Does JKR's portrayal of woment combat sexism?

[judyserenity]

Lots of very interesting comments on this thread!  I don't know if I
will have time to respond to everything, so I decided to respond to
Cindy first, since she asked some very good questions.

Cindy said:
> there's a fair chance that there isn't much disagreement among the 
> participants of this thread after all.   
> Let's find out, shall we?  ;-) ...
> OK, then.  We all want to see thoroughly developed female
characters 
> in a variety of roles.  I suspect everyone would object to having 
> *all* of the female characters be throw-away, unimportant 
> characters.  That's progress, that's progress.

Yep!

> That leaves the question of whether "token" female characters (that 
> is, female characters who are just there, not doing anything 
> notable -- placeholders, if you will) are harmful or helpful in a 
> work that already has thoroughly developed female characters.  The 
> Helga Hugglepuffs, the Mafalda Hopkirks, the Madame Maximes, I 
> guess.  
> 
> You know, my feeling is that I do not have a problem with "token" 
> female characters under these circumstances, and their presence 
> doesn't tick me off.  The reason is that books have major
characters 
> and minor characters. 

Yes, a few "token" characters would be fine with me, if there were a
variety of well-developed female characters as well. 

> That suggests to me that the problem with HP so far is *not* the 
> presence of token women characters.  It is the lack of thoroughly 
> developed and important female characters, IMHO.  

Well, yes and no.  Yes, I feel that the lack of thoroughly developed,
important female characters is the main problem. However, *given* that
there is a lack of fully developed female characters in
non-traditional roles, I think it might be better not to have those
token female characters at all. Having token female characters might
send the message that even when women are allowed to occupy any social
role, they still are unimportant. Admittedly, I really don't know of
any data on this issue, it's just a gut feeling.


Ok, now on to all those maternal issues things. 

Cindy said:
> If our goal is to bolster the self-esteem of young girls so that
they > will take pride in becoming mothers, then  you do have a point.
> I just don't think that should be our goal.  Many generations of 
> women have been raised to believe that they ought to aspire to 
> becoming first-rate homemakers and mothers.  I really don't see
that 
> we need to push young girls further in that direction.  It has 
> already been done.
>
> I think it is far more important to encourage young girls to "think 
> outside the box" -- to imagine themselves as influential in 
> government, influential in business, or accomplished in whatever 
> field they choose.  

Ah, I think I see what the disagreement here is. I'm envisioning a
two-step (or multi-step) process, where children develop some general
ideas early in life -- their feelings towards themselves, their view
of their parents -- and then don't choose a career path until later in
life.  Since the Harry Potter series is fantasy, I'm assuming it
doesn't really have much influence on the actual college and career
decisions adolescents make as they approach adulthood. I think that by
age 14 or 15, kids are more influenced in their career choices by
actual people they see (in real life, or on the news, say), than they
are by witches and wizards in a fantasy book. 

So, I see the Harry Potter books as mostly influencing younger
children's overall views of men and women, not as influencing older
kids' actual career choices. My idea is that if a young (age 11, say)
girl develops a positive view of women in general and of herself in
particular, she will be more confident in her ability to follow a
challenging career, should she see an inspiring real-life example of
one later on. I think the particular jobs she sees women doing don't
have much of an influence at this stage, as long as they lead her to
view women in general, and herself, positively. (This two-stage model
may fit better in the US than in England, because it seems adolescents
choose career paths much earlier in England than they do in the US.) 

Also, I don't see Molly Weasley as influencing girls *not* to have
careers. True, Molly appears to be a "stay at home mom."  However, I
think her "momness" is a lot more salient than her "stay at homeness."
 (In fact, I'm not even 100% certain she *is* a full-time mom.  Maybe
she's writing a novel or something.) In other words, I think Molly
Weasley sends a good message about motherhood, but I'm not convinced
she sends a bad message about women who work. If she went around
ranting and raving about how awful it is for women to work, it might
be a different story. 


I said:
> > Hmm, I'm not convinced that girls necessarily view the maternal 
> >role positively.  I certainly didn't while I was growing up. 
 
And Cindy said:
> It does seem reasonable that some girls may not view the maternal 
> role positively.  As you say, this can vary depending on a girl's 
> own family situation.  Fair enough.
> What I don't understand is what JKR is supposed to do about this. 
I 
> really don't follow you here at all.  If a girl has a father who is 
> hostile to the women in the girl's life, I fail to see how dozens
of 
> Molly Weasley characters will change the girl's perception of the 
> maternal role at all.

