A plea for tolerance?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Not sure quite what to call this - it's a comment I made on an earlier thread, where it was pretty deeply buried. I'm posting it as a separate comment because it's something I feel pretty strongly about.

Yes, I know - this is a sporking community. We are making fun of the Harry Potter books, and, at times, some of us can get quite irate in our discussions. But - please, please, can we refrain from getting irate towards J.K. Rowling?

Here's what I mean: I'm really not comfortable discussing the character of an actual human being just because I find her books frustrating. I'm a bit of a structuralist. The author is dead once a book has been published, and that cuts two ways. The author is no more privileged in his/her interpretation than any other reader, because the work belongs to the readers now. And there are limits to what we can extrapolate about an author's belief, personality, etc, based on the work s/he has written.

As angry as I get at the awful, mixed messages in these books, I think we must never forget that a real, vulnerable human being wrote them. It isn't right or fair to trash her while trashing the books. (Though I like to think we're not trashing them, but subjecting them to rigorous criticism!) And I'm really not comfortable with speculating about her family life and personality based on the words she's written. Though I do believe all real art is "true" in a deep sense, and reveals the heart of its creator, I still think the art has, and must have, its own validity. You see what I mean?

I hope to be a published author one day. Though I neither want nor expect Rowling's level of fame, I wouldn't like it if anyone psycho-analyzed me on the basis of my stories. I don't think any of us would - and many of us do some type of creative work. Would we like to be called "stupid cows" because a reader found our work stupid? The person is not the work.

So I think it's fine to discuss the image of God in Rowling's stories. I think it's fine to question the heavy use of Christian symbolism given the non-Christian content of the stories. Heck, I've done this myself, repeatedly! It's fine to discuss the mixed messages about race, bullying, authority figures, and so much more. But I'd rather not discuss the psychology and personal life of the woman who wrote the stories. J.K. Rowling is a woman trying to write, and raise a family, and live, in this real world. We shouldn't forget that, no matter how angry her books make us.

Comments

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

- since you've brought up the Ginny Weasley debacle yourself -

I just thought it was a bit amusing, how some people foamed at the mouth for daring to insult (in their eyes) a fictitious character while others cast slurs on the real-life author without a qualm.

Now, as an overall qualifier covering all of this serial-dater stuff I want to make it clear that I personally never thought that Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione were having sex. I happily read in accordance with the overall intent, customised to Rowling's child readership, that kissing was as far as romantic relations went. Unlike some fans I didn't go looking in the white space between the lines for adult themes in the HP books.

I mention this because I think you, and others, go overboard in your attacks/reactions because you're extrapolating beyond what Rowling wrote. With at least two exaggerations that *I'm* not comfortable with in just your comment here:

* a think calling a girl a 'slut' for merely dating/kissing a series of boys is going too far. 'Slut' is more appropriate for a girl who sleeps with a series of boys; at least that's how I see it;

* miscegenation, according to dictionary dot com, concerns 'marriage or cohabitation between two people of different races'. Which is beyond my own impression of what Ginny and Dean were getting up to.

So I think you have to understand from the start that I'm not looking at this with quite your fervour, because I'm not taking Rowling's books and writing as far beyond what was written as what you are doing. Which is part of your problem with what I *am* saying.

A statement being technically factual doesn't make it appropriate - or relevant.

No, but it certainly makes it a valid and eligible candidate for consideration as an appropriate or relevant point for an issue under discussion. I'm not sure what you're trying to say there. In a debate, if you can prove something is NOT technically factual, then you can throw it out. If you prove it IS factual then (a) you've helped your opposition and (b) you still have to make an effort to prove that it's not applicable.

As long as all parties are fully informed and freely consenting, it is no one's business who is going out with whom.

I guess you should tell Ron Weasley that. And Harry. And Hermione, who kept track of Ginny's romantic dalliances. I'm just a reader. They were the characters keeping tabs on Ginny's dating.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The word 'slut' is inappropriate, period. A woman can have sex with bazzillions of people, and it matters nothing regarding her character, morality or anything else. Because sex in itself is not morally 'iffy'. Cheating, coercing, getting people in bed on false pretenses etc are different issues.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Slut-Shaming 101

First, let's get some definitions down so we're all on the same page.

Slut-shaming in no way requires that a girl in fact be promiscuous. A virgin can be slut-shamed. A rape-victim can be and nearly always is slut-shamed. From Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog

Put in the most simple terms, slut-shaming happens when a person “publicly or privately [insults] a woman because she expressed her sexuality in a way that does not conform with patriarchal expectations for women” (Kat, Slut-Shaming vs. Rape Jokes). It is enabled by the idea that a woman who carries the stigma of being a slut — ie. an “out-of-control, trampy female” — is “not worth knowing or caring about” (Tanenbaum, p. 240).

