Ginger and Re: Gingerism, gingerphobia

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Aug 11, 2013, at 11:57 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> On Aug 11, 2013, at 12:37 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> 
>> I received a kind e-mail this morning saying Nexis has "gingerism" to 1998 apparently of British origin.
>> 
>> Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gingerism) has it to 1997 and labels it British.
>> 
>> My earliest recollection of hearing the word "ginger" is within the past five years
> 
> I think I encountered "ginger" as a color term for cats (the ones we call orange) before encountering it for redheads (i.e. humans), either from British neighbors or novelists.
> 
> 
>> , so I suspect that "ginger" itself entered general American English with the South Park episode "Ginger Kids" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_Kids) in 2005, though maybe I've just been out of the loop.
>> 
>> Gingerism/gingerphobia is interesting because AFAIK, unlike racism and homophobia, nobody actually believes that people with red hair are actually different, other than the red hair itself (and perhaps accompanying sensitive skin). Nevertheless, http://gingerism.com/ chronicles cases of gingerism, including at least one that seems to genuinely be fueled by nonginger supremacism (the attacker was drunk at the time, "Random Assault for Being Ginger-haired").
> 
> 
> cf. "X beat Y like a red-headed stepchild", with "stepchild" presumably standing for "bastard"--one with the same red hair as X's milkman.  Not in good fun in that case.
> 
> LH

Taunting is certainly not in good fun; the problem is that it's difficult to pin someone down for saying it because they can claim it was in good fun, and a red-headed child who complains can become the victim again when adults say the child is being too sensitive over something so minor as hair color.

At http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-red2.htm, "beat like a red-headed stepchild" is discussed, and the claim is made that red-headed people are thought to be ill-disciplined, so perhaps I was wrong in believing that gingerism differs from racism and homophobia.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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