Monsteradarling - Deliciously Monstrous

Ways In Which Harry Potter Is Bigoted Trash

Rowling uses names like Cho Chang and Kingsley Shacklebolt for her Characters of Color.

Werewolves are a metaphor for HIV. Fenrir Greyback is a werewolf who likes to infect young children. Seeing as the Aids Crisis primarily affected gay men and there is a stereotype that gay men are sexual predators, this is pretty damning. Especially seeing as she has no visibly queer characters in her story.

Dumbledore is the only confirmed queer character in her story and she kills him off. I suppose Grindelwald was also confirmed as being gay, but that's not the best representation seeing as he was evil. She never explicitly states either of these characters are queer in the text, though.

Dobby wanting to be free is treated as an anomaly amongst the house elves. The rest are content being slaves.

When Hermione creates S.P.E.W. to try to help free the house elves and gets them rights, Ron and Harry both become annoyed with her and Ron outright mocks S.P.E.W.

The book treats any character who is overweight poorly. Typically, heavier characters are either nasty people or incompetent people whom she makes fun of.

The whole thing where the girls can get into the boys' dormitories but the boys can't get into the girls'. You could probably find something transphobic here, especially since JKR is a TERF, but even so, she ignores that through the use of magic, the girls could be just as dangerous as the boys.

She is oftentimes misogynistic, as seen when Mrs. Weasley believes the rumors spread by Rita Skeeter in Witch Weekly and begins to treat Hermione, a fourteen-year-old girl, poorly for them, but treats Harry just the same.

Even characters we are supposed to like, like Hagrid and Ron, make nasty comments about Muggles. And not just the Dursleys. Ron even makes ignorant comments about Muggle doctors, calling them people who "cut people up" and acting like they aren't as good as wizards. Considering they can't just wave a wand and make everything better, what Muggle doctors do is amazing and we all know it.

The goblins are antisemitic caricatures.

Feel free to add onto this if there's any I missed. It's been a long time since I read the series, so there's probably something in there that I've forgotten about.

Isn't it strange how the gender movement has so much momentum (both social and financial), yet women's rights like abortion don't seem to have much backing?

I wonder why that is? 🤔

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Another Botanical Drake added to the compendium. Today is the tropical Draco Monstera

We had icebreaker questions about who our personal heroes are and if I wouldn’t get kicked out and blacklisted from the career for saying it I would have said JKR.

Even if we ignore all the trans stuff - a woman who escaped an abusive relationship with a baby who then went on to write the most successful children’s fantasy series of all time, to the point where she became a billionaire but then lost that status because of her charitable contributions and actually paying UK taxes instead of tax evasion like most other rich people.

She then wrote (an incredibly successful in its own right) adult detective series under a pseudonym, set up several of her own charities for women and children like Volant Charitable Trust, Lumos and Beira’s Place and supported more, including rescuing hundreds of Afghans from the Taliban.

She’s anti- Netanyahu but in like a normal way, not supporting cultural boycott of Israel or anything that would hurt regular Israelis.

All of this makes her incredibly achieved and successful, and yet she still has morals and principles and hasn’t turned into a monster like many rich people do. She’s an incredible role model and hero.

Feminism is in trouble. Underneath a veneer of supporting women, there's too much navel-gazing over which women deserve to be protected and which women deserve to be blamed and hated.

Misogyny is the oldest form of bigotry. It is the original form of oppression. Cultures from around the world, across time, decided that women were inferior so that men could control, rape and abuse, all in isolation.

Intersectionality is important for feminism, because misogyny is so entrenched into all sorts of different societies that it also is entrenched into every other form of bigotry, too. Every woman that happens to be part of a different oppressed group too has specific extra examples of specific misogyny that she faces because of that intersection.

That begs the question: can misogyny even be erased before every other kind of bigotry and hatred is erased? Or can no other form of bigotry be erased until misogyny is defeated?

It's interesting just how intersectionality has both the power to bring all women together of all different female lived experiences - but also the power to ensure that there can never be any form of class consciousness for women at all.

How can there be class consciousness and solidarity for all women when there are both white women that gloss over black women's lived experiences at one end, and then lesbians who victim-blame straight women for the abuse they receive at the hands of male romantic partners on the other?

Actual feminism is incredibly hard. Actual feminism means supporting and advocating for all women, not just women you like. It means offering a hand to women who have previously spat at you, or hated and abused you. Women who have been misogynistic or who promoted misogyny. Women that you otherwise (even rightly) hate. It means women who are oppressed in other ways, too, standing shoulder to shoulder with women who are part of oppressor classes because we're all women.

Especially in online spaces, it seems like the bar to be a feminist is to hate men, maybe prioritise and care for some groups of women (aside from using all women as statistics to justify hating men to focus on men again), and, if lucky, possibly a few scan-reads of some foundational texts, and then that's good enough to become a sudden shield to use so that it becomes safe again to make up some new misogynistic slurs. So that it's acceptable to understand that female socialisation is the cause for some anti-feminist behaviours, but it's all those evil women's faults and their free choices to attack and hate others depending on the narrative.

