The idea was developed in the Ravenclaw girls’ dorm, by the girls. They summoned a couple of professors for safety, but the word didn’t spread outside of that particular group—otherwise there would have been a large and varied mass to see the show, regardless of romantic interest.
Incidentally, is sexual orientation usually well-established by the age of eleven?
The idea was developed in the Ravenclaw girls’ dorm, by the girls.
Very good point. My objection is rendered moot.
Incidentally, is sexual orientation usually well-established by the age of eleven?
While this is also a relevant point, I would expect it to have nearly the opposite effect. Before puberty, identification with a sexual orientation would have to be completely socially constructed, so in a gay-friendly society most people should identify as bisexual by default.
Before puberty, identification with a sexual orientation would have to be completely socially constructed, so in a gay-friendly society most people should identify as bisexual by default.
A society can be gay-friendly and still heteronormative. In fact, I’d say that contemporary First-World youth fit right into that, although gay-friendliness hasn’t spread to the whole society yet. Still, as long as heterosexuals are most common, gays and bis will still be seen as unusual, even if OK. So socially, I expect that most people will still assume that they’re het until they learn otherwise.
However (contradicting both you and me), there are gay people who say that they knew that they were gay from a very young age. On the other hand, puberty has been known to mess with one’s expectations.
Generalising from one example: I can’t quite describe the environment that I grew up in as gay-friendly, only moving in that direction. Perhaps if it had been, then I’d have identified as bisexual at puberty, but perhaps not. In any case, it was a heteronormative environment, so I expected to be attracted to the opposite sex, and was. Then I jumped to conclusions, self-identified as het and suppressed my attraction to the same sex (ETA: because it messed with my idea of who I was) for another ten years. (Before puberty, I was completely asexual.)
On reflection, I was generalizing from one example as well. I was pretty sexual-hangup-y as a kid. I didn’t begin to suspect I was gay until I was seventeen, and it was another two or three years after that before I was comfortable with the idea that I had a sex drive at all.
Before puberty, identification with a sexual orientation would have to be completely socially constructed, so in a gay-friendly society most people should identify as bisexual by default.
This is not the case. Many gay people know that they are gay at a young age, often well before puberty. Or they realize that they are somehow different from the others around them. Human sexuality is not as simple as an on-off switch with the whole system coming into play when people hit puberty.
Actually, I’ve just thought of more stuff. Why would there be gender-segregated dorms in this world?
Unless they’re trying to deliberately encourage homosexuality in teenagers as a strategy for avoiding accidental teen pregnancy. This would also explain Lupin’s possible attitude (though I may be misreading) that homosexuality is a thing for the young, while adult relationships tend to be heterosexual.
On the other hand, if this were the case, I would expect the childhood sexuality taboo to only apply to heterosexuality, in which case Lupin shouldn’t have had the “when you’re older” reaction to telling Harry about Sirius and Peter’s relationship.
The real answer, of course, is that Hogwarts is shaped after British public schools, and it inherited gender-based dorms just like it did the four-house system.
A possible justification/rationalisation is that there are drastically different dynamics between a sexual attraction that involves a vast majority of the population, and one that involves a minority: heterosexual affections are much more likely to be potentially returned, compared to homosexual ones. Hence, while the occasional homosexual affair will sprout up in an all-male/all-female dorm, a mixed teenage dormitory would be completely overrun with drama, awkwardness, and unpleasant sounds and smells.
I can think of a good reason for segregated dorms: In the MoRniverse at least, rape is something aristocratic boys can do casually with the full expectation of getting away with it. Not to mention panty raids and other assorted sexually-harrassing nonsense. Even in a society without medieval/Victorian mores, girls would still need a place of relative safety in which to sleep, shower, dress, etc..
Boarding schools and prisons create similar social scenarios. I believe male-male rape/harassment/”hazing” is/was a significant problem in many all-male British boarding schools.
Fraternities fit into more or less the same category, and likewise frequently feature various forms of ritualized homosexuality. It just isn’t considered acceptable to acknowledge this; being the receptive partner in gay male sex has been considered damaging to masculinity for thousands of years, in at least the West and Japan.
I know it’s by far the more common in the real world, but MoR!Hogwarts seems to differ significantly in the politics of gender and sexuality from most of real life, and I wanted to investigate how those differences would affect this situation. Since I don’t yet have a clear theory of mind regarding why rape occurs or is gender-biased, I was trying to gather explanations from the rest of the peanut gallery.
