HBP Chapter Fourteen: "Felix Felicis"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* First up, I’m not sure what the name “felix felicis” is about. It’s Latin for “happy of happy”, but that makes no sense whatsoever. If I were in a particularly cynical mood, I might suggest she looked up happy in a Latin dictionary, found felix felicis, and didn’t realise that the second word was just the genitive singular of the first.

* Ron correctly points out that Harry’s lessons with Dumbledore aren’t actually teaching him anything useful, although once again we’re probably expected to judge him for his lack of blind faith in whatever his superiors say ought to be done.

* Hermione’s defence, that the lessons help to find out Voldemort’s weaknesses, might be more convincing if Harry ever actually uses something from Voldemort’s childhood against him.

* I’m not sure why Harry’s so averse to attending Slug Club meetings. Yeah, Slughorn’s a bit obsequious, but not so bad as to justify Potter’s constant attempts to avoid him.

* This scene perfectly captures Ron and Hermione’s dynamic: Ron sneers at Hermione for being better than him, and Hermione puts Ron down and makes him feel jealous. If this is JKR’s idea of romance, I’d hate to be her husband.

* Still, at least Harry’s got his priorities right: how will he be affected if they start going out?

* “Under the influence of Butterbeer” makes it sound like an alcoholic drink, but I’m pretty sure we’ve seen no-one (or at least no-one human) get drunk off it before, and there’s never been any indication of an age limit for drinking it. Oh dear, continuity.

* Seamus slams his books and looks sour when Dean gets a place on the team instead of him. For all that fandom has Slytherins down as the Hogwarts drama queens, I think that Gryffindors are definitely the most stroppy.

* I can’t imagine where the rest of Gryffindor house gets the idea that Harry plays favourites from. Except perhaps from the fact that he chose his best friend Ron two years in a row, despite the fact that Ron always goes to pieces whenever there’s a game on. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

* Still, it’s a pity JKR had to resurrect nervouskeeper!Ron. Not only was it tedious enough in the last book, its inclusion here just makes the Quidditch scenes in Phoenix seem even more pointless, and Ron even more needlessly pathetic.

* Ginny, of course, looks even better than usual in this scene: not only does she score most of the goals against Ron (which is probably meant to increase his emasculation – even his little sister is better than him), but she also makes Harry laugh with her sassy put-downs. When she and Harry get married they can both bond over their mutual enjoyment of other people’s discomfort.

* And… here comes the chest monster! Honestly, Harry and his chest monster must be the second-worst romance I’ve ever read (the first, of course, is Ron and Hermione).

* We know Ginny’s going to be awesome in this scene when she begins by “tossing her long red hair and glaring at Ron”. Somebody kill me now.

* What’s with all this “let’s get this straight once and for all” business? Ginny’s choice of words seems to imply that Ron keeps prying into her love life, but we’ve never been given any indication that this is the case.

* I presume the thing Ron doesn’t want people calling Ginny is “slut”? I wish they would. Not because I think it’s true, but because Ginny’s just so irritating that anything which would annoy her is OK by me.

* Ginny has a go at Ron for not having enough experience. Because obviously, modern society isn’t nearly sexualised enough, we need a series of popular books telling children that anybody who hasn’t had enough sexual experience is pathetic.

* Man, Ginny’s just a total bitch in this scene. Yes, Ron was rude to her, but her response is really disproportionate and uncalled-for.

* It’s odd, but Ginny seems to get most worked up about the way Ron tries to get Fleur’s attention. She sounds rather like a spurned lover here. Hmm, maybe all that Weasleycest fic isn’t quite so out there as I’d assumed.

* No, Harry, don’t stop Ron from cursing her! Let Ginny get zapped for once!

* So Ginny flounces off, leaving Ron behind. I suppose he should count himself lucky she didn’t whip out her wand and perform a super-sassy Bat-Bogey Hex on him.

* “She’s Ron’s sister, Harry told himself firmly. Ron’s sister. She’s out of bounds.” Even though Ron practically threw her at him at the end of the last book. Plot-induced amnesia strikes again.

* Harry feels “dazed and confused” the next morning. So do I, after trying to make sense of this book.

