House elves and some spoilers for Swordspoint WAS: realistic solutions

[susanmcgee48176]

No: HPFGUIDX 180836

Re: children who have been abused by their parents who still love 
their parents.

There are a lot of abused, and sexually abused children. When they 
are still children, it is true that they mostly still love and want 
to be with their parents. (Kids whose parents are divorced want them 
to get back together). But that doesn't mean that children like the 
abuse or love being mistreated. Children ARE often confused and feel 
that somehow they are to blame for their parents problems. 

This is tough stuff...and very painful for all of us even to think 
about..

But I think it would be a serious mistake to confuse what goes on 
with abused children's attachment to their parents with slavery.

First, the house elves are not of the same species as humans, and 
that gives us the idea that well, maybe, it IS in their nature to be 
slaves, and to be truly unhappy were they free. (That makes me 
incredibly uncomfortable). 

I hate to bring it up, but there are a lot of racists who don't 
believe Africans were the same type of humans as Europeans...their 
brain was smaller, it was in their "nature" to be subservient, they 
couldn't govern themselves or aspire to "higher" pursuits.  
Unfortunately, we will hear a lot of stuff about the happy darkie 
singing songs while laboring in the fields.

There is a lot of oppressor bullcrap in these ideas. Sure, there is 
internalized oppression where the slaves (or the people being 
oppressed) think deep down that the dominant class are better than 
they are..but that's because of what the oppressor class has to make 
everyone believe so that they can still be slaveowners, and benefit 
economically from the labor of slaves. (and got their sexual needs 
met, and their physical needs met, and they didn't have to cook 
meals, etc.)

In fact, if you take a careful look at U.S. history during the time 
that slavery was still legal, there were CONSTANT attempts at 
escape...CONSTANT bids for freedom..NUMEROUS slave rebellions....it 
took quite a lot of terrorism, lynchings/murders, torture, rape, etc. 
to keep most of the slaves under control. This really contradicts the 
ideas that all slaves -- or even most slaves -- were happy in their 
slavery and wanted to remain slaves.

Re: enlightened masters. Yes, some people were disgusted by slavery 
and refused to own slaves. Others freed their slaves. Some (like some 
of our early presidents) did not. Some were reasonably kind, didn't 
break families apart by selling some, allowed slaves to work for 
their freedom, taught slaves to read,  only raped a few of the 
slaves, etc. 

Susan