House Elves' enslavement

[Susana da Cunha]

No: HPFGUIDX 114277


 
Dungrollin wrote:
"(slightly OT, and pedantic to boot!): Dogs were *bred* to
serve humans by humans, they did not evolve to do so, natural
selection had no hand in it, it was artificial selection."
-------------------

Well, we don't know if elves weren't breed, do we? I'm not saying they
were - I added this to the 'what we don't know' list, remember? But if
they evolved by natural selection, one or two millenniums are enough to
adapt to a situation in such a way you'd have to *evolve* out of it.


------------------- 
Susana previously:
"But, you see, paternalism is not totally out off place here. If you
say elves have human intelligence I agree; But if you say elves have
human *capabilities* I'll say I've seen no proof of that in canon (maybe
they do, I don't know)."

Dungrollin:
"Erm. What's the difference? And why is their equal intelligence so
obvious?"
-------------------

I didn't say *equal* intelligence; I said *human* intelligence (meaning
human-like or human-type). Humans have all the same type of intelligence
and they certainly don't have all the same capabilities.



-------------------
Dungrollin: The point is having the *choice*!
<sniped excellent analogy to women's right to vote>
If house elves want to serve people and it makes them happy, then
fine, let them. But magically forcing them to serve wizards they
despise is wrong wrong wrong. While the majority of house elves may
be happy, we have already met two who aren't/weren't -
Dobby and Kreatcher. The only way to get rid of this injustice is by
giving them the choice, and at the moment, they don't have that choice.
No matter how willing the slave, slavery is slavery.
<sniped some more>
Certainly, trying to set the school elves free against their will is
wrong, and Hermione is not thinking straight when she does this. But
I don't think the reaction of everyone else in the WW (Hagrid
etc) is a good enough argument against trying to get the elves freedom.
I can imagine talking to a Swiss man in the 60's about
women's suffrage and him saying "But they don't *want* to vote!
It'd be doing them an unkindness!"
---------------------

Excellent analogy (now, why didn't I think of that?). 
For the record, I love Magda's suggestion that elves were supposed to be
given clothes but wizards twisted that. 
Also for the record, I *completely* agree with your analogy and that's
*exactly* what I meant! I just have a more practical view of things. Let
me try to explain:
Swiss women, with individual exceptions, were offended that *any* women
would vote. So much they voted against women's vote! So, in a way, to
allow women's vote *was* unkind (I consider unkind to offend people,
don't you?). People with broader horizons then them saw the injustice in
their situation and, through argument, 'educated' them into seeing it
too. I agree a Swiss man of the time would reply as you propose, but I
imagine that if you had asked a Swiss woman of the time she'd answer: 
"Oh, you're one of those very-modern women who think they're equal to a
man, right? Do you think we Swiss women are s**ts? We're proud to have
men who make decisions for us! They do their job and we do ours."
My point is, if you're dealing with that kind of reasoning you can't say
"elves should be free". You loose credit if you do. People just assume
you're an insane radical and stop listening! Instead you should say: "a
recent study concluded that 30% of the elves are emotionally abused and
12% are physically abused. Also, 19% admitted they wish the entire
family they serve would die." Think of how much more effective your
speech would be; what larger impact in society.
I have the "get me out of this movie" reaction when someone tells me
bull fights should be prohibited. We're talking about thousands of
people just in Portugal who depend on that economy (probably a million
or two in Spain). I immediately think of those people starving with no
money to turn their 'ganadaria' (where bulls are raised in the wild)
into intensive cattle raising farms. I start defending bull fights
straight away.
*BUT* if someone asks a simple innocent question like "do you think the
bull suffers in the arena?" (as opposed to "you're stupid if you don't
see that they suffer!") I immediately enumerate at least 10 disgusting
and completely unnecessary things done to bulls in the process. For
example, in Portugal they cut off the tip of the bull's horns before
going into the arena, to protect the 'brave' bullfighters (that's not
done in Spain).
So, concluding, if Hermione's objective is to free the elves, SPEW's
declaration of intentions should be to change the mentalities and create
the conditions for... Elves' Welfare. Because if she mentions elves'
freedom no one will listen. 

Cheers,
Susana



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