fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2262 ]

[ SECRET POST #2262 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2262 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #323.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's very disturbing to me that people just BELIEVE that house elves want to be enslaved. Especially when we meet one who doesn't. Has no one heard of Stockholm Syndrome?

I wanted to say this.

I'm not going to lie, I have never heard of someone attempting to justify house elf slavery before until this thread. I actually came here to ask the OP what the hell they were talking about only to go @_@ at the crap people are spewing about "house elves want to serve!" and "you can't apply real world ethics here!" up thread. I mean, have they missed the part where the main theme of the books is about prejudice?! The anti-Muggle(born) rhetoric and the wars are allowed to be very loose analogies for anti-Semitism and WWII, but for some reason a very loose magical analogy for slavery isn't allowed? WTF?!

If anything, I tended to assume the house-elves were meant to be about not taking the status quo at face value. Yes, it looks like the house elves are happy to serve...except Dobby that for all that Dobby punishes himself for speaking ill of the Malfoys and disobeying them he is delighted to be freed, and meanwhile Kreacher despises Sirius and all of the Order, but he is still forced to work for them and at the first opportunity he could he screwed them all over. Meanwhile in the fact of all this, people like the Weaselys are completely apathetic simply because that was how they are raised - even though they vehemently oppose almost all other types of magical bigotry, and the fact that Ron actively changed his mindset on this by the end of the books - "we can't order the elves to fight for us" - is presented as a good thing. >.<

All of this puts the "want to be enslaved" thing in a whole new light. (Personally, one of my theories is that house-elves were a race actively created/manipulated into existence by wizards long ago into be an entire servile race - that doesn't make it okay, but at least it might explain a few things...? Well, I call it "one" of my theories for a reason...)

I mean, yes, real life slavery and biological determinism and all that are very complicated issues...which is presumably why JKR didn't get too deep into it. Even if it had a "growing audience", the books are still predominantly meant for kids, and while some of the surrounding subtleties may have fallen apart for a variety of reasons, the core message remains the same - slavery is not a good thing. Service, maybe (i.e. paid and/or negotiated service), but not enslavement - and either way, being cruel to people who work for you is a Bad Thing. (Kreacher started to at least not hate Harry as much when Harry started simply being nice to him even after years of loyalty to the Dark Side.)

your made up theory isn't canon. elves are non-human creatures. slavery is unquestionably wrong in the human world, but it's a more complicated question in a fantasy setting. the wizard wars function as an analogue for real-world wars because they contain key features of those wars; they're analogies because JKR made them so. elf slavery doesn't work as an analogue for human slavery because there's a fundamental difference between the way elfs and elf slavery are depicted and real actual real-life slavery. yes, you should be nice to the elves, but being nice to them by their own lights includes keeping them as slaves or at least as unpaid servants.

Keeping someone as an unpaid servant is not the same as being a slave.

Also, house elves might be aliens (whose personalities are a bit like certain human slave personalities as described by pro-slavery racists) but Wizards are humans and humans owning a talking human-ish creature that does their bidding and punishes itself for contradicting its master is bad news no matter how much the elf says they want it. It's not that different from the slave-owner side.

I know it isn't canon. I supposed I should've added it's more of a head canon than anything else. I forget that everyone in HP fandom takes things so seriously.

there's a fundamental difference between the way elfs and elf slavery are depicted and real actual real-life slavery

And what, exactly, is that fundamental difference? And more importantly, how is that fundamental difference any different from the 'fundamental difference' between JKR's depictions of wizarding wars and our real world wars?

There's a reason why I said 'loose analogy'. WWII and the Second Wizarding War are both about the dominant group of people in the relevant society attempting to subjugate and/or exterminate a minority group and annihilate their culture. While there are some other similarities and differences, those are mostly just window dressing.

By the same token, house elves and African Americans are both entire races of sentient, self-aware beings that are systematically enslaved based on the perception by the dominant group (that has a very vested interest in maintaining the status quo) that they are better off enslaved, using examples of good treatment and situational improvement to ignore the examples of abuse an desires for freedom among the oppressed group. Now obviously there are a lot of differences and obviously it's not a perfect analogy, or even necessarily a good one - after all, this is a very minor side-issue that, from the looks of it, JKR ultimately shunted to the side in favor of the main point, which was the war and the WWII/anti-Semitic analogues. But it doesn't change the fact that the arguments being used to justify their enslavement are the same ones that were once used by white planters to justify black slavery...and look how that turned out.