* Hermione’s feeling “hurt and bewildered” by Ron’s “icy, sneering indifference”. If this was a semi-believable book, I’d say that Ron had finally had enough of Hermione’s constant passive aggressiveness and undermining, but as it is I think we’re supposed to assume he’s just upset at finding out Hermione had snogged Krum two years ago.

* Incidentally, why is this supposed to be such a big and shocking revelation? Surely when two teenagers go out, the natural assumption is that they’ll end up snogging?

* Luckily for Ron, he’s got no need to worry: Hermione’s just getting her necessary practice in to hone her technique for her true man.

* FOR GOD’S SAKE ROWLING SHUT UP ABOUT THAT SODDING BAT-BOGEY HEX GINNY IS COOL AND SASSY WE GET IT ALREADY STOP RAMMING IT DOWN OUR THROATS AAARGH… *takes deep breaths*

* Lavender’s trying to make Ron feel better. Keep away from him, you hussy! Ron doesn’t need a nice, friendly girlfriend, he needs a scornful and contemptuous one to keep him down in his rightful place.

* Well, at least the Slytherins are sensible enough to have substitute players.

* Harry gets his hand crushed by the Slytherin captain, and I seem to recall Flint used to do the same thing to Oliver Wood. Is hand-crushing a typical Slytherin trait then? Maybe all their parents told them about the importance of a good firm handshake, and they just take it a bit too far.

* Harry dislikes Zacharias heartily… presumably because he can just sense the latent evil in the boy, even though he hasn’t done anything yet which would merit such dislike. If anything, surely Harry ought to feel friendly towards a fellow DA member?

* Ginny scores four of Gryffindor’s six goals. Colour me shocked.

* The game goes pretty much unremarkably: Gryffindor score a few goals, and then Harry’s broom wins the game, rendering everything which came before totally pointless.

* “Oi, Harper! How much did Malfoy pay you to make you come on instead of him?” I’d say that distracting an opposing seeker like this was a very Slytherin thing to do, were it not for the fact that we hardly ever see Slytherins actually doing cunning and sneaky things like this.

* Not that playing on superior brooms and deliberately psyching out opponents makes the Gryffindors any less chivalrous, you understand.

* Ginny flies into Zach for his insufficiently fawning commentary, placing the crowning turd on the mountain of raw sewage that is this Quidditch game.

* “I never said you couldn’t [save goals]!” No, Hermione, you just implied it really, really strongly, such that nobody could miss that that was what you were thinking.

* Ron “looks like he’s eating [Lavender’s face],” unlike Ginny, who daintily glues herself to her boyfriend’s mouth.

* Unfortunately Ginny’s probably right: most first romances in these books seem to be for people to “refine their technique” before moving on to their true love.

* Hermione seems rather surprised that Ron got tired of her hectoring and decided to hook up with somebody who actually respects him instead. Maybe she’s been getting all her dating advice from The Game or whatever the wizarding equivalent is.

Comments

[borg-princess.livejournal.com]

ITA, imo, intent is meaningless - the person giving offense doesn't get to decide whether the term is offensive, it's enough that another person was hurt by it.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Definitely. Intent != magic. That being said, I don't think judging the acceptability of a comment purely on whether the other person is hurt by it is appropriate either. For example, if someone believes that blacks are just naturally lazy, less intelligent, and more belligerent than whites, but we shouldn't hold it against them because it's their fault, then that person is racist. They need to be called out on that fact even though most people would take great offense at such an accusation. It should also be noted that such beliefs do not make them a bad person per se. They may be unbelievably kind and lovely and generous and always try to see the best in everyone. But they do have incredibly harmful and misguided views about the world and the people around them, and these have to be called out, no matter how painful it is, otherwise the issues fester beneath the surface of false civility and the rot continues to spread. It's the same with calling out sexism and the various other -isms in our culture.

Where language becomes harmful is when it is 1) lies and slander, or 2) used to reinforce the marginalization and dehumanization of already disenfranchised groups, such as women, people of color, the disabled, etc.... Slut-shaming unambiguously falls under the latter category.

