[HPforGrownups] Re: Jenbea's sex question

[Jenett]

No: HPFGUIDX 31489

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, ftah3 wrote:
> But as to the topic, I don't think that being a wizarding world would 
> mean more or less looseness in terms of kids having sex.  The 
> allusions in the book have struck me as being fairly innocent, 
> especially based on the age group at which they're actually aimed.  

It's also worth noting that the school story genre in general, at least 
what I've read of it, tends to *very* much sort of slide over these 
issues. A lot of the older British school stories (at least the ones aimed 
at girls - I never read the male variant ones much - such as the old Enid 
Blytons and the Chalet School) sort of go from this "Well, boys are all 
very nice, and you talk to them on vacation, and you might well have 
brothers, but you don't actually want to do anything with them besides 
being polite" until, quite suddenly, you end up engaged.

The most amusing instance I can think of here is Jo in the Chalet School,
where she goes from not thinking about boys at all to being engaged to be
married with almost no mention of her having spent time with her
betrothed. Now, granted, that particular book was written in the 40s - but
my mother, who graduated from high school not more than a decade later,
was certainly more interested in boys (and did some dating) despite going
to a women's high school.

For those wondering, I'm American born, but my father was British, and my 
mother grew up there, so I grew up reading British school stories when I 
could get my hands on them. They are a quite specific genre in some ways, 
and a part of the charm of the HP novels for me *is* that they draw on 
that genre in some very interesting ways. 

Anyway, it may just be that the lack of focus on sexuality ties into some 
of the school story genre, where it somehow seems never to come up, 
really, or when it does, is seriously glossed over. It's just one of those 
things about the genre. 

I do tend to think that the argument that the faculty are keeping an eye 
on what's going on, in a basic way quite reasonable. 

To again trot out my own boarding school experience (whose policies were
on the fairly liberal end of the spectrum, as such things go), it was 
certainly possible to figure out what's going on. I had, both years, a 
single room. 

We were allowed to have visitors of the opposite gender in our rooms at 
certain times (called parietal hours) - but only if the house counsellor 
was in, and only if we went and signed them in. (We also had a special 
code with our house counsellors to use if someone was pressuring us to 
invite them up, so that our house counsellor would make up some excuse why 
that wouldn't be possible. 'I'm sorry, I need to go out in ten minutes'")

We *were* allowed to hang out in public space with no trouble (common 
room, library) or walk public places with someone. I spent a lot of my 
senior year walking slowly up to the library and back with a male 
just-friend just so we could hang out and talk easily. 

Having gone to school in a fairly cold climate (New England), I agree that
the temperature isn't very conducive to much more than walking around and
talking for much of the year. For one thing, the ground gets *cold* if it
doesn't have snow and such on it. And in New England, at least, most of
the times the ground isn't freezing, there's bugs.  There were a couple of
secluded places on the campus I went to, but they were relatively few, and
they were quite regularly patrolled by security guards and the occaisional
teacher.

At Hogwarts, I think it's reasonably safe to assume this is taken care of
by various wandering teachers, the ghosts, and the pictures.

Now, I did, in my time there, hear of a couple of date rapes, and some 
other pressure situations that weren't very pleasant. (Despite the 
attention of various people, and a mandatory date rape education class in 
11th grade) but they were fairly rare. It *was* hard to manage, however - 
and it's part of the reason date rape happened - it was very hard to 
guarantee sufficient alone time in a place where you had sufficient 
privacy for very long. 

(I'd also like to note that said school has severely cracked down on the 
problems in the above paragraph, since I left, which I consider a Very 
Good Thing. Mostly by not tolerating poor behavior that can lead up to 
that kind of pressure, and making it very clear what will and will not be 
allowed.)

-Jenett