Bigotry in the Potterverse

[sistermagpie at earthlink.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 188102

> Bart:
>     One of the basic premises I use for determining sexism: If you 
> reverse the genders, does it change anything? For various reasons, which 
> are far too heavily connected to politics for me to bring up here, there 
> still exists a double standard in both British and American societies, 
> where when a male takes sexual advantage of a female, that is usually 
> considered to be a crime, while if a female takes sexual advantage of a 
> male, that is usually considered to be the male "getting lucky."
> 
>     Now, keeping these in mind, let's say that guys were trying to use 
> "love" potions on Hermoine, and one of them actually got ingested by 
> Ginny. Would that have been much different than Ron accidentally 
> consuming a "love" potion meant for Harry? Would it have been as comicial?

Magpie:
It's likely that for some people with the genders reversed it would suddenly look like a sexual assault in ways it doesn't to them now. But that's not the only thing going on. The wider idea that women scheme and manipulate the innocent, overmatched men is a recognizable, traditional--and often intentionally sexist--view of gender behavior. The boys' desire is being controlled and manipulated by the women usually without love potions, but love potions are marketed to girls as if this is naturally what they are going to want to do. There's a lot of people who are very fond of the idea that women use men's sexuality against them so are partly if not mostly or totally responsible for the man's actions when under the influence of that sexuality. It might sound like girl power on a superficial level in a "boys are dumb!" way, but while a woman could certainly have a personality capable of dominating a man, it's not really power at all for women in general.

-m