Logic and Math of Sexism (WAS Article)

[Porphyria]

No: HPFGUIDX 41345

Dicentra wrote:

> It interests me to know why you find the relative paucity of developed
> female characters to be "less than satisfying," (not just Cindy but
> all the other listies who have expressed similar dismay at the
> decidedly uneven male-to-female ratio).

Because these books are complicated when it comes to everything else: 
ethics, genre, plot, metaphor, race and class, so I expect more regarding 
gender. The fact that I think it lags behind in female roles is something 
that I find disappointing, albeit not enough to ruin my pleasure with all 
the other interesting aspects.

I'm not trying to judge by some artificial standard. I suppose that I feel 
this way because I would like to see better female role models, both for 
the younger girls reading and for my own preference.  I don't think it 
hurts anyone to have a few intriguing female characters, even if we women 
can probably manage to get self esteem anyway. I don't mind that there are 
far more male characters numerically, but I think that improvements could 
be made both in adding a couple more important female characters and in 
depicting as more complex the ones that are there.

I said something about this in my last post, but to repeat, I think *a 
whole lot* of the male characters are portrayed as complex, even when they 
are minor or basically bad guys. Look at who we talk most about on the 
list even of the secondary characters. Timid, innocent Neville has a 
tragic secret in his past. He has enigmatic habits when you look at his 
character closely: he calls himself 'nearly a Squib' but really he's 
destructively powerful. Filch is a spiteful jerk who loves his cat above 
all else and suffers with shame for being a Squib in a school full of 
wizards. Does he have some tragic romance in his past? We have said a lot 
about Peter and what motivates him -- is he brave or a coward? Complicated 
question. Karkaroff is slimy, but still interesting; we wonder about his 
relationship to Krum and his involvement with the DEs. Is he going to 
return to evil out of cowardice or try to stay out of it? Lucius comes 
close to being a stereotype, but he's still kind of complicated: he tells 
Draco to act respectable and tries to keep him out of trouble, but he can'
t take his own advice. And Draco, is he redeemable, or not? Is Fudge evil 
or just a coward? These characters have interesting wrinkles to their 
personalities. They provoke debate. I think Lockhart is the only 
one-dimensional male character with a large amount of page-time. Maybe I'm 
missing some counter examples, I admit I'm writing off the top of my head.
  But it just seems to me like the grey and minor female characters don't 
have these enigmatic complexities. I don't see it in Trelawney or Skeeter 
or Hooch or Sprout or Pomfrey or Pince or Pansy. We may wonder more about 
their future roles but not so much about we already know about then. I'll 
talk more about major characters below.

Dicentra mentions that the books are about Harry's story and from his 
point of view:

> First, Harry's female schoolmates come across as one-dimensional
> because for pre-adolescent boys like Harry, they *are*
> one-dimensional, if they're on the radar at all. Parvati and Lavender
> might actually be deeper than we know, but all Harry notices is their
> giggling. Furthermore, Harry's not going to go out of his way to
> include girls in his circle of friends, nor is he going to have any
> insights about those he knows. He likes Hermione, but he certainly
> doesn't understand her.

Luckily for us, Harry's insight or lack thereof has nothing to do with how 
we read the characters around him.

I don't buy the argument that the females are only one-dimensional because 
we only see them from Harry's point of view. We don't really see the books 
through Harry's point of view. Technically it is a third person narration,
  and though the narration rarely sees stuff Harry doesn't see, it does see 
tons of stuff that Harry either doesn't care about or never muses on. 
There are many characters that we as readers see differently from the way 
Harry does since they are accompanied by a wealth of enigmatic details 
that we can interpret differently from Harry. These characters do tend to 
be male.

