[HPforGrownups] Re: Appropriate terminology

[Kathryn Cawte]

No: HPFGUIDX 89435

LizVega

>
> I don't see any problem with the word 'muggle'. There had to be a
> way for JKR to distinguish between 'wizards' and 'non magic folk'.
> And, not to be argumentative, but isn't it a stretch trying to
> correlate "that other inflammatory word with a double-g in the
> > middle. And that pejorative term for male homosexual that has a
> double-g in the middle..." to a word that means,
> essentially, 'unable to do magic?

K

I don't understand why people are associating a word that is merely the
non-magic equivalent of witch/wizard with an insult. I understand the belief
that muggles are treated as lesser beings, but just because wizards treat a
group in a certain way it doesn't automatically follow that the name for
that group is an insult. For vast periods of history women were treated
worse than men - but the term woman wasn't an insult.

It is also true that for some purebloods the word may seem like an insult -
in the same way for some men the term woman might be used as an insult e.g.
Malfoy snr might say to his son 'You're marrying her? But she's a muggle!'
(not that I can see Draco marrying a muggle), for Lucius he would be using
the term as an insult, she's a muggle=she's not good enough to him, but the
muggle in question would find the tone insulting but not the word, the same
way I would be insulted if someone said 'You can't give the job to *her*
she's a *woman*'. I would be insulted by the tone and the fact that the
person speaking thought women were less than men, but not by the term
woman - after all that is just a biological fact. I am a woman. Just as the
muggles in JKRs world are muggles. There has to be some word to stop people
having to refer to 'that group of people who are inherently unmagical' just
as there needs to be a term in our world for 'that group of people who
happen to have two x chromosomes'. If only because life is too darn short to
refer to people like that.

K
*who tried very hard to avoid a thread that she thought was 'silly' but
found she just can't help but put in her two penn'orth*