open letter to JKR

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 155629

-Susan:

> I agree that  you COULD see the HP universe as a metaphor for the 
> lesbian/gay population.
> 
> But it is also a metaphor, as you point out, for ANY oppressed group.
> That's because the way oppressed groups are kept down is the same 
> whatever the nature of oppression is.(one way oppressed groups are 
> kept down is spreading myths, lies, stereotypes about them).. JKR also 
> talks in one of her interviews about how disadvantaged populations 
> don't always stick together and do fight amongst themselves.
> 
Pippin:
Aren't the strategies for resisting oppression much the same also?
Does everybody who belongs to an oppressed group need a character
from that group in order to identify?

It was brilliant of JKR to make her hero a child, 
because childhood is the one condition of oppression and weakness 
that everyone has shared. JKR can write freely about the problems
of oppression and the various strategies, good and bad, for coping
with it, without offering succor or criticism to any particular group.

Would you still want Lupin to be a gay character if his strategy
is a poor one? If he has chosen an evil and destructive path?

In any case, do we want JKR, a heterosexual as far as I know, to
define what signifies gayness?  

What guarantee is there that she would get it right if she tried?
 Consider the golden fountain in OOP. It's the wizard's vision of what 
goblins, House Elves and centaurs are like,  but except in the House 
Elves' case, it differs drastically from how those beings see themselves.

Hags,  werewolves and vampires, meanwhile, have all
been left out, but would the fountain be better if they were 
represented in the same superficial and fatuous manner as the others?

I can imagine that Anthony Goldstein is Jewish without seeing him
light a menorah, and so can Jews who never light menorahs.To me,
the Potterverse gives a nod to the possibility of  Jewishness without 
telling people how to be Jews, and I appreciate that.  

Pippin