Harry Potter is Anti-Woman

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 181021

> Ceridwen:

> I think the men were short-shrifted as much as the women, only in a 
> different way.  From the beginning, most of our viewpoint has been 
> through the filter of a young male who is in the stage of life where 
> he is looking for male role models.  He lacks a father, and the 
> father-figure at home hates his guts and locks him in a cupboard.  He 
> meets exciting new people and idealizes the males.

Magpie:
I agree. Basically what I would say was that in general, women are 
equal to men--there's no question that they can't do jobs like men can 
or that they aren't valuable assets to the good side--Harry wouldn't 
have gotten two steps without Hermione.

However, I would also say that the books are riddled with traditional 
male/female ideas that aren't exactly enlightened, and that might give 
the sexist impression. JKR famously said in an interview regarding 
Lily "hating" James in the SWM scene that she didn't really hate him, 
and then added "You're a woman. You know what I'm talking about."

There's a lot of that "You're a woman, you know what we're like" 
feeling in the book, a confident tone about how women act, particularly 
with regards to men, and it is imo based on stereotypes. Harry and Ron 
are both chased by girls, there's oversexed but unttractive enough 
women lying in wait for men and trying to trap them and generally being 
repulsive. 

I actually must disagree with all the "Tonks is a great auror" defenses 
because I've never seen her be a great auror. I've seen her be a woman 
who leaves her post and loses her powers because her primary focus in 
the books is her man and not her job--which doesn't make me condemn her 
since some people are more focused one way than another, but she had a 
long time to impress me with her auror skills and instead gave the 
consistent impression that this wasn't her strong point. She's mostly 
linked to Merope Gaunt.

Maybe it's due to the male focus of the books, but female relationships 
are also all based around men (including Hermione and Ginny) or second 
string to the relationships the females have with males. The pure 
female/female friendships in the books are given the shorthand of silly 
giggling pairs or groups.

So yeah, I actually see the books demonstrating plenty of negative 
female strereotypes and I don't identify with the way females as a 
group are mostly presented in canon. I think that JKR does 
automatically revert to "female helps her male or child" default. I 
think it's a bit too generalized to say that this means she's 
encouraging any anti-feminist ideas. I just think she as an individual 
woman believes in the truth of a lot of things about "how women are" 
that aren't as universal as she thinks they are. I find them rather 
sexist, but she probably just thinks they're the way things are.

It's not just with women that this happens in the books, of course. All 
these characters are coming out of one mind so as different as they all 
are they're all going to hold many of the same things to be true about 
the world that the author does. They're demonstrating her view of the 
world, so naturally they conform to it.

-m