There is pretty much no way to justify the wizarding status quo with house elves without invalidating and undermining the very concepts of self-determination that is inherent to pretty much any being that can think for themselves - as house elves obviously can.

If the elves actively want to work in service to others and get no pay for it (and this isn't some kind of magical brainwashing or tampering), then that's fine - but that's their decision to make, and it's their prerogative as beings capable of independent thought to negotiate their work situation. That is NOT the situation we see or that is presented in the books.

There's no evidence that elves have Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. Elves are not human. They are alien. They are different from us. You have to give some kind of credence to what they say and do, and what they say and do, with minor exceptions, indicates that they would prefer to be unpaid servants. You can wish it weren't so, but that's pretty much what we get from the book. You can make up whatever kind of fan theory justifications for how the elves are totally all brainwashed, if that will make you feel better because Slavery Is Always Wrong, but those are still going to be fan theories.

It fucking blows my mind that someone would just casually say that "Slavery Is Always Wrong" is a flawed concept. By human standards it IS always wrong, and then it's wrong for humans to enslave, even if the creature DID desire it. Humans believe it's just as bad to enslave as to be a slave. The house elves appear perfectly human in every other way, and if they're fucked up enough to think they want to be enslaved, they could be taught that slavery is wrong. Because it is. Always. You say "with minor exceptions", those exceptions being the only two house elves we KNEW. Dobby hated the Malfoys, and he did their bidding not because he wanted to. He smashed his own head into things when he disobeyed them not because he wanted to, but because he was brainwashed. Kreacher despised the Order, and he still did their bidding. They are the only house elves we knew, and we knew that they were not happy slaves.

- we don't say that it's wrong to enslave a horse or a cow (most of us don't anyway - human society as a whole doesn't). so clearly the nature of the thing enslaved has some central impact on whether or not it is wrong.

- we do know at least one other named house elf - Winky. and not only is Winky a happy slave, she is crushed and depressed and terrified after she is freed - and she wasn't really treated well either, but being freed was something that she regarded as a horrible misfortune. and her attitude was treated as normal and proper by all the other house-elves that we see except for Dobby. even Kreacher isn't unhappy to be a slave, he just hates his master, and even that he arguably does out of commitment to his former master.

why, to your mind, is slavery wrong? to me, it's wrong because it goes against the proper treatment of human beings - it goes against their nature and it goes against their rights and it is wrong to do. if you have a group of beings with a different nature and a difference in what they want and different rights, it wouldn't continue to be wrong. and that's absolutely the way it's presented in the book. and i really, really don't understand why people seem to be so committed to saying that the way it's presented in the book isn't how it really is, and CLEARLY the elves are brainwashed. you simply refuse to actually say what's in the books is what's in the books.

we agree that slavery, in all conditions which actually have or could conceivably come to be in our world, is wrong. that's not at issue. and nothing about the fictional treatment of a race which could not possibly exist could conceivably change that. so i don't understand why it's so important for you and yours to be able to repeat "SLAVERY IS ALWAYS WRONG" with mantra-like intensity.

and her attitude was treated as normal and proper by all the other house-elves that we see except for Dobby. even Kreacher isn't unhappy to be a slave, he just hates his master, and even that he arguably does out of commitment to his former master.

It was also considered normal that Crouch had no responsibility for Winky after he didn't want her any more--the system is designed to only care about Wizard's wishes.

Kreacher actually was unhappy to be a slave, he just didn't put it in those terms. He was upset that he was forced to be serving people he didn't want to serve. If there was some way for a House Elf to simply put in a request to choose a different master, that would protect House Elves. It would also make them not actually slaves, even if they thought of themselves as such.

So slavery even here is being shown as wrong because it takes away all power for these creatures capable of knowing what they want. Meanwhile wizards get conditioned to think it's fine to make these people suffer because their feelings aren't important and they want it that way.

ummmmmmmm..... this is late, but we don't say it's wrong to enslave a horse or cow because they're not sentient. at all. house elves are people.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2262 ]

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People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

Re: People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

Re: People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

Re: People remember these books are for kids (who are not doing deep literary analysis), right?

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