It would tell the girl, "Hey, not all men beat their wives and treat
them like dirt. Some mothers actually get a say in how their
households are run." Now, this message would presumably be a lot less
powerful than what the girl was seeing in her own life, but that would
be true no matter what the JKR books (or any books) said.  And, I
wouldn't underestimate the power of a positive example of family life.
 I remember hearing one of the US Presidents - it was probably Gerald
Ford - saying how when he was growing up, his father twice took him
out to the woodshed and hit him with a belt. This was a real
eye-opener for me. It was the first piece of information I had that
other fathers didn't hit their kids with belts as a regular habit. (It
would have had even more of an influence if Pres. Ford had said that
his father never hit him with objects, but that isn't what he said.) 


I said:
> > And, I think the role of mother should be held in higher regard in
our society than it currently is. < <

Cindy said:
> Maybe I just don't have a clear idea of what you mean by "higher 
> regard" for the role of mother.  I mean, we already have 
> discrimination laws on the books to protect women from 
> discrimination while pregnant, and we have federal laws like the 
> Family and Medical Leave Act to provide child care leave.  I could 
> list several other laws and measures to assist mothers (child 
> support laws, for instance).  Can you provide some examples of what 
> you are advocating that you think would enhance society's regard
for 
> motherhood?  
> 
> I'm having trouble understanding the argument, I think.  Maybe the 
> problem is that I really don't see why a mother is entitled 
> to "higher regard" in society than a woman who chooses not to have 
> children or cannot have children.  Or a man who chooses to be a 
> father, for that matter.  I just don't get it.

Oh no, I'm not saying that mothers should be held in higher regard
than men, or than women with no children. (I think a wide variety of
roles are useful to society, and there should be respect for all sorts
of contributions people make.) I'm saying mothers should be held in
higher regard *than they are now*. 

What are my reasons for thinking that motherhood is held in low
regard?  More than anything else, I think the debate over welfare
reform has convinced me that motherhood is not respected. The whole
premise of the debate seemed to be that children are a burden, and
that the goal should be to reduce the number of children born. The
idea that having and raising children is a positive contribution to
society seemed to be largely left out of the debate. I remember one
Congressman being asked what would happen to little kids if their
mothers had to work. He said maybe a neighbor could look in once in a
while and check up on them! (As if raising a kid was as easy as taking
care of a dog.) I also remember a particular quote by Newt Gingrich.
(Hey, there's someone we can probably all agree on!) He said that
mothers receiving assistance (even if it was just food stamps) were
free-loaders who "should get out of the wagon and push."  There seemed
to be general agreement in Congress that flipping burgers was a more
productive use of a mother's time than caring for her kids, and that
taking moms from their kids and having them work in minimum wage jobs
was "progress." 

Now, I know the debate on welfare didn't *just* have to do with
motherhood. It had a lot to do with race, and also with negative views
of the poor. But, if motherhood were respected, I don't think
politicians could have gotten away with saying the things that they
did.  

Cindy, you seem to be saying that society expects girls to grow up to
be mothers, that there is a certain amount of societal pressure on
women to be mothers. And I agree completely -- there is pressure on
women to be mothers. However, that doesn't mean the maternal role is
respected; it is unfortunately quite possible for a group to be
pressured into a role that commands little respect.  So, I see
pressuring women to be mothers as largely separate from fostering
respect for motherhood.  

I think if we want to make women feel OK about *not* being mothers,
then what we need are positive models of women who are not mothers. I
think the JKR books aren't particularly helpful for women who aren't
mothers, but the problem isn't Molly Weasley.  The problem is a lack
of good adult female characters without children.

I think there may be a big difference in how people read McGonagall,
and some of the other adult female characters. I see McGonagall, and
also Madame Pince, as being strict and uptight. So, to me, they
actually seem to conform to a negative stereotype of unmarried or
childless women: the rigid, dried-up spinster. This may be why I just
don't see them as positive role models of women without children.  I
want to be clear, I'm not saying JKR *shouldn't* have positive
examples of women with no children, I'm just saying that she *doesn't*
have positive examples of women with no children, at least not well
developed ones.

Other people may be interpreting these characters differently, which
may be why some people see the Harry Potter books as providing good
role models of women in non-traditional roles when I don't. Certainly,
Madame Hooch was interpreted in a vibrant and positive way in the
movie, while I didn't get much of a feeling from her at all in the
books. 

