hanneblank (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} hanneblank) wrote,@ 2005-07-12 22:21:00 |
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Harry Potter and the Age of Consent
As everyone (who has not been living under a rock for the past month or two) probably knows by now, the sixth of J.K. Rowling's legendarily, massively, enormously popular Harry Potter books hits the streets in a matter of days. While I am not a HP fan, don't find the characters particularly interesting, and in fact find the books pretty much unreadable, I am quite curious to find out what this next book holds.
Why? Because our teenaged wizard has reached the British age of consent, that's why.
As I work on the last chapter of my own book, which as many of you already know is a history of virginity, one of the topics I'm discussing is how virginity has figured in twentieth (and early twenty-first) century pop culture. I'm very curious to see whether Ms. Rowling -- who has been reasonably forthcoming with dealing with a variety of adolescent issues in the books to date -- decides to take on the problem of whether and how Harry gets his ashes hauled.
It could happen any time now. Or it might not happen at all. Rowling is writing what is, despite its massive popularity across age groups, nominally young adult fiction. Some YA authors steer clear of anything resembling genital sex, preferring to avoid any potential controversy or negative criticism that might be occasioned by their doing so.
Other YA writers, a few of whom I'm pleased to call colleagues and friends, do write about sex and teenagers and the collision of the two. I should note that those who do sometimes suffer fallout in terms of books being banned from school curricula and libraries and suchlike; on the other hand, the same writers sometimes mention getting feedback from adolescent readers who wish they'd written more and discussed things in more detail. Clearly there is at least sometimes a substantial disconnect between what adults who work with teenagers believe those teenagers are prepared to read and know when it comes to sex and the kinds of information and content those teenagers themselves need and want.
Doubtless Ms. Rowling knows all this, and she will make her decision by her own lights, perhaps with the input of her editor(s). But personally, I hope that she does decide to show us Harry Potter becoming actively sexual with other people.
Why? Several reasons, really, none of them having to do with the intensity of the glee (and also the inevitable disappointment) such an event would no doubt engender in the huge HP slashfic community... which is a whole different discussion and one I'm neither prepared nor really sufficiently informed to have.
First and foremost, Ms. Rowling has a chance to show us, from the inside, a sympathetic male character losing his virginity. Technically speaking, she could potentially give us more than one, and at least one or two female characters as well should she so choose (she has got a whole boarding school to draw upon, after all). But the subject of primary interest here is Harry himself. Male virgins get short shrift in fiction, in pop culture generally, and in our culture. As Smokey Robinson sang, "How come people say / a lady virgin, that's okay / but when the situation's turned around / a virgin man, they always put him down." It's true enough, and there aren't a whole lot of depictions of male virgins that are sympathetic... or that treat male loss of virginity with any particular sympathy.
Even in pathbreaking books like Judy Blume's Forever (1975), one of the first YA novels to treat virginity loss with dignity as a normal rite of passage without it having to trigger some sort of horrible payback, male loss of virginity is handled primarily offscreen, without allowing the reader into the heads (let alone the bodies) of any male experience of either virginity or its end. The relative lack of male virginity-loss stories in YA fiction only underscores the strange quality of the silence that is both expected from and imposed upon men in our culture on the subject: men are expected to lose their virginity (and it's often assumed that they'll do so at the earliest possible opportunity and if they don't there's something wrong with them), but they are by no means expected to voice any emotion about it that's any more complicated than "yeah, I got some" or at most "last night, I became a man." Rowling's Harry, whose adolescent emotions have been an enormous component of the books, constitutes a grand opportunity to do some long-overdue exploration of what the end of virginity, and the beginning of partnered sexuality, might mean to a young man... and from one of the most potent and much-loved bully pulpits currently available.
