[ SECRET POST #6643 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6643 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #949.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

10. https://i.imgur.com/WdRBUvZ.png

[(Anonymous)]

I only read HP once as a wee child, can someone explain what the canon-typical transphobia in the series was? I was under the impression JKR's crap gender views came after it ended, and she was mainly garbage about race, some "beauty equals goodness" tropey IIRC, and other things in HP's run.

I'm 100% not doubting it, I'm just asking if any fans can explain so I can get this secret.

[dani_phantasma]

In the original book Rita Skeeter was described pointedly having especially large hands '(man hands? I guess the implication was). Oh and Aunt Marge having a mustache. (Ironically the kind of things you could imagine either character pointing out about others)

Thats all i can think of in the books

There was also some Not Like Other Girls™ vibes regarding Hermione and later Ginny. (And i say this as someone who otherwise liked Ginny as a character. . I will say that in regards to fanfic i also LOATHED the fandom's tendency to reduce Ginny to some kind of 'shameless slut' who would sleep with any guy. Two sides of the same misogynistic coin imo)

[(Anonymous)]

. I will say that in regards to fanfic i also LOATHED the fandom's tendency to reduce Ginny to some kind of 'shameless slut' who would sleep with any guy. Two sides of the same misogynistic coin imo)

Me too! I didn't get why she was labeled a slut for doing what many teenagers do. I had friends with multiple boyfriends in one school year, she had three boyfriends over the course of two or three years.

[dani_phantasma]

Admittedly til 20 i was almost entirely ficto-sexual and disliked/resented most of my classmates too much to consider dating them but i still didn't see why it was so weird bc i felt like dating was a thing that was typical of teens

But i suppose i also learned from fandom that internalized misogyny and shaming other girls for dating/liking guys "too much" was a hell of a thing.

[(Anonymous)]

DA - I read the books and never got into fandom or discussing them, they were just fun books to read and then I moved on. Later I made a friend that was into the fandom and we got to talking and I was shocked how hated Ginny was. Then she went on to tell me other things and I realized I had a very different experience with those books than most of the fandom seemed to and was happy I never looked into it.

[dani_phantasma]

Yea honestly from what i recall Ginny seemed to get it from all sides. She dated too much, but she was also supposedly a 'stalker' to Harry according to some (i recall seeing someone lament that Harry "married his stalker" and i was like 'literally when??? Aside from that one time she was possessed.) and a bunch of people tried to claim she was a Mary Sue but i recall even in the 6th book when Harry was crushing on her a lot of the time it was shown she could get nasty when her temper was provoked. Thats a flaw.

But yeah. The Ginny hate just came from all sides. I will say book 6 had its flaws in the romance writing department but i hardly think Ginny is entirely the problem.

[(Anonymous)]

I personally didn't like the romance between Harry and Ginny but I didn't hate her for it, I just though JK really fucking sucked at romance, lol. Ginny herself had some cool moments even if she wasn't a character I had much in the way of an opinion on. But I also wasn't in the fandom so I have no idea how bad it was towards her, but given how shippers can be I can fully imagine. And yeesh.

[(Anonymous)]

Describing unsavory female characters as having certain male characteristics = transphobia?

[(Anonymous)]

Ginny canonically going through lots of boyfriends later in the series was one of the things I think was handled extremely well. When other characters called her a slut (in child-friendly terms, but that's obviously what they were going for) it was always portrayed as them kinda being jerks and the text itself never shamed her for it. That's really counter to Not Like Other Girls, where Other Girls are usually seen by the NLOG as slutty while she's the special good one for not going after boys.

[(Anonymous)]

Granted, I haven't read the books since the last one was published. But even back then, there was a decent amount of fandom commentary about how there was clearly a "correct" way to perform femininity in the Potterverse. The women that you're supposed to like are all naturally pretty and feminine without being prissy, or else older and motherly. Some of them are athletic, but the pretty, Sporty Spice kind of athletic. They're never sweaty or butch.

