No Sex, Please, We're British (was ethics in the WW )

junediamanti june.diamanti at blueyonder.co.uk
Tue Oct 21 18:30:00 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 83262

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "grannybat84112" 
<grannybat at h...> wrote:
> o_caipora started it:
> > >  
> >> 
> To bring this back to canon: I don't believe Hogwarts even has a 
sex 
> ed class. JKR is so timid about broaching subjects sexual that she 
> had Harry's first kiss take place off-page. She never even places 
> conversations between Ron and Harry in the boy's bathroom in order 
to 
> give us a glimpse of how they learn how to shave. 

Snip
> 
> This reticence strikes me as odd when you consider that half of 
the 
> action in Cos takes place in a girls' restroom, with Myrtle coming 
> out of a toilet and all the bodily functions that implies. I 
wonder 
> if Myrtle isn't JKR's symbol of uncomfortable sexuality; I found 
her 
> scene with Harry in The Egg and the Eye hilarious, and the 
> interaction between them rang very true. ("Myrtle! I'm not wearing 
> anything!") 
> 
> Come to think of it, the only adolescent we see demonstrating 
overt 
> sexual urges is Roger Davies, the Ravenclaw who appears to change 
> girlfriends every month. Davies is at least a year ahead of Harry 
> (but I seem to recall he's in the same year as Cho, and she's two 
> years ahead...isn't she?). Students younger than fourth year just 
> don't appear to exhibit any interest in sex beyond puppy love; 
even 
> Ginny's crush on Harry was expressed in terms of embarrassed 
silences 
> and awkward get-well cards. Now that she's gained a bit of 
> confidence, suddenly she's dating a string of boyfriends.
> 
> My point is that the kids at Hogwarts feel awfully innocent.
> 
> So I have to wonder: Is this reluctance to address sexual issue 
> reflective of the larger British society, or is it meant to 
express 
> yet another discomforting little social flaw that the Wizarding 
World 
> refuses to talk about?

June:
Other races have sex - the English have hot water bottles (from "How 
to be an Alien" by George ??? anyone remember the name?

> 
> I don't think this is just a Flint or another trivial detail that 
> Rowling forgot to mention while constructing her world. The issues 
of 
> blood purity, Squibs, and family allegiances cannot be divorced 
from 
> sexuality. The looming war will force these issues to explode, and 
> I'm betting that more than one dirty little skeleton will fall out 
of 
> more than one family closet. (Crouch/Winky, anyone?)

June:
Now that's twisted...

> 
> It would help, I think, to have a baseline from which to theorize. 
> Would any of the Brits care to expound on the general state of sex 
> education in the British boarding school system? 
> 
> Smelling salts at hand,
> Grannybat

June:
OK it's a tough job but someone has to do it.  (Spits on hands, rubs 
them together).  

Hogwarts imho is set sometime about twenty years ago... which sorta 
takes me back to school. I wasn't part of the British Public (ie 
Posh) school system but I went to a grammar school which was the 
next echelon down (you passed an entrance exam but your parents did 
not pay fees).  Sex education - zero, zilch, unless you count the 
sex life of an amoeba, and other single celled organisms ( and I 
recall they were not very well... sexy...).  No, friends, I found 
out most of my info from whispered discussions with other girls who 
had more advanced thinking parents than me (my parents never told me 
nowt either) and I remember being horrified by everything I heard.  
Which may account for a great many factors in later life <g>.

Now in Hogwarts they aren't even looking at amoebas because the 
curriculum is somewhat different.  So the nearest you will get to 
any discussion of sex is going to be the kind of wink wink, snigger 
snigger, double entendre that we repressed brits excel in.  "Can I 
see Uranus, Lavender?" and that kind of thing.  

This of course is why some of the characters might be so weird 
(wearing my amateur psychiatrist's hat now).  Because they have 
wholesale the british attitudes to thingy, rudies, rumpy pumpy, 
how's your father, a jolly good seeing to*, sorry too embarrassed to 
call it sex.  (Blushes furiously).  This is why we have "le vice 
anglais" - ask any public schoolboy alumnus what that is.**  That is 
why we are so weird.  

Love in a cold climate.

June

*One day I might just prepare a master list of the British 
euphemisms for sex. Well perhaps not.  

** Le Vice Anglais is the french (who are bloody weird themselves) 
being rude about the fact that the stripes on the old school tie are 
often matched by the stripes on the old school bottom.  This 
especially obtains when one has been to a very good old public 
school.







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