Take Snape for instance. Harry hates Snape, and does not care much to 
figure him out. Harry mostly cares about Snape when he feels his life is 
threatened. Harry worries that Snape is trying to kill him and he worries 
that Snape will betray Dumbledore and he worries about his Potions grade. 
Understandably, of course! But Harry does not say to himself 'gee, I 
wonder if Snape puts on an act for the students since he seems different 
when he doesn't think anyone's watching him.' He never wonders why Snape 
joined or left the Death Eaters and he never wonders if he's really after 
the DADA post or if it's just a rumor. But *we* do, and we're interpreting 
by a lot of hints that Harry sees too but they just don't interest him.

It works the same with characters Harry likes. Take Lupin and Sirius. We 
can argue that Lupin is passive-aggressive, or non-compliant, or has such 
an awfully black sense of humor that someone might misinterpret it and 
distrust him. Harry doesn't think these things for an instant. But Harry 
and ourselves have the same observations about him. Likewise, we can argue 
that Sirius is maybe a little too reckless to be a good godfather, and we 
can wonder if maybe he mishandled the Secret-Keeper responsibility. But 
Harry loves him without caring about or remarking on this stuff. He doesn'
t have exceptional insight into these guys either, even though he cares 
about them, so again we are not restricted by his concerns or interests. 
Same with Hagrid -- does Harry debate Hagrid's teaching skills or his 
trustworthiness? No, but we have more than enough details available to 
develop our own concerns and judgments.

Same with the minor characters I listed above. Harry is not particularly 
fascinated by Neville or Peter or Fudge or even Draco. But we have enough 
information about them in spite of Harry to find them that way ourselves.

So my point is why couldn't it be the same for a female character? Why 
couldn't the narrative drop a lot of enigmatic little hints about 
McGonagall or Molly or Narcissa some other female character to make you 
think that maybe there's more to her than what Harry thinks, maybe he's 
misinterpreted her or underestimated her because he just doesn't care, 
because he's taken no stock in the details the reader sees. Granted, we do 
wonder about the future roll of Ginny and what we'll find out about Lily, 
but this is pretty light compared to what we wonder about Snape.

I find McGonagall the most oddly underdeveloped character. I think Harry, 
boy or not, should be at least interested in the person who is his own 
Head of House and who teaches an important class he takes every year and 
who has shown favor towards him (bought him a broom, got him on the team 
early, went lightly on him over the Anglia incident). In theory he could 
half-notice her doing or saying something that might make her seem 
enigmatic or compelling or complex, even if he didn't care enough to 
interpret it. She just doesn't have Edge, she's not sexy from an adult 
point of view, we don't speculate much about her backstory. Again, we do 
do these things about Snape, Sirius and Lupin even though Harry couldn't 
care less. My attraction to the Evil!McGonagall theory, however farfetched 
it is, is that it makes her secondary, underdeveloped quality seem 
deliberate and gives her some juiciness. But I suspect JKR intends her to 
be good after all.

> Second, part of the story JKR is telling deals with Harry's growth
> from boy to man. Boys usually have their fathers as role models, but
> Harry's father is absent, so the fictional world handily presents
> Harry with a gamut of model fathers from which to choose: Dumbledore,
> the wise old man; Snape, the strict, mean father; Uncle Vernon, the
> anti-father; Sirius and Lupin, ideal fathers that are just out of
> reach; Voldemort, Harry's potential dark side. It is common in
> literature to fragment a single role into several people. Keeping in
> mind their function in Harry's psychological development, could you
> swap out any of these men for a woman?

Yes. I don't think the world would end if Harry had a female "father 
figure" in any of these roles. A woman can be wise and old, or perfect but 
exiled, or strict and mean, or a shadow side or whatever. I don't see that 
these have to be biologically male to be compelling or to fulfill the 
narrative function. Why isn't Hooch more of a role model? Harry loves 
Quidditch and he dreams of playing professionally. But the one time Hooch 
goes on and on about the advantages of one broom over another she bores 
the boys and they're happy when she falls asleep. I don't see why a 
Quidditch coach couldn't be portrayed as a mentor to a boy who loves the 
sport so much. And McGonagall is his Head of House, and a big Quidditch 
fan herself. Isn't that a potential mentor position? Why can't her 
sternness-but-fairness contribute to his psychological development? 
Granted, it might not be his first inclination to go to her for support, 
but there's no reason that the text couldn't be written in such a way that 
he has to rely on her here and there and gets to know her better that way.

