The Overarching message (of the HP books)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 191638




>
> > Alla wrote:
> > Him raping anybody is not canon though, his idea to keep Lily is a pet is  
> > not canon either, although certainly saw enough canon clues to speculate  
> > the same way, but it is not spelled out canon at all.
> > 
> > James:
> > What, in real life, would the DEs do with women before killing them? What  
> > would a loyal DE, and Snape was loyal to Voldie at the time, do with a  
> > mudblood once he "owns" her? Tell all his DE friends how much he loves his  
> > mudblood or treat her as a pet/slave/toy?
> > How would a man, who thinks love means to kill those that the "love"  
> > interest most loves and force her to be with him, treat a woman? Anything  
> > like his father? Worse, since his personal "belief" is that she doesn't  
> > even deserve to live?
> > It takes very little to see where canon would take someone and saying that  
> > a specific act was not mentioned in a kiddies book does not mean it isn't  
> > quite logical that it happened. At least the Brothers Grimm told you what  
> > was happening.
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> Please note that nowhere in my post  I said that it is not a logical assumption. I agree that it is a very logical one, but assumption, canon based speculation, just not canon. I personally see nothing wrong with those assumptions and made plenty of them myself, but canon based speculation and canonical support are not quite the same things. 

Pippin:
What's illogical, IMO, is  jumping to conclusions in situations where we are likely to make mistakes -- that is, where the circumstances are unfamiliar or unusual and there is no attempt to correct for bias. 

What I see here is a halo effect: disliking  Snape for the things we know he did makes it easier  to imagine Snape doing other things that we dislike and what is easier to imagine seems more probable.    But this is an illusion. 

For example:

We  all have lists of characters whom we would  bet were in Slytherin -it's certainly hard for me to imagine Umbridge in another house - but the odds that any randomly selected Hogwartian is a Slytherin are, were, and always will be no better than one in four. The fact that I can more easily imagine Umbridge as a Slytherin than, say, Madame Malkin, has no effect on the odds. 

Likewise, I dislike terrorists, so it's easy to imagine terrorists doing things I dislike. And I know that some terrorists have engaged in systematic campaigns of rape. But so have regular armies, and gangs of civilians. I really have no idea whether terrorists are more likely to be rapists than those other groups. 

So in a Potterverse where rape is a possibility, we have to accept that Aurors and Order members are possible rapists also, and don't let's get started on the centaurs. In actuality we have no more evidence that Snape went around raping people than, say, Remus Lupin or Sirius Black. 

Sexual violence, or the attempt at it, does occur in the books and is not limited to Death Eaters. There's MacClaggan's unwanted attentions to  Hermione, the Marauders pantsing Snape, and Romilda's tainted candy. it appears most kids at Hogwarts  think  that anyone who is careless enough to ingest a love potion deserves whatever happens to him. And those are the good guys.

For the bad guys, we have Mrs Roberts flipped upside down to show her bloomers, and Merope's sexual enslavement of Tom Riddle. 

 Voldemort himself, though, seems to be stuck in an oral phase of development. Consider his emblem and the name of his group. His servants have to kiss his robes. Charity Burbage is publicly eaten. He also thinks purebloods mating with Muggles and other non-purebloods is repulsive. So a rape campaign just does not seem to me like his style. 

Harry does think about the possibility of someone forcing Lily, but it's not Snape or even Voldemort that comes to his mind. It's James. 

As for Snape, as far as my undoubtedly biased memory recalls, the only time he ever got physical with a female was when he dropped that branch on Petunia. Am I forgetting anything? 

Pippin