I must have missed the part where we see that MoR!Hogwarts in general differs in gender politics and sexuality than most of real life, except for the “girls can compete in contact sports/armies with boys” bit, but that’s a logical consequence of inherent equality of magical power. Lupin and Harry accepted a Peter/Sirius relationship without any squick, but Harry’s a child of the Enlightenment (who, by dint of his uber-prodigy-ness likely didn’t have jock-type macho-boys or religious conservatives as his formative peer group) and Lupin’s a member of a disadvantaged minority himself. Do we have any evidence that someone like Lucius Malfoy would not be about as homophobic as the average medieval baron, of the sort who would teach his son that raping uppity peasant girls with impunity is one of the bennies that comes with “good breeding?” Or that, say, Seamus Finnigan wouldn’t have the same kind of teen-boy homophobia/bullying reaction that’s fairly common in our world?
Do we have any evidence that someone like Lucius Malfoy would not be about as homophobic as the average medieval baron
Yes, the beginning of Chapter 42 suggests this very much!
There we are told that some Wizards[*], at least young ones, find the idea that Muggles hate homosexuality so surprsing that they expected it to be anti-Muggle propaganda. And not just any anti-Muggle propaganda, but Death-Eater propaganda. The implication is that Death Eaters (and Lucius Malfoy is one) have been spreading the word among Wizards that Muggles hate homosexuality. It would be difficult to do this if these Death Eaters hated homosexuality themselves!
[*] When capitalised, I use this word to mean both witches and wizards, as in ‘Wizarding Britain’, ‘Azkaban, the Wizard prison’, etc.
Ooooops, yeah, major reading comprehension fail on my part. When I read that chapter, I just kinda sped past the squee-ing girls to get to the story, and ended up still seeing things through the lens of canon and Harry’s previous impression of “Damn, these Wizards totally missed out on the Enlightenment!” Guess I need to pay more attention to preconceived notions and not letting them cloud my vision. :)
With more reflection though, it does make sense to me that Wizards would have a more enlightened attitude toward LGBTQ people, and find other irrational reasons to hate each other. In a world where some people can turn into animals, or alter their bodies at will (Metamorphomagi), and anybody with a jug of Polyjuice Potion and a clipping of hair can change their physical sex, non-heteronormative sexual identity could be seen as pretty tame. McGonagall could, if she so desired, turn into her feline form and go out lookin’ for some tom. Or if she’s lesbian or bi, then McGonagall/Mrs. Norris.
“Wow,” Daphne said, sounding a little shocked. “You mean Muggles really do hate that? I thought that was just something the Death Eaters made up.”
“No,” said an older Slytherin girl Hermione didn’t recognize, “it’s true, they have to get married in secret, and if they’re ever discovered, they get burned at the stake together. And if you’re a girl who thinks it’s romantic, they burn you too.” ”
-From the beginning of Chapter 42
It would seem to imply that being gay is certainly accepted, so much so that the Death Eaters used the Muggles’ homophobia as an argument against them.
The beginning of Chapter 42 seems to suggest casual acceptance of homosexuality, at least relative to the Muggle world. I’m trying to work out what other consequences would result from that and from the inherent equality of magical power—you can’t just change one thing and expect everything else to be the same.
Do we have any evidence that someone like Lucius Malfoy would not be about as homophobic as the average medieval baron, of the sort who would teach his son that raping uppity peasant girls with impunity is one of the bennies that comes with “good breeding?” Or that, say, Seamus Finnigan wouldn’t have the same kind of teen-boy homophobia/bullying reaction that’s fairly common in our world?
I don’t think we do. Apart from the the recent chapter, of course. Everything prior to that would suggest a mild tradition of homophobia would be likely. It would be extremely surprising if there wasn’t a bullying reaction of some kind. Children require very little excuse to bully someone atypical!
I’m not sure ‘by far’ is appropriate in this context. In the US, for instance, 91% of reported rape victims are female and 9% are male, with estimates usually of about 10% reporting for males and 40% reporting for females, which would yield an actual rate of about 28% of rape victims being male. That’s hardly an inconsiderable number.
Though I’m not sure how many of those are in prison, however.
Where are you getting your numbers? They sound to me like they come from the National CrimeVictimization Survey. These are not reports to police, but the result of asking random people if they have been raped. I don’t think that they sample prisoners, so they are probably highly biased against prison rape, but should catch some.
Why would there be gender-segregated dorms in this world?
Remember also that the girls’ dorms are magically protected against boys, but not conversely (at least in Gryffindor, at least midway in Harry’s career). IIRC, Hermione derides the rule as old-fashioned (but then, she’s Muggle-born, so that proves nothing).
Unless they’re trying to deliberately encourage homosexuality in teenagers as a strategy for avoiding accidental teen pregnancy.
A wise strategy, I would think. One reason why teen pregnancy rates are higher in the more relgious areas of the United States?
This would also explain Lupin’s possible attitude (though I may be misreading) that homosexuality is a thing for the young, while adult relationships tend to be heterosexual.
This was the attitude of the classical Greeks (and then Romans), at least for men.
A wise strategy, I would think. One reason why teen pregnancy rates are higher in the more relgious areas of the United States?
