Comment on Does Harry Potter only know fifth grade math?
Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months agoThe core text of Harry potter itself has many ableist (Durdsley), racist (House elves enjoying slavery) , antisemitic (goblins) and transphobic (Rita Skeeter) themes even if it surface level against racism.
That’s the first time I hear the treatment of Rita Skeeter is transphobic. James, Sirius and McGonagall are also able to shapeshift, and they are positive characters in the books.
For the house elves, the whole SPEW plot is designed to both make Ron (and the whole Wizard word as a whole) look stupid and bigoted, and Hermione a bit too self-righteous, as teenagers can be.
Relevant reference: …stackexchange.com/…/why-did-rowling-seemingly-ma…
I’ve seen several times that the fact that the society isn’t changed by the end of the last book as a critic, but do all work of fictions have to uphold their societies? Game of Thrones definitely isn’t becoming a democracy during the books, and Brigderton is as classist as it can be.
inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If this is the first time you have heard this criticism, then I think you should try to be more engaged with those discussions, I worry you have used that copy/paste citation of fanfiction as opposed to actual understanding why people are upset.
As I said before, I’m not super willing to go through every theme in the book I take Umbridge with (pun intended). I don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth to go through point by point. [www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iaJWSwUZs](Shaun has a wonderful video doing exactly that). But briefly, I have no reason to think Sketer is trans, but Rowling is well known to use physical insults for characters that are morally wrong, such as the Durselys being fat. Rowling uses the description “man hands” and allusions to her dressing like a Drag queen, and changes her body to spy on children, a theme she follows up in her openly transphobic book Bad Blood. This also goes hand in hand with Rowlings racist naming convention, Cho Chang and Kingsley Shacklebolt just off the top of my head. Similar to the way Goblins are clearly using anti-sementic banker tropes. And finally while I agree that there are positive shapeshift characters in the books, but the concept itself is very clearly an allegory for HIV/AIDS with their transmission fears.
Game of Thrones isn’t about bringing democracy to westoros, thats not a theme at all, historical realism IS a major theme so democracy would be entirely out of place. Plus an extremely mature book aimed at mature audiences. Conversely, Harry Potter is a book aimed at children ostensibly about defeating racists that use slurs like “mudblood” who want to enslave muggles. Which makes it odd that Harry himself keeps his house elf slave because the slave “enjoys it”, which was another major criticism of slavery abolition. The reasons cited in the book for why racism is wrong is that “some of those mudbloods turned out to be great wizards just like Hermonine” as opposed to “its wrong to subjacate anyone based on bloodline”, Harry and Hagrid only talk about how useful those subjugated people could be to the general population, not the intrinsic rights that humans deserve.
But that is me trying to be brief, and not at all what I wanted to talk about anyways. I do not want to discuss the text any further. You can read whatever you like and from the start I said I would never try to take it away from anyone even if I personally find it hateful. What I am asking is to stop promoting the works of bigot who is doing materal harm to peoples lives. I can’t and work control your actions, I am just please asking you to be more critical of the author your community is celebrating. Its easy enough to say you disagree with her, but actions speak louder than words. And instead of citing papers about the health of fanfiction, perhaps actually listen to the trans community when they talk about the harm they have suffered from her actions and propaganda.
I will take your word that Gabe has allowed the community, cleary it still exists. But by his own words he appears openly uncomfortable with it. Of course, the views of one person who literally said they don’t want to speak on the behalf of the trans community should not weigh to heavily on this topic anyways. It feels gaslighting to cite him and the paper as reasons why the trans community is wrong about HP, instead of actually listening to harm.
TL:DR, this is long that I wanted it to be, I kept my original comment succulent in politely asking you to reconsider. As always, do as you wish. Just please put more effort in to understanding why people want you to stop.