Ok, out of the Harry Potter books, and back into real life -- 

Cindy said:
> I mean, we already have discrimination laws on the books to protect
women from discrimination while pregnant, and we have federal laws
like the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide child care leave. I
could list several other laws and measures to assist mothers (child
support laws, for instance). Can you provide some examples of what you
are advocating that you think would enhance society's regard for
motherhood?<

To some extent, I am concerned with attitudes instead of policy, which
is why I like things such as positive portrayals of motherhood in the
media.  (OK, so I am back to Molly Weasley again!) 

There are some policy changes I'd definitely like, though. I talked
about welfare "reform" as something I particularly objected to. To be
clear, I agree that the previous welfare policies had some bad side
effects. What I'd like to see is across-the-board government support
for children, such as many European countries have. Changing the
"Earned Income Tax Credit" to just a credit for children, regardless
of whether the child had a working parent, would be good.

I'd like a lot more support for college education.  That's a huge
burden that I think parents bear too much of.  

I actually think there could be a lot of improvement in child support
laws. Currently, many states put priority on enforcing cases where the
father owes the state money (usually as welfare reimbursement.) 
Often, there is not enough staff left over to enforce cases where the
money is going directly to the children and custodial parent.  The
result is that a lot of child support enforcement only benefits the
states financially, not children or mothers. I think cases where the
support goes to the family should be given at least equal priority. 

I have a particular problem with the way the child neglect laws are
enforced.  As far as I can tell, non-custodial parents are almost
never charged with neglect if a something bad happens to a child.  I
remember one case in Detroit where a family's heat was turned off due
to lack of payment. The mother (there was no father in the home) tried
to keep her baby warm with a space heater. Unfortunately, the baby's
blanket caught fire and the baby was hurt. The mother grabbed the baby
and ran to the emergency room, leaving her other children behind.  She
was charged with abuse for the burn to her baby, and neglect for
leaving the other children behind. The father wasn't charged with
anything. In effect, the mother was punished for staying with the
children instead of abandoning them like the father did. (I don't know
if the mother was convicted, but even being charged with abuse is a
form of punishment.) In this particular case, I think no one should
have been charged with neglect, and the heat shouldn't have been
turned off in the first place.  In some other cases, though, I think
the non-custodial parent should bear more responsibility if the
children are neglected. 


Anyway, maybe this gives some idea of what I'd like changed regarding
society's treatment of mothers. I'd like to ask a parallel question,
concerning the goal of giving women access to traditionally male jobs.
I do not feel that this battle has been won, contrary to the
impression I might have given. I actually feel that there is still
substantial sex segregation in the workplace.  However, I feel women's
gains in the workplace have mostly leveled off.  Given that equal
opportunity legislation has been around since the 1960's, and is
enforced reasonably well (AFAIK), I'm not sure what else can be done
about desegregating the workplace. This is one of the reasons why I
think feminists should focus on other areas.  

So, let me ask anyone who wants to give women equal access to
traditionally male jobs, are there additional policies that you feel
would help this goal?  Or, do you think it's more a question of
providing positive role models for girls?  (Or something else?)


Ok, the rest of this isn't related to the questions Cindy just asked,
but I had already written it, so I might as well post it.  

I said: 
>I've certainly gotten the message that other women here believe that
division of labor is the key to problems facing women....<
And said I wanted to talk about: 
> whether division of labor is the cause of problems such as violence
against women, and whether, as a result, feminists should focus on
division of labor as their main issue.

Amy said:
> I haven't heard anyone on here suggesting either of these things.< 
AV said:
> Well, I think you're oversimplifying some other peoples' positions
here. I certainly do not believe division of labor is *the* key. I
think there are many keys, and that is one of them.<

I *thought* some of the other participants here (Naama, maybe?) were
saying that division of labor is the key.  Looks like I misunderstood
at least some people's views; sorry.  It can be really hard to figure
out exactly what's people's positions are, using this medium. 


I said: 
> > What David describes - a profession losing respect because women
joined it, resulting in men abandoning that field - is in fact well
documented. << 

Amy gave a lot of extremely interesting details about how this was
avoided in her field, Unitarian Universalist Ministry.  (Did I get the
name right, Amy?)   AV said this hadn't happened in her field
(editing, I think?) Cindy said it hadn't happened in her field of law,
and questioned whether this had really happened in pharmacy.

