I am not sure about the feminine version of emasculation – though femasculation may be an attempt to create one. There seems to be a movement in society to get women to emasculate themselves to make themselves more attractive to men – to makes themselves dependant, powerless, and to focus more on their looks than their careers or other aspirations. It makes sense from a business point of view in that women who make themselves totally dependent on men and who are taught that their value depends on their looks are going to spend a lot of money on make-up, clothes and plastic surgery. What I complained about in parts of HBP and in DH is basically the femasculation of Ginny.
I tend to use words such as “frivolous” or “vacuous” or ‘inconsequential” or “fluff” or Bratz doll to describe a woman who has been emasculated. What is the word for when one is able to shut down or divorce oneself from one’s feelings – to the point that all one can feel is anger or hate or indifference?
QUOTE(wickedboy @ Jun 3 2009, 04:03 PM)
The question relevant to this thread is why it was we had no female grudge holders, no females that had to move through this type of huge change - or show an ability not to change.
What about Bellatrix and her grudge against aurors and the DE who abandoned both her and her beloved leader? What about Molly, though she would deny feeling this way, when she thought that Hermione had trifled with Harry’s feelings? What about Hermione and Ginny – they both seemed to have some sort of grudge against Fleur? What about the grudge match between Ginny and Cho (the two seekers) in Quidditch – whose intensity makes the present one between Detroit and Pittsburgh look lame by comparison? What about Umbridge, who never forgot a slight? What about Hermione and Pansy – that was a bit of a mutual grudge?
Ginny seemed to hold grudges very easily – maybe because of her competitive nature. But never ever ever against Harry. I think that she was the best candidate to move through this type of change and that HBP was setting it up. Sadly, JKR changed her mind after the first draft of DH.
Concede that there were women who should have held grudges but didn’t – Eileen should have held one against Tobias and left him. Bellatrix, so easy to grudge usually, seemed to figure that Voldemort could do no wrong.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ Jun 3 2009, 04:03 PM)
The way James found out, canon tells us in POA, is that Black informed him after having spoken to Snape. Then James raced to the scene and saved Snape from killing or harming himself.
And Brian Mulroney was telling the full truth and nothing but the truth when he said, in a previous court hearing where he was awarded money in a defamation of character suit, in response to a question concerning his relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber - that they had coffee together a few times (it turns out that cash in envelopes changed hands, among other things). Likewise, James did hear what Black had said and, sometime after that, did pull Snape back saving his life. Nothing Snape says contradicts this. Snape doesn’t say who told him how to get past the branch. However, Snape’s version, like the version where Mulroney didn’t just chat over coffee, highlights James’s role more than Lupin’s “coffee chat” version.
p. 261 (POA 18) – ‘… but your father, who’d heard what Sirius had done, went after Snape and pulled him back, at great risk to his life …’
p. 210 (POA 14) – ‘… your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn’t got cold feet at the last moment. …’
p. 210 (POA 14) – ‘… There was nothing brave about what he did. He was saving his own skin as much as mine. Had their joke succeeded, he would have been expelled from Hogwarts.’
QUOTE(wickedboy @ Jun 3 2009, 04:03 PM)
Snape couldn't handle James saving him because it didn't fit into Snape's view of either James or himself. Snape would never have done it, imo, and so he imagined his enemy could not either.
It was brave that James saved Snape from a death that he almost had a part in – and corrupt that James capitalized so much on the fact that the full truth could not come out (just like Mulroney did since only he, Schreiber and someone guy in Germany knew about the deal at the time). However, maybe the comparison should be between James and Black. Black, as we both admit, played a role in the “prank” and somehow managed to resist the urge to save Snape from something that was, in part, his fault. Was Black’s reluctance based on cowardice or something else? We find out later that Snape did not want Harry to know that he loved Lily. While canon seems to say that Snape’s reaction in the cave was because of the “prank”, would not Snape be angry at Black, who he believed to have betrayed Lily to Voldemort?
There is a bit of truth to what you said that Snape thought that James was more like himself. Snape wanted DD to save Lily – and asked him to save all of them because he thought that was the only way that Lily would be saved. Snape accuses James of doing something very similar – what would have happened to Lupin, for instance, if Snape were to have died? We never find out why James saved Snape – only that he did.
Snape did not lack repentance – his grief over Lily’s death and his desire to do right by Lily proved that. Snape regretted being a DE and serving Voldemort and even giving Voldemort the prophecy – all before Lily died. Just because Snape never stopped hating James doesn’t mean that he lacked repentance any more than the fact that Black never stopped hating Snape. A lot of people carried grudges around – the Wizarding world tended to be a very petty society.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ Jun 3 2009, 04:03 PM)
Society is willing and ready to forgive if a person comes begging and bowing to its wishes. They will even help her support her young. But the end result is that Tonks would not have to be an outcast, she could be reembraced by society if she cut off the "unclean branches" as Voldy put it.
Cutting off the “unclean branches” would include either abortion or infanticide on Dora’s part. As long as she insisted on giving birth to (and raising) Lupin’s child, she would be an outcast under a Voldemort administration. Note how Bellatrix was not asked to kill Andromeda for marrying a muggle but Dora for marrying a werewolf. Likewise, as long as Voldemort was in power, all mudbloods would be construed as muggles who stole some wizard’s power (a fantasy mothers of squibs would embrace because of the stigma placed on mothers who produce squibs). They were not bad mothers because they produced a squib, their child was a victim of an evil muggle!
As far as Dora was concerned, it was no longer Lupin’s personal battle.
QUOTE(wickedboy @ Jun 3 2009, 04:03 PM)
I don't see a problem with this. I didn't want Harry to end up with a strange or nerdy person myself.
You mean that, males who place themselves in the shoes of the book’s protagonist would prefer the coolest prettiest girl rather than someone good enough looking, extremely kind hearted who cares about even the people who have been mean to her in the past, but who is also somewhat nerdy?
Got to do groceries and will be sick afterward (which is normal, happens every time). The rest tomorrow after I recover.
The Harry Potter series is not the Nose From Jupiter where the alien living in Alan’s nose hangs up an airfreshener strip and it is considered harmless (the only inappropriate part of the book BTW which has a girl bully that Alan eventually makes friends with after he stops being afraid of her) - in the series we have poison scented candles, Trelawney’s perfume which makes Harry very drowsy, and love potion peddled as perfume to get it past – er – security.
May 10 2009, 08:10 AM