If all negative connotations are removed from the word, a “slut” is simply a person, most often a woman, who has had sex with multiple partners. In societies where the only acceptable expression of female sexuality is within a marriage (usually for the purpose of having children), engaging in sex with more than one partner is enough to justify the label of “slut” and the slut-shaming that comes with it. In societies such as the United States where it is not uncommon for people to have several relationships throughout their lives, for the most part it is no longer considered a requirement for a woman to wait until marriage before engaging in sex. However, this shift in sexual mores has simply shifted the goal posts for “proper” female sexuality from marriage to “the attitude of the girl, her emotional feeling for the boy she’s with and her feelings about sex as an expression of love” (Taunenbaum, p. 67). (Emphasis added.)

http: (slash) (slash) finallyfeminism101(dot) wordpress (dot) com/2010/04/04/what-is-slut-shaming/

In a similar vein, rape culture is

a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm.

In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable as death or taxes. This violence, however, is neither biologically nor divinely ordained. Much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change.

http: (slash) (slash) finallyfeminism101 (dot) wordpress (dot) com/2009/10/19/rape-culture-101/

Slut-shaming reinforces rape culture by propping up the belief that sex is something that is done to women, not something they can ever legitimately participate in or initiate on equal footing. It further perpetuates the violence of the system by targeting for abuse those women who do try to assert control over their own bodies and normalizing the violence of that response through moralizing and social pressure.

(I strongly recommend reading both page in full. They give a good overview of how pernicious and insidious these attitudes are and their poisonous affects on society.)

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Public Shaming: A Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Public shaming is one of the oldest legal sentences we know of, though the details vary from culture to culture. In ancient Rome a woman convicted of adultery or prostitution was forced to wear a toga instead of a proper stola. In the 17th and 18th centuries in New England, those convicted of adultery were forced to wear a scarlet A on their chest. Use of the stocks as a form of punishment is attested to in the bible, and continued to be used as such through the 17th century.

The main problem with public shaming is this: when you hold someone up to be punished by the public, you are giving each individual member of that public permission to punish that person as harshly or leniently as they see fit. There is no mechanism to even attempt to ensure equity before the law. This is mob justice.

Consider the fates of those sentenced to the stocks. Those who were popular, like Daniel Defoe, were pelted with flowers and made comfortable by an admiring crowd. Most often though, the crowd gathered to ensure the punishment was as miserable as possible. That was the entire point of making it public. The crowd would mock them, insult them, beat them, urinate on them, torment them to the limits of their imaginations and whims. They would throw mud, rotten fruit, excrement, and dead animals at the offender. Some would throw stones and bricks. Sometimes so many threw stones and bricks and other dangerous objects that the offender was maimed or killed.

And that outcome was just fine. If anyone was ever convicted for their part in murdering someone sentenced to the stocks or pillory I've never found an account of it. Because when you turn the administration of justice over to the public, whatever sentence the public carries out, however lenient or cruel, is ipso facto justified and just.

And the problem is worse than just the fickleness of the crowd: when the punishment for deviance is for the populace to make an example of the deviant, then that punishment only works if the crowd makes an example of them. This means that denigrating the convicted is not just a question of personal preference, it is a question of civic duty. A good, upstanding member of the community, in order to maintain that status, is pressured to add their own punishment, and to inflict it with sufficient severity, that they won't be accused themselves of excusing or promoting the convict's misdeeds.

Beyond that, most sentences of shaming didn't and don't have even implied limitations on the time frame in which it may be done like the stocks or pillory do. Those who were branded, or forced to wear the sign of their shame on their person, or attached to their name, were condemned for life. There was no point beyond which they could say that the comment box was closed, all judgments had been finalized, and the sentence completed. For the rest of their lives those who had been convicted in the public court would always be faced with the uncertainty of whether the people they must interact with would punish them further or let them be, or what form that punishment might take if it was inflicted on them anew. Nor would they have recourse for the redress of their own grievances regarding this harassment. It was, after all, their just punishment.

For these reasons among others, public humiliation was outlawed in the U.S. over the 18th and 19th centuries as running afoul of the 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Modern slut-shaming and other modern shame-based approaches toward social control are in some ways worse than those that were legally sanctioned. With the latter, there was a commonly understood definition of the underlying crime. Today, not only the punishment, but the determination of whether someone deserves to be punished, is in the hands of the mob. Once the mob gathers gathers steam, however, it has just as much power and social legitimacy as it did when the stocks were still legal.

Likewise, where in the past a person could theoretically leave their small town where they'd been convicted and start over fresh, in today's social media landscape there is no possibility of escape. Once an image or story spreads through the ether it exists in perpetuity for the entire world to see and pass judgment on.


Lest anyone think these are merely academic concerns, here is a tiny snapshotsof slut-shaming and rape culture as it appears in the 21st century. (TW: Rape, Pedophilia, Self-Harm, Suicide)

*A 21-year-old midshipman claimed she was raped by three Naval Academy football players at a party. Investigators spent over 20 HOURS grilling her over everything from what undergarments she was wearing to how she performs oral sex to what her previous relationships were like. I should hope it would be obvious that none of these questions having anything to do with the issue of whether she was raped on that particular night. It is purely an attack on her character, looking for some excuse to blame the attack on her.