[600ants.livejournal.com]

It only shames you if YOU think there's something wrong with being a woman. of color, disabled... I couldn't care less if someone calls me eg. "white bitch", I don't consider it an insult. I'd be insulted if they called me thief, liar, racist - you know, something that's both untrue and despicable.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but are you white, male, middle class or better, able-bodied, cisgendered, heterosexual, or at least the vast majority of the above? Because your comments reek of unexamined privilege. All of the above categories are implicitly favored in patriarchal (yes, including Western) society. The REASON 'bitch,' 'slut,' 'retard,' 'bastard,' etc. ad infinitum are considered insulting in the first place is because they indicate the person referenced is in some way an outsider to the dominant power structure, either because of what they are or what they are perceived to be.

Have you heard of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis? Essentially, it posits that language is not a neutral descriptor of the world, but instead acts to limit and filter our perception of the world depending on the language we use to process it. If a language requires you to code whether you 'know' information first-hand, second-hand, or only from hearsay, the speakers of that language are going to pay closer attention to their sources than speakers of other languages. Languages that use grammatical gender result in populations that link culturally feminine or masculine attributes to inanimate objects of the same 'gender.' English is a language like any other.

This doesn't mean that language is determinative, though. Cultures with only two color terms obviously see the world very differently than a culture with hundreds of such terms. However, people from that same culture can learn those new color terms and identify them with the proper referent (though they still tend to have difficulty with borderline cases, like bluish-greens).

Change the language you use, and you change the way you see the world around you.



Call a woman a bitch and you indicate that she is too strident and abrasive.

Call a man a bitch and you indicate that in some way he is too submissive and weak.

Both are violations of the "proper" gender roles society still expects us to fulfill. Both are intended to insult, demean, and degrade the target. Using them as such reinforces those cultural perspectives.

Call someone an asshole or a bully and you indicate that they're a nasty piece of work without invoking those damaging gender stereotypes.



Reclaiming bigoted language is possible, and can be deeply empowering, but I see no evidence that that is what you're advocating here.



600ants, if you disagree with this, if you really believe words don't hold any shame unless the recipient personally feels it, then why do you think so many people reach for these derogatory markers so quickly when they want a quick and dirty way to hurt someone?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Also, only the people *targeted by* the bigoted language can reclaim it, and even then that's up to the individual's determination - it's not possible to reclaim it for another.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Very true.

[600ants.livejournal.com]

Drat, I can't seem to reply to your previous post. LJ keeps marking me as spam. Sorry for the deleted comments.

Now look, I am well aware of how unfair the reality is, not to mention humakind's ugly history. And lots of people are just plain nasty. But my point is, if someone insults you, don't make the freaking world of it. Why should YOU feel bad for someone else's bad manners (or stupid opinions)? Why should YOU act as if there's something wrong with being a "bitch"?

Even linguistically speaking, when people embrace a word that is meant to be insulting, after some time it ceases to be an insult. :-)
If I had to choose just one of the two, I'd always value my freedom of speach more than my right to not be insulted.

Please don't try to judge people by their color, sexual orientation, background etc. And anyway, you are quite wrong in your assuptions of my "vital statistics". :) I've been part-time working since age 15 (better way to get money than crawling before my family and conforming to their expectations), and I think back then I had every right to consider myself working class. The reason why you percieve me as male is that I'm ok with being a woman, and not a little bit ashamed and acting as if it was a handicap, as many women were brainwashed to do. "White ....." is a common insult where I live, and unlike "black ......", it's not punishable in any way - because some populists think that being white is an aggravation, if not downright criminal offence. I've been judged on my color more than often, ty very much (most recently by yourself). My most significant relationship so far was actually homosexual, even though I have a boyfriend now. Being what I am, I can safely tell you that generally speaking, bisexuals are equally unpopular on both sides of the fence. Gay people can be pretty judgemental too, just as folks of color can be racists. I've never in my life encountered or heard about an incident when someone would shout insults at a disabled person, but if it helps, I experienced "fat-shamimg" by a couple of classmates as a kid. Even back then I didn't consider it a big deal, though.