Meanwhile, the antagonistic women are all either described as looking mannish (Petunia, Marge, Pansy), exaggeratedly feminine (Narcissa, Harry and Ron's ex-girlfriends, Fleur until she loosened up and Our Heroes decided she was cool) or both (Rita, Dolores). Lots of big square hands covered with jewelry and big square jaws covered with makeup in the HP rogues gallery. Back then, people just figured that Jo had some unexamined sexism and homophobia going on. (Not just because of that. There was, for example, that whole thing where Remus turned out to be the only good werewolf and most of the rest of them are violent pedophiles. Or that thing where Dumbledore's gay crush had him siding with the wizard nazis for a little bit.)

In retrospect, there were signs of things to come.

[(Anonymous)]

your examples are excellent but as a counterpoint: plenty of authors have been describing women with those very attributes for decades before Rowling was even old enough to hold a pencil. The hands/jaws/oh no hairy face has been part of western culture as shorthand for ugly/unfuckable for a very long time without it directly coming from a place of transphobia. If anything it's, as you say, extremely sexist and misogynistic and always has been. Rowling was just maintaining her spot in a long line of people who write ugly people as evil, and there's lots of that still going on.

[(Anonymous)]

The only thing that comes immediately to mind for me was Fleur's reaction to being polyjuiced into Harry when the Order of the Phoenix wanted six decoy Harry Potters in the first Deathly Hallows movie (I didn't read that book and have no idea if there's something like that in there). It didn't make any sense to me and I was so annoyed by it.

[(Anonymous)]

Sounds like you picked a crap fic to read.

[(Anonymous)]

There isn't canon-typical transphobia. You're adding things into it that aren't there due to current drama.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn’t sure of a better way to phrase it than transphobia. The fic had this thing about how all the good girls were “feminine,” and because Millicent Bullstrode was buff and liked wrestling, that meant she was “trying to be a guy” and that was bad.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Ahhhhh OK I was eyerolling over the Rita and Marge examples, but if Millicent is what stood out to you, that's legit. When I first read the books, I thought JKR had issues with butch lesbians. Not that it was implied that Millicent was a lesbian, but there was definitely that whole butch girl=evil implication.

Which is ironic because now it seems she's surrounding herself with butch TERFs.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I just use the phrase "conservative gender roles" or "GNC hatred" for things like that. Transphobia is very specific, it ties in with GNC hatred and supporting gender roles but as a cis GNC person I can still say I have faced one but never transphobia.

[(Anonymous)]

I've been reading HP fic on and off for almost two decades, and haven't come across any fat- or transphobia. JKR is a monster irl but I don't recall any transphobia in the books either.

You read one bad fic and decided it must be representative of all fic for that fandom - ironically, this is what happens in the brains of racists/transphobes/prejudiced people.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm even surprised if there's a fic with any transphobia* on it, I would think most of the fics have a dosage of trans character to be a "gotcha!" to JKR.

*Transphobia in the sense of hating a character for being trans while dealing their issues, not transphobia because fuck that character.

[(Anonymous)]

No fatphobia in any fic you've read for twenty years? That's impressive, considering how blatant the source material is.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

And while the books do contain transphobia, it's easy to miss (especially compared to the fatphobia); I'm trans myself and I had to have it spelled out in complete detail.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Not that I recall. It's possible I have at some point, maybe there was a dodgey comment about Dudley or something in there somewhere. I probably could have said that I can't remember encountering any rather than that I absolutely haven't, but the point - that in my experience these things aren't prevalent elements of HP fic - stands either way.

[(Anonymous)]

TBF since fanfic is self-indulgent, it tends not to include Disliked Fat Characters like Marge or Umbridge at all. Or if it does, it's focusing on them because it's deliberately humanizing, usually Dudley.

(if they appear as villains, fanfic also doesn't NEED to characterize them by appearance since a fanfic audience already knows what they look like.)

[(Anonymous)]

well... read a good fic instead? a fine-wine drarry.