We asked readers about their experiences with the infamous Dutch directness

I am Dutch and since 1993 I live in the US. I came first through a professional exchange program, where I had to be introduced often, to different groups of sponsors. I often heard them introducing me as “ she is Dutch and Dutch are very blunt” it sounded almost like a badge I had to wear. Talking about being blunt! Then I started working and one day wore my Dutch pantyhose, black with lips on them. Someone came up to me and said: only whores here in the ?US wear them” . Not blunt? Yet, after all these years here, I still will hear things said to me that are not “fun” no matter how funny it is meant by those who bring it up, in describing me. Bluntness is everywhere and as a foreigner you seem to be relegated to it more often. I think I have adjusted well in this culture, having lived in Ohio, California and now Texas( every State is different in it’s culture). I love Texas, they are respectful, not phony like in CA and not stand-offish like in Ohio. But I constantly, in new situations and groups, check if I come across too blunt or too “ foreign”.

Some people confuse plain rudeness with directness. Just three of the examples are proof of the Dutch directness (1,2 &10), the rest is proof of Dutch rudeness. Dutch directness means that you say what you think without any intention to be rude or demeaning. If you ask a Dutch person out for a date and they don’t feel like it, they won’t make up an excuse. If you’ve been to a hairdresser, your Dutch friend will let you know if they don’t like your new hairstyle. Dutch people will let you know when something’s not right in your appearance: spinach between your teeth, a smudge on your coat or a booger on your nose will be reported to you. Not to embarrass you, but to keep you from further embarrassment. Directness is honesty. One of the downsides of the Dutch directness is that Dutch people are quite insensitive to careful hints or cautious suggestions. If you want to go out to a restaurant, say so. Hinting that it’s a lovely night and you feel a bit peckish will result in your Dutch friend telling you that there’s a snack bar down the street, so you can walk there and buy a kroket or frikandel.

I’m a born and raised Dutch and the examples given in this article are not an example of Dutch directness but Dutch rudeness. It shows a complete lack of empathy and general consideration. Well mannered, respectable people think it through: do not do unto others which you would not want to have done to you. There is not a Dutch person who wouldn’t feel offended by these remarks. Bad manners. BUT, I have to admit that such inconsidered harshness has become a structural part of our cultural communication. It started becoming culturally dominant after 9/11 where people decided that they should be allowed to judge Muslim behaviour in public. Naturally this created a manners/freedom of speech tension and the people wanting to badmouth Muslims took the right to free speech to the next level and made all other laws and cultural expressions inferior rendering them moot. This caused major tensions within the country but it remained. Rude counterculture, fed by anger and fear, infected regular culture when politics became nothing more than rude rhetorics. “Henk and Ingrid” , aka the angry white original cheese heads, termed by irrevocably Rude Politician the Second Geert Wilders, really mainstreamed the idea that rudeness is an acceptable and effective way of communicating in situations where you simply don’t agree with something. Alot of people feel we’ve lost the art of respectful direct communication and we’ve collectively become major a-holes in the process, all the while acknowledging that most Dutch people, when you get to know them, have a big mouth and a small heart, meaning they are generally nice and fairly accepting people.

I entered my first job in the Netherlands, and everyone there were Dutch. My two coworkers with the same position as me but with different days of work told me that they were very happy to have me there, because I was going to do the job that they didn’t like. After that, indeed they asked me to do the worst part of the job, they treated me like a slave, and they were happily doing the simplest part. I was there just for 2 weeks, and when I quit both were begging me to stay. I was traumatized!