It's obvious that in online spaces, so many that describe themselves as "feminist" come from TRA spaces, because they have hierarchies of women in mind, fuck you, [identity label] woman, stupid fucking handmaiden, you get what you fucking deserve. It's just a remapping of prioritising men to prioritising certain women, like feminism is a new religion instead of a difficult movement with difficult and uncomfortable inner work, even before that has to translate to offering actual solidarity to all women that isn't just lip service.

If you call yourself a feminst, be honest with yourself: are you actually a feminist, or do you just like how the title sounds?

Ironically, I think that it's the modern evolution of political lesbianism, just without the (historically accidental, because back then it was encouraged by some actual lesbians too) lesbophobia.

There has been the idea from at least 1970 that to be a lesbian is to be an inherently better feminist, because lesbians are supposedly magically better at seeing through patriarchy, they're so pro-woman that they even centre other women romantically, and they reject male supremacy so much that they would never be attracted to a man. It's a strange fetishisation of what is (or at least should be) a neutral sexuality that a woman happens to be born with.

It makes lesbians the top-tier of feminists that all other women should emulate and aspire to be, but also be separated from. It then allows the smaller number of misogynistic lesbians that claim to be "feminists" to feel entitled attack bisexual and straight women under the guise of "feminism," and then when called out for that misogyny and biphobia, claim that they're doing nothing but speaking out about their oppressors, and accusing others of lesbophobia for demanding that lesbians centre their oppressors after that criticism.

In reality, no lesbian ever has to centre straight women. It's understandable if they don't. The problem is that the smaller number of lesbian "feminists" who behave like that like the idea that they are the peak feminists that can speak for everyone, and they enjoy wielding power over women that they like to deem as lesser. If they didn't, if they genuinely wanted to stay focused only on lesbian issues and lesbian support networks and other lesbians (which is entirely reasonable!) then they wouldn't cling to call themselves "feminists" while spouting misogyny and trying to make certain types of misogyny "acceptable" in feminism.

The fact is, to be feminist is to support all women. The vast majority of women are straight. The vast majority of those women have been socialised to get married and have children or be seen as a failure, where it's drummed into their heads so much that they fear dying alone and unloved and unwanted. That's even before the anon's facts that love can happen whenever and wherever, and it is hard to stop it from happening.

That doesn't mean that straight women need to be front and centre of everything, fuck us bisexual women and fuck lesbian women too, but it does mean that their struggles are equally important because freedom for all women is important, and to ignore them or dismiss them is inherently anti-feminist.

I really appreciate your response to the post victim blaming straight women. I was astonished when wanting a life partner was compared to "hitting a hornet's nest". That's like. Not remotely the same thing. Or calling a desire for a partner simple "socialization". No. It's an *instinct* that most people have. And romantic love can be an absolutely incredible and lovely experience. Some of the most beautiful experiences of my life involved romance. Saying that forgoing it is a simple and easy thing and you're just stupid if you don't is massively simplistic. I especially hate this when it comes from lesbians. You're asking straight women to give up something amazing that you aren't at all expected to give up. It is indeed true that most men are terrible and getting into a relationship with them is a big risk, because repeatedly men have shown that they have the ability to be deceptive about the truth of who they are until marriage and/or children have tied their female partner to them. But that doesn't somehow make straight women simply stupid or pathetic for getting into relationships with men. It makes them human beings with human desires. I'm lucky enough to be bisexual, so I'm not inherently going to be deprived of romantic love if I want to keep myself safe from men. But I have fallen in love with men before. Not because I went on dating sites looking for them--I actually select only looking for women on them--but because I've met men at work and school, and fallen for them. Resisting the urge to act upon those desires is massively difficult if not impossible. It's not going out of your way to kick a hornet's nest. It's trying to ignore the call of something primal and potentially beautiful. Sneering at straight women is unempathetic and disgusting, and I would expect better from women who purport to be feminists.

It's because those "feminists" are just lesbians with a superiority complex.

I am also fortunately bisexual, honestly I'm finding that the only people I can trust to be Normal about women is bisexual women.

What makes it even funnier is if you DON'T think straight women are helpless dumb dick addicts swatting at a hornet's nest, you MUST support dating men. Like. No I have a whole ass tag of reasons to never date men, because based on the data it is my belief that it is not beneficial to women. But I do not view women as inherently lesser for giving in to biology.

Weird question but since you're bi and not dating men, do you still allow yourself to fancy them?

Absolutely! I feel zero guilt for feelings of attraction. I spent way too long feeling awful for being bisexual to play that game. If I see a man I find attractive, I enjoy the sight. I don’t pursue relationships with men because of the risks related to domestic relationships with them, but if a hot guy is in a movie? If I see an attractive man at the park? I don’t try and police the natural attraction I feel. Nor do I feel guilty.

Same with women. I no longer torture myself for seeing a beautiful woman and feeling attracted to her. It’s not automatically predatory or objectifying to just feel my feelings. Nor is it a betrayal of my politics or lifestyle to feel attraction to men.