Werewolves and RL equivalents

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 170314

lizzyben wrote:
> 
> Yes, I agree, in the Wizarding World, it's *rational* to be afraid of
> werewolves. They are dangerous, & do kill people. It might even be
> rational to discriminate against them. That's why I don't understand
> JKR's statement that werewolves are a metaphor for a disability.
> Wouldn't this lead to the conclusion that people w/disabilities
> *should* be discriminated against? Is she saying that people w/a
> disease *are* a threat to the community? Because I don't believe that,
> and I bet JKR doesn't believe that, but that seems to be the
> underlying message of the metaphor as she's created it. So what,
> exactly, was JKR doing there? It's a paradox.
>
Carol responds:
I don't understand the disability analogy, either, although I think
the focus in JKR's is on the way others react to a person with a
disability. But people with disabilities other than psychosis or some
other form of mental illness that causes them to compulsively harm
others aren't dangerous. It's more like, say, leprosy, which was
genuinely dangerous and required the sick person to be quarantined to
avoid contaminating others, combined with an irresistible compulsion
to spread the disease, except that it only occurs once a month. (I'm
assuming that leprosy is now controlled in some way, which is why I'm
using past tense.) Actually, there's nothing really comparable--a
once-a-month compulsive rapist with syphillis or HIV? But he wouldn't
turn his victim into a compulsive rapist like himself. He'd only
contaminate her.

At any rate, while Lupin and others like him don't station themselves
beside their prospective victims, waiting to strike when the moon is
full, they do become, in Lupin's own words, "Before the Wolfsbane
Potion was discovered, however, I became a fully fledged monster once
a month." And he's a "fully fledged monster" when he forgets to take a
dose of it as well. (Wonder what he does when he doesn't have access
to the potion. Has he been locking himself in or transforming along
with the other werewolves and roaming the countryside since he joined
them as a spy?)

Werewolves, in any case, are not remotely comparable to, say, blind
people or paraplegics. They are not normal people who happen to have a
disability. They are people who, once a month, become a terrible
danger to everyone around them. Wolfsbane potion helps, but only if
it's taken on schedule, and only for that one month.

IMO, anyone who hires a werewolf or marries a werewolf should make
absolutely certain that the werewolf takes his potion or has somewhere
to transform that he can't escape from. Werewolves need to be
identified and registered so that they won't be roaming loose on full
moon nights. It isn't an ideal solution, but it would at least prevent
the condition from spreading until some potions genius invents a cure.

Carol, who thought that the Wombat test was oddly subjective except
for the true-false and condition/cure questions and expects to get a
very low score