ADMIN: Possible Threat to HPfGU lists

[jwcpgh]

> Linnea:
<snip> If the group is in danger of being summarily deleted for 
references to the seduction of a minor by an adult, then we need to 
pause and think again about our need to read and write about it.
> 
> While it is a little less fun for some it's better for us all if,
> under the circumstances, we leave such sexual implications for 
private conversations. 

Laura:

I emphatically disagree.

Sexuality and its ramifications are time-honored topics of literary 
analysis.  The sexual subtexts of the HP books are many and varied, 
and that's one of the elements of the books that makes them real and 
compelling.  Writing truthfully about adolescence without some 
reference to sexuality, either overt or between the lines, is 
impossible.  Ask an adolescent.  There's a reason why young adult 
fiction is different from juvenile fiction. We'd worry about a 
teenager who wasn't wrestling with his or her sexuality-that's part 
of the job of growing up.  Harry and friends are doing just that in 
a very normal and healthy way.  

As for the Bellatrix/Harry ship, there's a long literary tradition 
of the older, more worldly, experienced woman initiating a younger 
male into the ways of sexuality.  Sometimes it's a gentle, kind 
initiation and sometimes it's stormy and wild.  But it's hardly 
unheard of.  

When the admins posted the original message about the threat to the 
lists, I understood the point to be that someone was acting 
maliciously.  That implies that there is no good reason behind their 
actions.  What we do or don't do on the main list has no bearing on 
whatever that person's grudges may be.   We have a volatile 
situation in which some person has the capacity to do a lot of 
damage via an ISP which, according to many posts, is arbitrary and 
unresponsive.  Avoiding certain topics on the list isn't going to 
make the problem go away, because that's not the problem in the 
first place.  

We all know that HP is susceptible to attacks from all kinds of 
closed-minded people for all kinds of spurious reasons.  If the 
American Library Association is prepared to defend the books, I 
think we should be as well.  Defending the books includes defending 
our right to discuss them fully.  If it can't be on Yahoo, we'll 
find somewhere else.  But the discussion shouldn't stop.  And 
listees shouldn't feel that we have to tiptoe around certain 
topics.  It's bad enough that enemies of these books want to crush 
discussion about them.  Let's not encourage its friends to do the 
same thing.

Laura