Sex and the Hogwarts student... was (Harry Potter, REALLY for Grown-Ups)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 164463

I felt a need to join in the discussion regarding the question of 
sex at Hogwarts


Just to begin with, a question of tattoos!

In message 164406, I wrote:
I don't think that proves - or disproves - anything.

I'm sure that on a warm Saturday afternoon or after classes on 
a summer day, many of the boys would have their shirts off 
whiling away their time down on the grass by the lake,

In message 164415 Sandy replied: 

Geoff, while I so hate to disagree with you, there is absolutely 
no cannon to support such a view and, furthermore, I think 
there is a little bit of movie contamination here. The kids at 
Hogwarts wear wizard robes and, based on Snape's Worst 
Memory, they wear nothing under them but undergarments. 
When James so unceremoniously yanked Snape in the air 
upside-down you will recall that it revealed his dingy, grey 
underpants. It is only in the movies that the kids wear 
uniforms under their robes. Therefore, if the male students 
were basking around the lake bare-chested, they would be 
doing so in nothing but their underwear. Even in the second 
task of the TWT the students entered the lake in their robes.

Geoff:
I think I might counter that by saying that there is no canon 
for your view.

I agree that it is possible that students do not wear anything 
other than underwear beneath their robes, possibly because 
of the warmth of these garments.

However, it is often normal practice for students to wear more 
casual clothes in an environment away from a classroom or a 
formal situation such as the second task. I cannot see them 
being in school uniform all through a weekend or in their 
"off-duty" hours. Just in passing, the incident with Snape 
occurred just after the students had been released from an 
examination.

In the current threads discussing sex among the students, I 
feel that some posters are guilty of making sweeping 
generalisations.

When I was training for teaching many moons ago, I had a 
lecturer who taught Maths and Psychology and one dictum 
he had was that "there is no such thing as the average or 
normal person", this hypothetical creature being the 
aggregation of all the various swings from the norm that 
we collectively add up to. So, in any situation such as 
Hogwarts, you can expect a whole range of approaches 
and attitudes to sex.

Let's take Harry, and I shall make comparisons with myself. 
I am an only child. Although, like Harry, I went to a mixed 
school up to the age of eleven, I, like most of my peers, did 
not go to a boarding school but went to a single-sex grammar 
school and later to a single-sex training college. I  had a 
number of male friends during my teens partly because boys 
tend to "gang" together at this age an d also because many of 
my interests were the sort that tended to appeal only to boys. 
So, by the time I was into my early twenties, I had not had a lot 
of regular contact with the opposite sex.

I remember going to a college ball and taking a young lady 
whom I knew slightly and, as with Harry at the Yule Ball, it was 
something of a disaster!

Even after a long marriage with a grown-up daughter threatening 
to make me a grandparent in September, I still find it difficult to 
interact with women and am often left baffled in trying to "read" 
them and their ideas.

Nowadays, it is not true that every guy is trying to get a girl into 
bed at the earliest opportunity. I look at some of the young men 
currently in my church in their middle to late teens and find that, 
although they have relationships with the girls, they are not 
apparently overtly sexual. They have other interests at this age and 
I certainly get the feeling that, in the UK, the more sensible (and 
intelligent?) guys are not getting involved so soon. Pressures in 
education, from school to university, and the problem of getting 
settled in a career seem to take up a lot more of their time.

So, I see no reason why Harry, of all people, Is odd in not getting 
too tied down with a girl friend. Saving the world takes a bit of 
concentration. Because of his background, he is something of a 
loner – which I identify with again – And I feel that he will make 
the right moves when the time is ripe. As I said earlier there is a 
wide range of responses
 Harry tends to being a loner; he doesn't 
always share things even with Ron and Hermione. Look at Neville 
who is more of a loner even than Harry and then you have an 
opposite such as Seamus whom I see as having an eye for the ladies.

I did write some months ago that I would not be disappointed or 
worried if Harry continued in a bachelor state for some little while 
beyond his Hogwarts years.

To round off, we have commented on the group before that we 
cannot have a blow-by-blow account of every day of Harry`s time 
at school – especially his sexual development. I have commented 
on a couple of occasions about this in the past in the past:

In message 160165, I wrote

"And, with sexual development, in how many books involving 
young people would you find the question of wet dreams and 
as some one put it euphemistically and  (amusingly) self-discovery 
aired as part of the plot of the story? Can you imagine Ron bouncing 
into breakfast, sitting down next to Harry and saying out loud "I've 
just had a smashing wet dream?"

And, then again in message 162094, we had this exchange:

> Cassy:
>
> I somehow think that ON PAGE are key words here. We actually 
> have no evidence that Harry reads much for pleasure, but we 
> have no evidence to the contrary. After all, we have only seen 
> him taking a bath on page once in GoF (the egg affair), but it 
> doesn't mean that it was the only time he washed in 6 year, right? 
> We don't see EVERY moment of Harry's life, only those important 
to the plot.

Geoff:
Neither have we seen him going to the toilet, having a wet dream 
or picking his nose in public.
:-)

Take these last couple of observations as being a little tongue-in-cheek. :-)