What Does Harry Potter Mean Now? [90:15-95:17]

When Harry returns to the muggle world, he must hide his wizardly tendencies, not just by refraining from magic, but by disguising that part of himself. The dursleys demand that he doesn't even mention it. In Chamber of Secrets, he literally hides being forced to remain silent in his bedroom while the dursleys have visitors. In Prisoner of Azkaban, he must go along with the more palatable lie Uncle Vernon told Aunt Marge about him. In order to survive a hostile family environment, Harry must mask his true identity. Likewise, wizards dress differently to muggles. Harry has to change his presentation in order to pass in the muggle world. And to the dursleys presenting as a wizard is a sign of shameful non-conformity with muggle society. Opportunia whimpered piteously. It could not have been planar that she was thinking of what the neighbours would say if they caught sight of these people, marching up the garden path. The comparison is much less clumsy than a lot of Joanne's intentional allegories. The way Harry experiences his own identity and how he navigates the borders of these two worlds is incredibly relatable for many queer people of all queer identities. And when viewed through this allegory, Potter becomes a celebration of queerness. Harry's wizardry not only connects him to a community, but also to a life of adventure fun and wonder. For queer children, it allows them to vicariously experience acceptance and, well, pride at a time in their lives where that might not yet be within reach. The Potter books celebrate a revolt against accepted conventional life against the world of the muggles, who slavishly follow societal rules without ever thinking about whether they are right or wrong if they make sense or not. They are, at heart, an attack on the very idea of normalcy. The Harry Potter books tell children that being normal is dull, unexciting, unimaginative and deadening. So, f*** you, Joanne, you wrote a queer story without meaning to you idiot? Sure, that was how Michael Bronsky felt after book four, but once the series was complete, he changed his tune. After seven long novels, the final vision rolling leaves us with is that these great queer magical people evolve into nothing more than quidditch mums and slightly vacant suburban debts. Which is hardly surprising. Potter's queer elements, though definitely present, are clearly unintentional. Is it any wonder the plot winds up contradicting them? For example, the reason Asia Romano identified so heavily with Potter is because they read the character Tonks as a fellow genderqueer person. A shapeshifter with spiky pink hair, a punk rock aesthetic, and an insistence on being called by her gender-neutral last name. I was certain that Rowling had written a canonically gender-fluid character. And yet, as the book's progress, Tonks becomes more feminized, softer, less feisty, more emotional. She accepts a more traditional feminine role by becoming a wife and a mother. She allows her husband to call her the more feminine dora. The suggestion here is that genderqueerness or gender dysphoria is just a phase. An idea Joanne specifically argued for in her turf war's essay. As Asia puts it, She deliberately created Tonks as a dysphoric individual so that the character could grow out of her dysphoria, subtly perpetuating the transphobic narrative that gender dysphoria is a choice. Okay, look, I really don't want to invalidate Romano's reading. You absolutely can interpret Tonks as genderqueer. She definitely does have a disappointingly normative conclusion and it is uncomfortably reflective of Joanne's arguments about gender dysphoria. I'm just not convinced it was deliberate. While Tonks does assume the role of wife and mother, she also refuses to stay home during the battle of Hogwarts. And the name Tonks objected to in the past was her full name, Nymphadora, whereas Dora is the pet name her family call her. It is irritatingly gendered but Lupin's use of it may be intended to imply a greater intimacy with Tonks. The real sticking point for me, though, is the shapeshifting. That's another supernatural trope associated with queerness. It naturally suggests blurring boundaries of identity, which lends a lot of credibility to a genderqueer reading of Tonks. She uses her shapeshifting powers not only to present as alternative, but also to change her presentation depending on her mood. Some people, not Romano, admittedly, incorrectly claim Tonks loses these powers, which does appear to be what happens in the movies which she permanently loses her pink hair for unexplained reasons. But in the books, though she does lose her powers, it's clearly signposted as a temporary symptom of depression. In the final book, she gets her pink hair back.