Sexuality in HP

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 40404

I've divided this response up into two separate ones, as I think
that the issues of homoeroticism, sadism, and how Voldemort feels
about women are probably best separated from my analysis of how
authorial decisions regarding word choice and phrasing effect how
we read the Graveyard scene.  This post deals with the first body
of issues; its follow-up deals with the second question.


Dicentra wrote:

> There's no doubt in my mind that Voldemort is getting off on 
> something here. I just don't think the erotic imagery is 
> necessarily pointing to homoeroticism, per se. 

No.  I didn't really mean to imply that.  I do see strong homoerotic 
overtones to Riddle and Harry's encounter in the Chamber, but 
Voldemort's behavior in the graveyard strikes me as more purely 
sadistic.

The way that Riddle is depicted in the Chamber does speak to me of a 
certain degree of homoeroticism.  JKR seems to be going out of her 
way to describe him as behaving in a self-consciously flirtatious and 
seductive manner.  She also focuses on details, like those long 
fingers, that carry with them rather sensual connotations.

One might just as easily, however, read Riddle's interest in Harry as 
narcissistic, rather than as homoerotic.  Harry does somewhat 
resemble him, after all, as did James, in whom he also seems to have 
paid an unusual degree of physical attention.  By the time of the 
confrontation in the chamber, Riddle already knows that his fate is 
inextricably intertwined with Harry's.  The "double" aspect of their 
relationship is not merely a literary device; it is one that the 
characters themselves -- Riddle included -- comment upon.  So the 
possibility that what we are seeing there is pure and simple 
narcissism also seems quite convincing to me.  Riddle is a 
megalomaniac, after all.  It's an inherently narcissistic position.

As for Voldemort in the graveyard...

Dicentra:

> As for whether his excitement is genuinely sexual or only 
> metaphorically so, I'd prefer not to guess. Because if it's the 
> former, it buries the needle on the EWWWW scale, as far as I'm 
> concerned.

Far too EWWW, I agree.  And none of our business besides.  My 
goodness, even fictional characters deserve *some* privacy, don't 
they?  

Just for the record, though, I don't really believe that Voldemort 
has sexuality in any normal human sense of the term.  After all, he's 
supposed to have lost much of his humanity in the process of seeking 
immortality.  I tend to assume that sexuality is one of those things 
that you leave behind once you start heading down that path.

The particular nature of his excitement in the graveyard is, however, 
*physical.*  It has a somatic element.  He is not merely mentally and 
emotionally engaged.  He is breathing heavily, heavily enough for his 
nostrils to be "dilating with excitement," and he's really not been 
doing anything strenuous enough to account for that.  So I'd say that 
he is certainly physically aroused.  Whether this means that his 
excitement is actually "sexual" in any technical or, er, genital 
sense of the term, though, strikes me as pretty moot, honestly.  It's 
close enough.


Dicentra:

> I think Voldemort, as a predator, is getting off on killing (ever 
> hear the noises a cat makes when a bird flies nearby?). 

I remember stumbling downstairs one morning only to find one of my 
cats, a poor little orphan kitty who never learned to kill properly, 
busily engaged in the very last stages of torturing an unfortunate 
mouse to death.  

She was purring.  Loudly.  And also doing that cheek rub thing that 
cats do.  You know, the thing that they do when they're really 
awfully *pleased* with you and want to mark you as their very own?  
The cheek rub that we tend (no matter how often we are told that it 
is actually a territorial behavior) to read as a sign of deep feline 
affection?  She was doing that to this poor suffering half-dead mouse.

Oh, yeah.  It was pretty disturbing all right.  I just love cats, but 
it did make me feel some sympathy for those people who find them 
unsettling.

Getting back to Voldemort, though, I do agree with you that it's 
predatory, but I think that it's rather worse than just getting off 
on killing.  He doesn't just like killing.  He likes causing 
suffering, and not merely in those he deems "worthy opponents" 
either.  He does take some time to play with poor old Frank Bryce, 
after all, who is old and lame -- and a Muggle to boot.  I mean, 
really.  The man hardly offers much in the way of *sport,* does he?  
But Voldemort still insists on revealing himself before killing him, 
just so that he can get a kick out of that look of terror on the 
man's face.  He's not merely a predator.  He's a sadist.  And as you 
point out, sadism is at heart about power.