Not taking unimportant words of unimportant people to your heart is one of the most important lessons I've learned.in life. :) Fight for the right thing and stick up for others? Yes. Think I can save the world and think I can make everybody agree with me? No. Gender (and other) stereotypes need to be broken, not tiptoed around, people need to be given unbiased education and taught to THINK different, not just forced to speak different.

Or that's what I think, anyway.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah... I mean, it's all very well to say that such-and-such world shouldn't be hurtful because I, personally don't mean it that way, but when you're speaking in a context where the word is still frequently used by more socially powerful people to put down people they see as their inferiors, in exactly the same way as they always have? (For instance, there are still many teenage girls and women to this day who are shunned, kicked out of their homes, or subjected to violence for having children out of wedlock. That stigma is a real, living thing, not a distant historical memory.) No, that just doesn't work.

Especially when you're speaking in a public forum where you have no idea whether someone who has been subjected to those insults by people who really mean them, in their fully-gendered historical forms - or someone who uses them and means them, for that matter - is reading. I'd rather not unintentionally stomp on someone or unintentionally encourage someone else to think I support their nastiness.

And yes, people slip up. It's hard not to when the modes of speech are so ubiquitous. But I think it's worthwhile to make the effort.

(And for the record, something I meant to mention earlier but lost track of because there are so many things to comment on... Yes, I am very, very uncomfortable with statements like "Remus is weak and therefore couldn't possibly have gotten it up/fathered a child." That kind of Gryffindorish macho-culture bullshit reinforces all sorts of pernicious stereotypes that hurt men by forcing them into narrow molds and punish any who fall outside them, and hurt women in the process because that kind of macho bullshit often requires showing off one's objectification skills to win the approval of fellow men. It's lose-lose. And I don't like to reinforce those ideas, thanks.)

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you're offended, but I don't agree with you. Speaking as someone who was virtually ignored by her father mother's sperm donor her entire life, and whose life has been nearly destroyed by her family's misogyny, I think I've paid in blood for the right to insult "men" who abandon their families and/or people who treat their female family members as worth less than their male family members.

And for the record, I don't have different standards of conduct for men and women. I regard the "manly" virtues of courage, loyalty, and taking care of and protecting your family, especially your children, as virtues that parents of both sexes should live by. Women who act like Remus are every bit as contemptible as men are. Biologically, it's just not possible to make that kind of deservedly vicious joke about women. Believe me, I'd be happy to do it if it were.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

There's a difference, though, between insulting and criticizing individual men for their actions, and insulting them using gendered stereotypes that play into the same set of restrictive gender roles that hurt women. Which I think is what sunny was getting at - i.e. the insinuation that Remus wasn't a 'manly man' is different than calling Remus morally weak.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand that. But the point I'm making is that, while I realize that I used what is technically a gendered stereotype as an insult, that's not how I was using it. If it were biologically possible to say of a woman who acted like that, "She doesn't have the equipment to bear children," I'd be happy to do so. Since I'm an equal opportunity insulter, I don't consider it "Gryffindorish macho-culture bullshit" to use that insult.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

1) What does 'biologically possible' have to do with it? Nobody's arguing that Remus literally doesn't have the physical, um, equipment. (genuinely confused here, not trying to be attacking) Unless you're getting at how having balls equates culturally to strength in a way that having a womb/vagina doesn't? (Though realistically it ought to be the other way around - balls are rather easily hurt, whereas anything that has to birth a baby has to be quite tough! XD But I digress.)

2) I still have to disagree I'm afraid. I don't see how it can be logically or otherwise argued that using certain gendered stereotypes (those applicable to women) to insult is not ok regardless of individual intent because they support an oppressive framework, but using other gendered stereotypes rooted in the same framework to insult is ok as long as the individual doesn't mean it 'that way.' It's true that the direct impact on men may not be the same as the direct impact on women, because women are the oppressed class. But both sets of insults prop up exactly the same set of oppressive stereotypes, which harm both men and women. It's insulting to the man because it's ultimately, in the existing framework, asserting he's not a man - i.e., he's weak and dickless like a woman. The whole notion of masculinity in our sort of patriarchal culture is centered around proving oneself not a woman via displays of overt strength and aggression. I'm not exactly comfortable supporting that for obvious reasons. I'm also not convinced that, just because the object of derision is a man, suddenly individual intent can erase how the inherent nature of the insult as insult plays into an overall sexist framework - its power to insult is inherently rooted in sexist notions.

