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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