This is a complicated issue.  I had previously considered saying more
to try to make my beliefs clearer, but I figured I had gone on long
enough.  I don't think *all* fields will suffer a loss of prestige and
salary if women join.  For example, I think politics will always be
prestigious, in the sense of being high status and relatively well
paid.  It's an intrinsically powerful job, so it will appeal to people
of both genders no matter how many women are in the field.  (At least,
I expect it will work that way.  We'll see how things go in Iceland.)
 Law may be another field that will always attract people of both
genders, because it confers power.  Medicine is another possibility -
it may not confer a lot of *political* power, but doctors have a lot
of power over people's health.  It's possible that ministry fits into
this category, too - ministers have a lot of influence - but it's also
seems possible to me that Amy's church is somewhat unusual in its
commitment to paying both genders equally.  From what I know of the UU
Church (correct me if I'm wrong Amy), its adherents tend to be pretty
liberal (or progressive) politically. 

Actually, I think it's very good for women to try to get into these
sorts of influential jobs - politics, law, ministry, journalism, etc.
  What I feel is less useful is for feminists to put a lot of effort
into getting women into traditionally male-dominated jobs that don't
confer much influence or power, such as truck driver, carpenter,
garbage collector, coal miner, assembly line worker, lumberjack, etc.
 Now, before I get truck drivers (etc.) mad at me, I'm not saying
there's anything wrong with these jobs.  And, I'm sure some of them
would be very satisfying (I think I know people who would *pay* to do
carpentry) and therefore it might be a big loss personally for a woman
who was excluded from these jobs. But, suppose one has the goal, as I
do, of changing the world in ways that help women - for example, by
making rape and domestic violence less acceptable, or getting more
help for single mothers.  If that is the goal, I think a focus on
getting women into jobs such as coal miner, truck driver, etc. is
mostly (or even totally) a waste of effort.

Or, to put it another way, suppose I could wave a magic wand and put
more women into traditionally male jobs.  But, suppose I could do only
*one* of the following two things.  I could give one million women
jobs without political power (such as truck driver, coal miner, etc.)
*or* I could give the US presidency, plus 50 seats in the US Senate
and 200 in the US House of Representatives, to women.  I'd go with the
251 political positions, not the one million non-political jobs, even
though the one million non-political jobs would go much further,
numerically, towards equalizing the division of labor.  This is what I
meant when I said that I think division of labor isn't all that
important.  (Yeah, I know it would be undemocratic to reserve
political positions for women, and I'll vote for a pro-feminist man
over an anti-feminist woman any day.  It's just a hypothetical.) 

Cindy had previously said:
>You know what I think might be going on here? It seems that your
argument is focusing quite a bit on achieving equality and fundamental
fairness *between groups.*< 

Yep, that's exactly what I'm interested in.  I feel that in many
societies, men "gang up" on women, and set up policies that advantage
men as a group, while disadvantaging women as a group. The Taleban
was, of course, an extreme example of this.  Fortunately, nothing that
extreme has happened in the US.  However, it's still the case that
most people making policy in this country are men, and I think a lot
of the policies made give men an advantage over women.  An example I
gave in an earlier post was divorce law, which I feel is (probably
unintentionally) designed to reflect men's interests. That's the sort
of thing I want to change. 

I want to make it clear that I do care about individuals.  For
example, I'm on a pro-Tibetan mailing list, where there are a lot of
claims that China is engaging in "cultural genocide" against Tibetans.
 I actually think China is being completely unsuccessful at
suppressing Tibetan culture, due at least partly to the fact that the
Chinese can't decide whether they want to suppress Tibetan culture, or
celebrate it and encourage it.  However, even if the Chinese were
successfully suppressing Tibetan culture, I would still see that as
much less bad than killing Tibetan people. (Fortunately, there isn't
much of that in the past decade or so, either.) I care about what
happens to the human beings, and not much about what happens to the
culture.  Either way, though, the conflict between Chinese and
Tibetans is fundamentally a group conflict, and can only be understood
(and perhaps fixed) by analyzing it on a group level. It isn't just a
collection of individual conflicts between people who happen to be
Chinese or Tibetan; it's a conflict between groups. 

I'd say much of this conversation applies to women as a group.  The
original question - "Does JKR do a good job of portraying women?" -
focuses on women as a group.  Several people have seem to be saying
that women are less powerful than men are because women have less
money; those claims clearly focus on women as a group. 

I think a lot of our other disagreements here follow from the
difference in individual versus group focus. For example, when I said,
"If we want equal respect for women, we need respect for
childbearing," I meant equal respect for women as a group, not
necessarily the respect Margaret Thatcher or any other particular
woman receives. 