(For a parallel example not using gender, consider the word 'crazy' used as an insult. I, as someone who deals with diagnosed anxiety and depression issues, regularly refer to myself as 'crazy' with both positive and negative connotations. I've also in the past had a habit of using it generally in the culturally accepted manner as an insult towards others, especially those I disagree with politically. Having read and thought a bit about the stigma against mental illness, I make an effort to no longer use it that way, and I even question my use of it towards myself, though it could be argued that there I'm reclaiming it. Because whether or not I ever consciously intended to argue that the person I was insulting was literally mentally ill, or consciously intended to stigmatize all people with any sort of mental illness as bad or Other, the very fact that I found the word insulting implied to any listener that I thought being mentally ill made one inferior, or at the absolute least that I assumed the insultee would find it so and I was happy to support that belief in them if it enabled me to insult them. Otherwise it wouldn't be an insult, merely a factually dis/provable assertion about the other person with questionable relevance to the conversation. And I couldn't very well expect random Jane/Joe listener to read my mind and realize I didn't mean it 'like that,' I just meant...well I meant.... See what I mean? It's not about individual intent - the insults only work as part of a structure of assumptions independent of any one person's intent.)

(more in a sec)

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

3) I'm also not wild about the potential equivalent for women either, frankly - I'd say I'm deeply suspicious of any gendered insult used within a broadly sexist culture like the West's. Though childbearing doesn't have the same associations of strength for women the way the given example does for men, it's still an aspect of (what is considered to be, cis) womanhood that's always been used to objectify and control those read as female. By which I mean, not that having is inherently part of What It Means to Be a Woman, but that it's traditionally been viewed that way, and therefore women who couldn't for whatever reason have children have historically been marginalized for that 'failing.' So I'm uncomfortable with any insult that mimics that thinking structurally, regardless of the individual intent behind it. If something culturally associated with a specific gender is essential to the insult as insult, there's going to be sexist ickiness at the root of it somewhere, in my experience. (I simply go with truly equal-opportunity insults like asshat. Everyone's got an ass and everyone's is equally dirty.)

I hope I'm not coming off as attacking, here. I agree with you on many, many things and I love your take on the books overall. I just am uneasy letting anything that reads to me as rooted in sexist notions go unchallenged, because it's something I'm actively working on in myself.

[sunnyskywalker]

I still have to disagree I'm afraid. I don't see how it can be logically or otherwise argued that using certain gendered stereotypes (those applicable to women) to insult is not ok regardless of individual intent because they support an oppressive framework, but using other gendered stereotypes rooted in the same framework to insult is ok as long as the individual doesn't mean it 'that way.'

That's what I was trying to say, yes. Actually I could probably stop with "what she said." Including the reasons for me trying to stop using "crazy" to mean "bad person" or "just wild, man."

I am all in favor of calling out people for specific morally weak behavior, but tying it to their reputation of whether they meet "proper" gendered expectations? First, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the point you're trying to make, really (unless you are arguing that moral weakness affects sperm count or erections, which is not the impression I got). And second, again, it reinforces a lot of the same toxic crap that so many boys are so carefully taught that encourages them to grow up and be jackasses, and who does that help?

I will make a distinction between a handful of friends talking in a closed group and someone speaking in a public forum, though. A few friends might well know each other well enough to know when one "doesn't mean it that way," and it doesn't necessarily impact anyone else, because no one else hears. It's different in a public forum - which I count this as - when you have no idea who will just magically know which "way" you intended it.

Also, I'm not deeply, personally offended (though someone else in my place might be - I have no idea how others might react). I just personally don't like it, try not to do it myself (not always successfully), and don't think it's a good idea in general. Plus I tend to prefer insulting people for exactly what they have actually done rather than what tangential baggage societal expectations might try to drag into it.