Percy's engagement

[Jen Faulkner]

No: HPFGUIDX 26534

On Sun, 23 Sep 2001, Catlady (Rita Prince Winston) wrote:

> --- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Mindy C.L." <mindyatime at j...> wrote:
> > Ron growls by how obsessed Percy is about Mr. Crouch, he says,
> > "They should be announcing their engagement any day now." Oh my 
> > gosh, what kind of engagement are they talking about? Is this 
> > supposed to be sarcasm? A real slash romance?
> 
> It was sarcasm.  Slash romance is So Far out of Ron's idea of 
> possibilities that he can say such a thing only as an absurdity

Absolutely (though I would point out that 'slash' is not a synonym,
necessarily, for 'same-sex' since it refers to fan produced
fiction/interpretation understood as extra-canonical).  Any
interpretation other than that Ron is being sarcastic is far-fetched in
the extreme.  The statement would not have the intended effect if he
thought a romantic relationship between Percy and Mr. Crouch possible
(the stress then would be on *why* they spend so much time together, not
on the mere fact that they do).

> That it is That Far out of Ron's idea of possibilities implies that 
> he's never so much as heard of a publically acknowledged homosexual 
> relationship. 

This part of your interpretation, Rita, I have trouble with.  For a
number of reasons, I agree that the Potterverse *is* heterosexist
(though I hold out hope that it's not as much as the first four books
(may) have led us to believe -- if Justin *doesn't* turn out gay, for
instance, I will be very surprised, after all that blathering on about
Lockhart he does in CoS).  But I don't think it's necessarily fair to
attribute Ron's characterization of a homosexual relationship between
Percy and Mr. Crouch as impossible to a general 'disbelief' in same-sex
relationships, esp. specifically in long-term, 'marriage-like' ones.  

That could be one reason, certainly, but it could also be that he simply
knows that for Percy (for whom there is no evidence, despite the
numerous slash fics, that he is anything but heterosexual) a same-sex
relationship is so unlikely as to be ludicrous.

Obviously prevailing heterosexism informs that remark and is a necessary
precondition, I would think, for its utterance.  That doesn't disallow
the existence, however, of highly prominent (in terms of social position
and 'visibility') same-sex couples, or less prominent ones known to Ron
personally -- family friends or relatives, neighbors, colleagues of his
father's at the Ministry, or even teachers (whose marital status is,
after all, apparently quite the secret from the readers so far, but will
be revealed later, and thus might already be known to the students).  
Heterosexism is still rampant in our society, yet there are many
prominent, and not-so-prominent, same-sex couples.  Mere visibility is
not enough to reduce heterosexism, nor homophobia.

If you read the remark as springing from Ron's disbelief that Percy
specifically would ever be in a same-sex relationship, it actually
presupposes that Ron would otherwise consider same-sex relationships
possible for some, which then argues that he does have some knowledge of
same-sex couples.  (It needn't, of course, be knowledge coupled with
approval.)  At any rate, I don't think his remark is evidence for the
total invisibility of same-sex relationships in wizard society; if
anything, it suggests it as a conceptual possibility, that it is in fact
a part of the cultural discourse, which otherwise we should have no
reason to suspect.  But I think any speculation as yet for how those
relationships might be viewed, whether there is any understanding of
sexual orientation as an identity, etc., must of necessity be an
argument ex silentio; we simply can't know yet, but that does suggest
certain things, powerfully.

--jen :)

* * * * * * 
Jen's HP fics:
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