> Furthermore, if Harry had been Harriet, I'm sure McGonagall and the
> other female professors would figure much more prominently than they
> do now. Take Hermione, for example. Who would we name as her primary
> mentor? McGonagall, of course. Trelawny would also figure in as a
> negative example, and other female professors would have enlarged roles.

I don't believe that Hermione would totally fail to take an interest in 
her male teachers and mentors, especially since her best friends are boys.
  I think she'd notice both. I would find a book that was overbalanced 
towards strong female characters to be frustrating and 
not-as-good-as-perfect as well.

> Third, you can't help but notice the "Hero's Journey" archetype that
> informs much of the series' action. In the Hero's Journey, the young
> man leaves home (and his mother, by extension) and searches for The
> Father. Along the way there's the wise old man who gives him advice
> and/or a talisman, and the women he meets are either soothsayers that
> help him along or temptresses. He often does find a woman worthy of
> him at the end, and once he's found The Father he has also acheived
> maturity. Again, as in the second point, Harry is on the road to
> manhood, and all these father archetypes are helping him in one way or
> another to become a man. Even Snape.

The books definitely partake of the Heros' Journey archetype, as well as 
fairy tale and epic, but they mix them up with that of mystery, boarding 
school, humor of all types and definitely satire. Have we not agreed this 
is genre soup? They mix up our expectations and leave us guessing in so 
many ways. I think they could get away with mixing up some gender types 
too. In some ways the books are extremely progressive -- witches *are* 
just as powerful as wizards and apparently have been considered so since 
Hogwarts was founded. And this is the series that was imaginative enough 
to bring us the Pensieve, omnioculars, Ten Tongue Toffee and Blast-End 
Skewrts. I think it can afford to have a few female father figures, or 
just female mentors. Harry can only achieve manhood with the help of men? 
In the late 20th century, in a WW society which isn't very sexist and in 
an atmosphere like Hogwarts that doesn't care about income, race or 
parenthood? I don't think it would be a stretch.

> I suppose you can stand back and notice who is in power in the WW: the
> MoM, the Headmaster, etc. But is this "male dominance" a result of
> suppressing females or is it just the way things happen to be at this
> juncture?

I for one am less bothered by this aspect. I'm more concerned about page 
time than who are the powerful figures in the background. I appreciate 
that there have been female headmasters at Hogwarts and that there are 
female professional Quidditch players and so forth. That's great. But yes,
  personally, I'm more interested in the characters that the text makes a 
big deal out of, the ones who are important to the story.

> As a last point, I have to side with Jai Marie: these fictional
> characters have universal qualities. I never cared if the main
> characters in the books I read were male or female--I just wanted a
> good read.

Well, if they have universal qualities, then it shouldn't matter if they 
are biologically male or female. So why so many males? I'm not saying that 
there should be a 50/50 gender ratio, but if you are saying on the one 
hand that Harry is the necessarily male Hero of the Hero's journey and he 
needs all these specifically male father figures, then I don't see how it 
follows logically that gender suddenly doesn't matter in the end.

> So to get back to the question: do you think that the imbalance
> between male and female characters constitutes a failing in the books?
> Are you afraid girl readers are going to wonder if they're important
> after reading HP? And given that Harry's going to have normal
> hormones, do you think he'll start to see girls as more than
> one-dimensional? (All too many real-life men don't, even after
> they've grown up.) :D

I wish the books, progressive, imaginative and genre-bashing in so many 
other ways could add more complex female characters even if Harry didn't 
notice them as much as the reader. And yes I do have every hope that as 
the series gets more developed, dark and complicated that better developed 
female characters will emerge. I'd be delighted if this argument were 
irrelevant after OoP.

And if Harry can save the world, then he can have a two, yea even 
three-dimensional image of women. :-) We can hardly expect less from our 
Hero.

~~Porphyria


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