I think that has more to do with the idea that it’s immoral to provide kids with sex education. (This theory would be falsified if there’s a significantly larger difference in teen pregnancy than in teen STDs.)
The idea was developed in the Ravenclaw girls’ dorm, by the girls. They summoned a couple of professors for safety, but the word didn’t spread outside of that particular group—otherwise there would have been a large and varied mass to see the show, regardless of romantic interest.
Incidentally, is sexual orientation usually well-established by the age of eleven?
Very good point. My objection is rendered moot.
While this is also a relevant point, I would expect it to have nearly the opposite effect. Before puberty, identification with a sexual orientation would have to be completely socially constructed, so in a gay-friendly society most people should identify as bisexual by default.
A society can be gay-friendly and still heteronormative. In fact, I’d say that contemporary First-World youth fit right into that, although gay-friendliness hasn’t spread to the whole society yet. Still, as long as heterosexuals are most common, gays and bis will still be seen as unusual, even if OK. So socially, I expect that most people will still assume that they’re het until they learn otherwise.
However (contradicting both you and me), there are gay people who say that they knew that they were gay from a very young age. On the other hand, puberty has been known to mess with one’s expectations.
Generalising from one example: I can’t quite describe the environment that I grew up in as gay-friendly, only moving in that direction. Perhaps if it had been, then I’d have identified as bisexual at puberty, but perhaps not. In any case, it was a heteronormative environment, so I expected to be attracted to the opposite sex, and was. Then I jumped to conclusions, self-identified as het and suppressed my attraction to the same sex (ETA: because it messed with my idea of who I was) for another ten years. (Before puberty, I was completely asexual.)
On reflection, I was generalizing from one example as well. I was pretty sexual-hangup-y as a kid. I didn’t begin to suspect I was gay until I was seventeen, and it was another two or three years after that before I was comfortable with the idea that I had a sex drive at all.
This is not the case. Many gay people know that they are gay at a young age, often well before puberty. Or they realize that they are somehow different from the others around them. Human sexuality is not as simple as an on-off switch with the whole system coming into play when people hit puberty.
Actually, I’ve just thought of more stuff. Why would there be gender-segregated dorms in this world?
Unless they’re trying to deliberately encourage homosexuality in teenagers as a strategy for avoiding accidental teen pregnancy. This would also explain Lupin’s possible attitude (though I may be misreading) that homosexuality is a thing for the young, while adult relationships tend to be heterosexual.
On the other hand, if this were the case, I would expect the childhood sexuality taboo to only apply to heterosexuality, in which case Lupin shouldn’t have had the “when you’re older” reaction to telling Harry about Sirius and Peter’s relationship.
The real answer, of course, is that Hogwarts is shaped after British public schools, and it inherited gender-based dorms just like it did the four-house system.
A possible justification/rationalisation is that there are drastically different dynamics between a sexual attraction that involves a vast majority of the population, and one that involves a minority: heterosexual affections are much more likely to be potentially returned, compared to homosexual ones. Hence, while the occasional homosexual affair will sprout up in an all-male/all-female dorm, a mixed teenage dormitory would be completely overrun with drama, awkwardness, and unpleasant sounds and smells.
I can think of a good reason for segregated dorms: In the MoRniverse at least, rape is something aristocratic boys can do casually with the full expectation of getting away with it. Not to mention panty raids and other assorted sexually-harrassing nonsense. Even in a society without medieval/Victorian mores, girls would still need a place of relative safety in which to sleep, shower, dress, etc..
This is a good point.
Is there a specific reason to be significantly more concerned about male-on-female rape than the other three combinations?
It’s by far the most common, outside of certain highly artificial settings that don’t apply to Hogwarts.
Boarding schools and prisons create similar social scenarios. I believe male-male rape/harassment/”hazing” is/was a significant problem in many all-male British boarding schools.
Fraternities fit into more or less the same category, and likewise frequently feature various forms of ritualized homosexuality. It just isn’t considered acceptable to acknowledge this; being the receptive partner in gay male sex has been considered damaging to masculinity for thousands of years, in at least the West and Japan.
I know it’s by far the more common in the real world, but MoR!Hogwarts seems to differ significantly in the politics of gender and sexuality from most of real life, and I wanted to investigate how those differences would affect this situation. Since I don’t yet have a clear theory of mind regarding why rape occurs or is gender-biased, I was trying to gather explanations from the rest of the peanut gallery.
