So, the other day at an all-campus event I met a new masters student with a slight accent, and, after talking for a bit, I asked him what it was, and it turned out that he was from Dublin, and from there I was telling him how I used to have Irish roommates, and then, after he cleared that they were Irish-Irish and not Irish-American, he asked me what my perceptions of the Irish were.
"I found the culture patriarchal and fucked-up," I was like, "And they all behaved like children when drunk."
At that, the guy started pressing, and I told him that I thought Anglophone drinking cultures all tended towards binge-drinking and childish behavior, though, if I had to rank them, the Irish were the worst, followed by the English and then Americans.
"And how many Irish people have you met?", he was like.
"I don't know," I was like, "Seven."
"And you've never been there?", he was like.
"No, but I once talked to an Irish feminist activist around our age, and she agreed with me about the specific manifestations of patriarchy," I was like.
"Seven," he was like, and at that he was like, "Nice meeting you," and shook my hand and went off, fuming, before I even noticed what happened, he had drawn such a visceral reaction out of me about Irish culture.
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I think the weakest part was your evidence for patriarchy, but I'll bet you he was more upset about the binge-drinking.
Perhaps he was sorry you hadn't been to Ireland for him to show you around from pub to pub... :)
I think I told him that 3 of the 5 Irish men our age who I know and are politically progressive reserved the right to sleep around for themselves, but called any Irish girl who did the same a "whore", and that I didn't know any politically progressive German/French/British/etc. men our age who did the same thing.
Nice detail to leave out.
Dare I ask, what do you think about Italians.
They smile a lot when they make small-talk.
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