Cindy continued
> If I'm reading your remarks correctly, I think this focus on group
advancement could be where we have a difference of opinion. If all
women are directed to law and all men are directed to medicine, and
the career prospects in these fields are identical, I would see a
*big* problem there, whereas I gather that you would not. <

Well, I would see it as a problem, but it wouldn't be high on the list
of problems that I feel I should be personally working towards
solving.   Mostly, this is because I feel only a small fraction of the
human race gets to pick their careers in the first place, and for many
people, work is not the most important part of their life anyway. So,
I don't think that getting rid of gender barriers in the workplace
would provide meaningful work for all that many people.  

Cindy continued:
> I fail to see why we should ignore the problems of the professional
woman if we are not convinced that addressing her problems will
improve the lot of all women as a group.<

It's fine it someone wants to focus on this problem; it's just not
what I want to do.  There are lots of serious problems that I'm not
working on. I'm not doing anything to find a cure for AIDS, even
though I realize that AIDS is an extremely serious problem. 

But more generally, focusing on improving the lot of women as a group
is what I want *feminists* to do.  If a problem doesn't specifically
affect women as a group, then what makes it a feminist issue?  

When I was in grad school, I spent a fair amount of time on feminist
issues. (Gee, what a surprise!) I had a friend, Greg, who was very
concerned about nuclear war and wanted me to put my time into nuclear
disarmament instead.  He'd argue that nuclear disarmament *was* a
feminist issue, because if there were a nuclear war, a lot of women
would be killed.  I was not in the slightest convinced by this
argument.  Besides the fact that I thought his approach to avoiding
nuclear war was extremely naïve, there was a more general issue --
he
seemed to think problems that specifically affected women shouldn't be
addressed until *all* problems that affect humanity in general were
fixed.  With this approach, I don't see how anyone would ever get
around to addressing women's issues. 

Cindy said:
>just speaking for myself, I would be *much* more interested in
policies and programs that made being a stay-at-home mom *easier* than
those that tried to make others respect that choice.<

Oh, me, too, absolutely.  I?m interested in what policies you and
others here think would be helpful

Cindy continued:
>Stay-at-home moms have no income, so I was refused a [disability
insurance] policy outright. This is the sort of pointless restriction
that discourages people from staying home with their kids.<

I think the problem here is that insurers find it relatively easy to
tell if someone has stopped working at paid employment, but find it
difficult or impossible to tell if a homemaker has stopped cooking,
cleaning, and caring for children. In other words, I suspect insurers
don?t want to cover any non-paid work because they have no way to
guard against fraud. Also, insurers are very wary of any health or
disability policy that is underwritten on an individual, rather than
an employee group, basis. They are concerned that people seeking these
policies may already be ill. Denial of insurance is a big problem for
many groups of people. I tend to see the solution here as extending
Social Security benefits to disabled full-time caretakers.


On the topic of what term to use for mistreatment of women, I said I'd
like to use the term "sexism" for that, and asked:
>> If there is no term that specifically refers to mistreatment of
women, then won't that problem become invisible? <<

and Jennifer Boggess Ramon replied::
>No. It's certainly not invisible to women, and never has been. The
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is not that strong! But it's moot, as there is
a word with that specific meaning; as Athena has already pointed out,
it's "misogyny".<

I don't think misogyny is the term I want. Misogyny is defined as the
hatred of women, not just as any situation that leads to women being
disadvantaged as a group.  At the very least, misogyny refers to
deliberate mistreatment of women. I want a word that refers to
anything that has the effect of making women as a group worse off than
men, whether it's deliberate or not.  The term "misogyny" also assumes
a certain cause (hostility on the part of men), when I want a word
that makes no assumptions as to cause.

As for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - for those who don't know, this is
the theory that people have a hard time thinking about something
unless they have a word for it.  My claim was that if there is no word
for mistreatment (or oppression or whatever) of women as a group, then
women (and men) will tend not to recognize situations where women as a
group are mistreated. Jennifer is (if I understand her right) saying
that women *will* notice mistreatment of women as a group, even if
there is no word for it.  This is an empirical question - that is, it
should be possible to answer it via research.  I think there is
specific research on this issue, but I don't remember it offhand.  I
can say that in general, most women don't have a strong identification
with women as a group - that is, they think of themselves primarily as
Republicans or Americans or Baptists, rather than primarily as women.
 Men are even less likely to identify with men a group.  This would
suggest that mistreatment due to gender is not that easily noticed.

Prolix!Judy