

I'm just thinking of Northern Ireland a while back, where people used to think they could tell which community somebody came from by their style.

That's good to know.

To be fair, I don't think any culture encourages sex work! I largely did it for the experience and am now penning a thesis on it, I am from a fairly middle-class wealthy family and they'd have been nuts had they encouraged or approved, but I am fine and unscathed and a post graduate, it wasn't something I 'had' to do.
But yes, I won't forget how nice the gypsy lads were to dance for. And they threw a tip at you every five minutes and just seemed so happy. Some customers you'd not like dancing for, some were okay to dance for and then you'd get the odd ones who were a joy to do it for, and they were.

You missed my actual question

I know you said there is a lot of ignorance around gypsies/travellers but a lot of people’s only experience of them has been when they have rolled up and settled in the local park, taking over and leaving a mess on their eventual exit (example being my own local park). It’s not a very positive experience.

The programmes aren't always an accurate representation of travelling communities but when it comes to our homes we are very house proud and our homes are always immaculate

What makes you "travellers", if most of you don't travel? How would you define the "culture"? What makes you different from any other people of Irish extraction who no longer live in Ireland?

Are you married? Children?

Just because she was “English” she can still have cultural heritage and be part of the Romani community

Did you post this exact same AMA about a year ago?