I must have missed the part where we see that MoR!Hogwarts in general differs in gender politics and sexuality than most of real life, except for the “girls can compete in contact sports/armies with boys” bit, but that’s a logical consequence of inherent equality of magical power. Lupin and Harry accepted a Peter/Sirius relationship without any squick, but Harry’s a child of the Enlightenment (who, by dint of his uber-prodigy-ness likely didn’t have jock-type macho-boys or religious conservatives as his formative peer group) and Lupin’s a member of a disadvantaged minority himself. Do we have any evidence that someone like Lucius Malfoy would not be about as homophobic as the average medieval baron, of the sort who would teach his son that raping uppity peasant girls with impunity is one of the bennies that comes with “good breeding?” Or that, say, Seamus Finnigan wouldn’t have the same kind of teen-boy homophobia/bullying reaction that’s fairly common in our world?
Yes, the beginning of Chapter 42 suggests this very much!
There we are told that some Wizards[*], at least young ones, find the idea that Muggles hate homosexuality so surprsing that they expected it to be anti-Muggle propaganda. And not just any anti-Muggle propaganda, but Death-Eater propaganda. The implication is that Death Eaters (and Lucius Malfoy is one) have been spreading the word among Wizards that Muggles hate homosexuality. It would be difficult to do this if these Death Eaters hated homosexuality themselves!
[*] When capitalised, I use this word to mean both witches and wizards, as in ‘Wizarding Britain’, ‘Azkaban, the Wizard prison’, etc.
Ooooops, yeah, major reading comprehension fail on my part. When I read that chapter, I just kinda sped past the squee-ing girls to get to the story, and ended up still seeing things through the lens of canon and Harry’s previous impression of “Damn, these Wizards totally missed out on the Enlightenment!” Guess I need to pay more attention to preconceived notions and not letting them cloud my vision. :)
With more reflection though, it does make sense to me that Wizards would have a more enlightened attitude toward LGBTQ people, and find other irrational reasons to hate each other. In a world where some people can turn into animals, or alter their bodies at will (Metamorphomagi), and anybody with a jug of Polyjuice Potion and a clipping of hair can change their physical sex, non-heteronormative sexual identity could be seen as pretty tame. McGonagall could, if she so desired, turn into her feline form and go out lookin’ for some tom. Or if she’s lesbian or bi, then McGonagall/Mrs. Norris.
So, yeah.
For example
I probably shouldn’t click that at work, should I?
Eww… I’m not posting McGonagall cat porn! Text only and nothing much worse than what is already implied here.
(And for what it is worth even ‘McGonagall cat porn’ image search is clean. Rule 34 is a lie!)
You don’t have to get all YKINOK up in here.
I like the way you think. :3
I don’t know about Seamus Finnigan, but:
″ “Romantic?” Hermione said. “They’re both boys!”
“Wow,” Daphne said, sounding a little shocked. “You mean Muggles really do hate that? I thought that was just something the Death Eaters made up.”
“No,” said an older Slytherin girl Hermione didn’t recognize, “it’s true, they have to get married in secret, and if they’re ever discovered, they get burned at the stake together. And if you’re a girl who thinks it’s romantic, they burn you too.” ” -From the beginning of Chapter 42
It would seem to imply that being gay is certainly accepted, so much so that the Death Eaters used the Muggles’ homophobia as an argument against them.
The beginning of Chapter 42 seems to suggest casual acceptance of homosexuality, at least relative to the Muggle world. I’m trying to work out what other consequences would result from that and from the inherent equality of magical power—you can’t just change one thing and expect everything else to be the same.
I don’t think we do. Apart from the the recent chapter, of course. Everything prior to that would suggest a mild tradition of homophobia would be likely. It would be extremely surprising if there wasn’t a bullying reaction of some kind. Children require very little excuse to bully someone atypical!
I’m not sure ‘by far’ is appropriate in this context. In the US, for instance, 91% of reported rape victims are female and 9% are male, with estimates usually of about 10% reporting for males and 40% reporting for females, which would yield an actual rate of about 28% of rape victims being male. That’s hardly an inconsiderable number.
Though I’m not sure how many of those are in prison, however.
Where are you getting your numbers? They sound to me like they come from the National Crime Victimization Survey. These are not reports to police, but the result of asking random people if they have been raped. I don’t think that they sample prisoners, so they are probably highly biased against prison rape, but should catch some.
I presume you refer to, for example, prisons? Anywhere with sex based segregation and artificially enforced proximity (that rules out ostracism.)
Yes, I had prisons in mind.
Well, in practice, it seems to be a lot more common. Certainly a lot more reported.
Remember also that the girls’ dorms are magically protected against boys, but not conversely (at least in Gryffindor, at least midway in Harry’s career). IIRC, Hermione derides the rule as old-fashioned (but then, she’s Muggle-born, so that proves nothing).
A wise strategy, I would think. One reason why teen pregnancy rates are higher in the more relgious areas of the United States?
This was the attitude of the classical Greeks (and then Romans), at least for men.
I think that has more to do with the idea that it’s immoral to provide kids with sex education. (This theory would be falsified if there’s a significantly larger difference in teen pregnancy than in teen STDs.)