The Washington Post: Military’s handling of sex assault cases on trial at Naval Academy rape hearing


*In the UK, Judge Robert Brown ordered a jury to return a verdict of Not Guilty in a case where 5 men were accused of conspiring to and then carrying out the gang rape of a 24-year-old woman. He ordered this solely on the basis that at one point in the past she wrote that she might someday enjoy trying group sex. “Judge Brown told the jury: 'This case depended on the complainant's credibility.

'Not to put too fine a point on it, her credibility was shot to pieces.'”

BBC News: Men cleared as rape woman's group sex fantasy revealed


*A Missouri woman dancing at a party was filmed by Girls Gone Wild. The Girls Gone Wild crew asked her to remove her top, and you can hear her saying “No” on the original video. At that point a second woman pulled her top down, exposing her breasts. Years later the woman discovered that GGW had published that footage of her being exposed despite her explicit denial of consent. She attempted to sue them for damage to her reputation, but the jury ruled 11-to-1 in GGW's favor, claiming that the implicit consent she gave in attending a party and dancing in front of a camera over-ruled her explicit denial of consent to stripping in front of that camera:

“'Through her actions, she gave implied consent,' O'Brien (the jury foreman) said. 'She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing.'”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri woman loses lawsuit over 'Girls Gone Wild’ video

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

Cont'd

*An 11-year-old girl in a small Texas town was gang-raped by at least 17 and possibly as many as 28 men. They threatened to beat or even kill her if she did not comply. There is video evidence of the assault that, as usual, went viral.

In light of these facts, The New York Times felt it appropriate to write that one of the large, unanswered questions raised by this crime was, “how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?”

As if an 11-year-old child was capable of mind-control. As if these men and boys have no responsibility for controlling their own actions.

Residents, when asked about the case, felt the most pertinent details to note were that 1) the girl wore makeup, 2) she dressed 'like a twenty-year-old,' and 3) she had hung out with teenage boys at the playground.

Of all the people interviewed for these articles, only one, was noted to have stated unequivocally that the perpetrators of this crime were the ones who needed to pay.

After the video came to light and arrests started being made, the girl's family started receiving threatening calls. Child Protective Services took the girl into protective custody to prevent retribution.
The New York Times: Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town

The Houston Chronicle: Cleveland residents still reeling after gang rape of girl, 11


*Amanda Todd was 12 when she was exploring online via webcam with some friends and a predator manipulated her into exposing her breasts for him. A year later he contacted her again and ordered her to perform for him or he'd send the picture he'd taken of her breasts to everyone she knew. She didn't, and he did. The school turned on her, calling her a slut and whore. She fell into extreme anxiety and depression, started cutting herself and doing drugs and alcohol to cope. She had to change schools to get away from the harassment. Her predator found her again, and the contact information of her new classmates. This time he set up a face book page with her breasts as the profile picture. Again, the school turned on her, again calling her a slut and a whore.

Then things got worse. An old male friend contacted her during her renewed isolation and led her on. Convinced her that he liked her, wanted to be with instead of his present girlfriend, and convinced her to sleep with him. When the girlfriend found out, he stood by and did nothing while she beat in full view of her new school and a posse and students from her old one. All of the students did, except those calling for the beating to take place. That night she tried to kill herself by drinking bleach. She was saved, but a new level of abuse was added once people found out. They started sending pictures of bleach bottles and telling her to kill herself properly next time, even after she had transferred schools yet again.

Amanda Todd killed herself one month after posting this video. Even after her death the attacks didn't stop. Her tormentors posted pictures of her breasts to her memorial page on Facebook and more pictures of bleach bottles with the caption “It's to die for.”

Herald Sun: Online bully victim Amanda Todd still tormented in death

Her story in her own words

http: (slash) (slash) www (dot) youtube (dot) com (slash) watch?v=vOHXGNx-E7E


*Rehtaeh Parsons was 15 when she went with a friend to another's house. There, she was gang raped by 4 boys. One of those boys took a picture of her assault and spread it around the school. As in the case of Amanda Todd, the school turned on her, calling her a slut and whore. Even after she changed schools, she continued to be harassed. Complete strangers would text her asking her to have sex with them. Others would contact just to just tell her what a slut she was. After 17 months of this abuse, she also committed suicide at age 17.

National Post: ‘The justice system failed her’: Nova Scotia teenager commits suicide after being raped, bullied: mother

The Chronicle Herald: Who failed Rehtaeh Parsons?

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

An observation on language: when someone is in the public eye and can be identified, they'll point to specific excuses as to why this woman or that deserved whatever misery happened to her, but this is just political correctness. Everyone can see that the excuses change every time – from dancing to makeup to going to the wrong party – while the true sin, that a female dared to have her sexuality exposed in the wrong way, is constant.

However, take a group of people given complete anonymity – or tweens and teens who wouldn't know “tact” if it hit them over the head - and they don't sugar-coat that fact. They don't dance around with euphemisms or circumlocutions or tossing out excuses for why this woman had it coming where others theoretically wouldn't (even though in reality they always, always do somehow). The truth is that in our culture a slut is a slut is a slut and she has to be punished for it and there are more than enough people in our society who are champing at the bit to put such creatures back in their place with all the zealotry of True Believers.