Red Haired Prejudices

I have always been partial to redheads, so have never understood why apparently some of them are subject to what could be called  'gingerism'.

Queen Boudicca Was A Formidable Redhead ... and Not A Whinger.

 

Being called 'carrot top' or 'ginger', 'copper-top', 'ginger-nut', 'ginger minger', etc doesn't seem too bad but is obviously distressing to the victims .... although being called 'a ginger tw*t' is possibly a different matter.

 

But so ingrained is this casual abuse of red-headed people that a New Labour 'right on pc message' politician, Harriet Harman, felt it was OK to use such a term about another politico (she called him a a "Ginger Rodent" ....), and got only some minor rebukes.

However that led me to wonder about how long ginger abuse has been around ... but it appears that the answer to this is related to which culture you look at ... certainly there have been many famous redheads: 

• Lilith, Adam's lover in the Bible was a redhead. 
• King David of the Israelite's
• Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe
• Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt
• Henry VIII of England
• Elizabeth I of England
• Sir Winston Churchill, WWII leader

.... and I doubt anyone dared call them 'Ginger Whingers' ... well at least not more than once.

Now I am not really able to reference proper classical sources for this, but allegedly redheads were sacrificed in ancient Egypt, and were reputed to bleed more, and be more resistant to pain (possibly because of all those sacrifices!), as well as of course having fiery tempers. In the Bronze Age, red headed girls were believed to have the 'power' to intervene with the goddesses, and wall-paintings on the Greek island of Thera (modern-day Santorini), are said to depict a number of young women, but the only one allowed to approach the goddess in the temple, is the girl with a mane of deep red hair (I couldn't see it myself, which raises the question of what colour exactly is red hair?).

There is also a fragment of a poem by the poet Xenophanes in which he describes the 'Thracians' as blue-eyed and red-haired. Herodotus described the 'Budini' tribe as being predominantly red-haired. The Roman historian Tacitus commented on the "red hair and large limbs of the inhabitants of Caledonia", which he connected with some red-haired Gaulish tribes of Germanic and Belgic areas.

There are other  references and associations in early medieval times, which sometimes associated red hair with witches and vampires. However all of this may actually go back to the dawn of Europe under homo-sapiens, as some academics have suggested that the redhead gene comes from the Neanderthals ..... Red hair is caused by a mutated MC1R gene, which is most prevalent in far northern and western Europe, and may have survived due to increased vitamin D production in pale-skinned people.

Homo-sapiens And Neanderthals Don't Share Same Red Head Gene

A DNA study has concluded that some Neanderthals had red hair, although as the mutation responsible for this colour, apparently differs from that which causes red hair in modern humans, it doesn't preclude some sort of interbreeding introducing the original variant. Now if this was homo-sapiens first interbreeding, then it may well have also spawned it's first interracial prejudices .... so being marked with red hair could have prompted comments from then until now ... We have simply lost the ribald context for the jibes, and of course, there are the redhead jokes ...

Here's a few of the jokes:

• "What's the difference between a terrorist and a redhead?"... "You can negotiate with a terrorist." 
• "Whats the difference between a ginger and a brick?"  .... "At least a brick gets laid."
• "What do you call a ginger at a party?" .... "Unwelcome."
• "What do extinct dinosaurs and Gingers have in common?" ... "Not enough"
• "What do you call a redhead with an attitude?" .... "Normal."

Well you get the picture .... none of them really moving from the theme of unattractive or bad tempered or both ..... and yet I have never found that either of these is true. Indeed to get back to the culture issue .... There is nothing like this level of abuse in the US where having red hair is not a precursor to having someone abuse you. Red hair is considered glamorous ....

Ginger Rogers Anyone?