Dicentra:

> However, Harry is his Ultimate Foe, and getting rid of him means 
> acheiving the power he's been looking for all his life. (This also 
> applies to Riddle's reaction to Harry.) And since power is the 
> ultimate aphrodisiac, it's no wonder he gets all hot and bothered.

No.  It isn't a surprise, I agree.  He's certainly more engaged than 
he is while tormenting easy prey like Avery and Pettigrew.  In the 
absence of anything really exciting, he'll entertain himself with the 
likes of Bryce, but I agree with you that the main reason that he is 
so particularly keyed up over Harry is a question of power.

Which is also the reason that I think he is more interested in men 
than in women.


Dicentra:

> He's probably too dehumanized to care about the sex of his victim. 

Here is where we disagree.  I do think that Voldemort cares about the 
sex of his victims, not because of any normal preference for men as 
romantic objects, but rather because of his contempt for women.  

Neither as the teenaged Riddle nor as the reincorporated Voldemort 
does he seem to recognize women as valuable, powerful, or even as 
particularly interesting.  He is profoundly dismissive of them.  They 
barely seem to register on his radar.

Whether the teenaged Riddle preferred boys to girls as a matter of 
regular old preference or not (and I am most certainly *not* trying 
to equate homosexuality with misogyny here), I think that he 
certainly seems *disinterested* in girls.  His emphasis on how very 
*boring* he found dealing with Ginny is obviously primarily meant to 
wound Harry, but I also find myself believing it.  He really doesn't 
seem terribly interested in Ginny.  Even his comments upon learning 
the origin of Harry's protection speak to me of a profound dismissal 
of women as a general class.  (Oh, yes.  Mother love.  Should have 
thought of that, hadn't I?  Oh, well, if *that's* all it was...)

Nor, as Voldemort, does he give the impression of having paid nearly 
as much attention to Lily's death as he had to James' (more fool 
he).  His "die the way your father died" gloat to Harry in the 
graveyard does seem to imply that he actually paid some attention to 
James.  I never receive that impression from him about Lily.  Even 
the much-touted "hesitation," which some have read as evidence of 
reluctance, I tend to read as pure and simple contempt.  His 
particular means of ordering her away ("stand aside, girl") is 
dismissive.  She simply doesn't register to him as a person of any 
importance at all.  He can't even be *bothered* to kill her, until 
she refuses to get out of the way of the target who really does 
interest him: her son.

His tone when talking about Bertha Jorkins is similarly dismissive.  
You would think that torturing his way through the poor woman's 
Memory Charm would have been *just* the sort of thing that he would 
have enjoyed, but he doesn't really speak of it with all that much
in the way of relish.  He doesn't *reminisce,* so to speak.  He seems 
to have found her fairly uninteresting.  

There do not seem to be many women in his circle of followers.  The 
only female Death Eater that we know of is the mysterious Mrs. 
Lestrange, and she is both married to another DE *and* (if she is 
indeed the Pensieve woman) a person of unusual charisma, dedication, 
and strength of will.  In other words, she is just the sort of woman 
that you often find as the sole exception to the rule in a male-
dominated organization -- and she had an in through her husband, as 
well.

The overall impression that I am left with is that of somebody who 
simply isn't particularly interested in women, not even as the 
victims of his otherwise undeniable sadism.  As prey go, he seems to 
regard them as marginally better than nothing at all, and I just 
can't avoid the suspicion that this is because he doesn't consider 
them powerful.  Just as he regards Harry as a more satisfying 
victim than Wormtail, so he regards men as more satisfying victims 
than women.

<shrug>

My take, anyway.  


-- Elkins (who would like to reassure Amandageist that she too was a 
late-bloomer, and who also tends to feel that too much icky girl 
stuff can really get in the way of a rousing good yarn)