JKR messed up........ no.

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 178342

Magpie wrote:
<snip>

> Not about anyone's sexuality? It's very often about lots of 
> characters' sexuality, including Harry's. There's plenty of straight 
> sexuality on display in it. It's not not sexuality because it's 
> straight. I'm amazed anybody could read HBP especially (but it's not 
> just HBP by far) and say this isn't about sexuality--how many 
> romantic storylines did we hear about in that book alone? Why do 
> Wizards make love potions again? What's that chest monster supposed 
> to be?

Carol responds:

It seems to me that sexuality is a secondary motif that fits in with
adolescence. It's a source of internal conflict for Harry and external
conflict for Ron and Hermione, as well as a normal part of growing up,
along with anger, jealousy, competition, bullying, the pressure of
examinations, and acne. (At least one of our main characters should
have had to deal with having a pimple on the tip of his or her nose at
a crucial moment!) Since JKR wants Harry to end up happily married
with the family he never had as a child, he is per force heterosexual.
The same is true for Ron and Hermione, whom she intends to end up
together (their bickering is almost certainly prompted to some degree
by unresolved sexual tension, unrecognized by Ron, at least, until HBP).

The books are not *about* sexuality. They're about Harry. In HBP and
to some extent DH, his growing attraction to a fellow student (part of
the normal adolescence being experienced by other students his age)
conflicts with his unique role as the Chosen One. He has to relinquish
his relationship with Ginny to destroy Horcruxes. So sexuality plays
two roles, marking Harry as an Everykid that teenage readers can
identify with and setting up a conflict (several conflicts, actually,
including the supposed choice between Ginny and Ron which reflects
Harry's rather dim understanding of his best friend's psychology) in
Harry's life. Harry and his friends are heterosexual; therefore, the
sexuality depicted (which, perhaps out of consideration for her young
audience and perhaps because she's concentrating on Harry/LV and
doesn't want normal life to conflict with it) is heterosexual.

I do think that JKR has limited the sexuality to "snogging" because
very young readers are turned off even by kissing but also because she
doesn't want to encourage teenage pregnancy or premarital sex. (Even
Tom Riddle's parents were married.) Presumably, she has similar
reservations about sex between teenage boys being depicted in books,
either because her young readers might find it disturbing or because
their parents might.

At any rate, these are not books about the RW and RW problems and
conflicts distract from the mythical elements, the David-and-Goliath
confrontation that the books are leading up to and the themes of agape
love and self-sacrifice and atonement and forgiveness and redemption
and death that are, IMO, much more central than sexuality of any kind
to these books. Also, of course, love, especially unrequited love, and
sex don't necessarily go together in these books. The only sex that we
know occurs does so off-page between married couples, and we only know
that it happens because those couples produce children (although
Arthur's pet name for Molly, Mollywobbles, suggests moments of tender
intimacy that Harry finds embarrassing).

Maybe it's a conservative approach (and I, for one, see nothing wrong
with that), but my feeling is that the books are written on two
levels, one that a child can understand (for example, most children
won't think of pedophilia when they read Rita's insinuations about the
"unhealthy" relationship between Harry and DD or rape in connection
with what the Centaurs did to Umbridge), and one that an adult reader
can deduce through subtext. We don't *know* what happened to Umbridge
because it happened offpage, but readers of all ages are left to
imagine that punishment for themselves, or just not think about it if
they so choose. There are also sexual innuendoes that go over a
child's head; cf. JKR's answer to the eight-year-old who asked about
Aberforth's goats. I for one don't want any eight-year-olds or
ten-year-olds of my acquaintance to be disturbed by such things. The
violence and mindless bigotry (Muggle-borns "stealing" magic) are
sufficiently disturbing. (BTW, I don't see how the DH film is going to
manage a PG-13 rating, but, of course, that's a topic for another forum.)

Carol, who thinks that JKR has sidetracked us from the real themes of
the book with her imagined view of Dumbledore