Secondly, Harry Potter's sex life doesn't have to follow muggle rules. And in fact, there's no reason it particularly needs to. Ms. Rowling has predictably not broached the subject of sex prior to Harry's sixteenth year, not only because of the real-life (and very muggle) British law that makes consent to sexual activity impossible for those under sixteen, but because on several fronts in our contemporary culture, sixteen is something of a watershed year where sex is concerned: sexologists have a fairly well-established tradition of limiting their research in most cases to individuals ages fifteen and up†, and statistically speaking, the years between 16 and 19 are the years during which the greatest number of Western teenagers make the transition to partnered sexual activity. There is, in other words, a sort of critical mass behind the idea that one's sixteenth year opens the possibility of sexual debut.
But beyond that, there is nothing in the Potterverse that says that sexual relationships in the wizarding world have to replicate their muggle-world equivalents. This clearly opens the gate to the potential that Harry might indeed feel and express complex emotion about sexuality, but more than that, it opens the potential that Harry's introduction to sex could follow its own script on any number of levels. Think of all the cliches you know about virginity loss, all the worn-out tropes, all the thoroughly-flogged horses. Ms. Rowling is, simply put, bound to none of them. The Potterverse has its own social conventions and its own ways of handling things like finance, bureaucracy, political power, and even things like transportation and postal service. (And I may not be a HP fan, but in a world with potions, invisibility capes, flying Ford Anglias, time-twisting pendants, and patronus spells, there has simply got to be some efficient and reliable everyday magic in regard to things like contraception and STDs.)
I am loath to suggest what alternatives, or what combination of known or predictable quantities even, might be appropriate or most desirable instead when it comes to dealing with young Harry's sexual existence. That's Ms. Rowling's job, and if she's at a loss, I'm sure she can avail herself of what I know for a fact is a gargantuan supply of fan-generated exempla, some of which would doubtless be of interest primarily as examples of what doesn't, or wouldn't, work. Regardless of their quality, the reams and reams (pun intended) of HP virginity-loss fanfic do make one thing clear. Rowling has a huge territory to explore where Harry's sexuality is concerned, and his virginity and its end (if it happens in the span of the next two books at all) is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
I'm eager to see what happens in this respect in the next two books. To be completely honest, I hope it happens in the seventh book, not this one, but that's purely selfish, since I'll feel compelled to include it in my own book if it happens in the one that goes on sale this weekend and that'll throw something of a wrench into my schedule and my plans for the last chapter.
But I do wonder whether Ms. Rowling will include Harry's sexual debut in the remaining novels, and I do wonder what it'll be like if she does. And I have to be honest... the prospect of finding out is probably the only thing that would get me to read one of the books all the way through rather than waiting for the movie.
-- Hanne
† Whether this is always the most desirable condition, from the perspective of the kinds of information that might be beneficial to social and medical scientists, is a whole different issue. There are many good reasons that sexological studies might reasonably include people of ages younger than 15, not least of which might be studies on things like, say, younger adolescent men's attitudes and emotions about sexual activity and virginity, a field about which almost nothing at all is empirically known.
As everyone (who has not been living under a rock for the past month or two) probably knows by now, the sixth of J.K. Rowling's legendarily, massively, enormously popular Harry Potter books hits the streets in a matter of days. While I am not a HP fan, don't find the characters particularly interesting, and in fact find the books pretty much unreadable, I am quite curious to find out what this next book holds.
Why? Because our teenaged wizard has reached the British age of consent, that's why.
As I work on the last chapter of my own book, which as many of you already know is a history of virginity, one of the topics I'm discussing is how virginity has figured in twentieth (and early twenty-first) century pop culture. I'm very curious to see whether Ms. Rowling -- who has been reasonably forthcoming with dealing with a variety of adolescent issues in the books to date -- decides to take on the problem of whether and how Harry gets his ashes hauled.
It could happen any time now. Or it might not happen at all. Rowling is writing what is, despite its massive popularity across age groups, nominally young adult fiction. Some YA authors steer clear of anything resembling genital sex, preferring to avoid any potential controversy or negative criticism that might be occasioned by their doing so.
Other YA writers, a few of whom I'm pleased to call colleagues and friends, do write about sex and teenagers and the collision of the two. I should note that those who do sometimes suffer fallout in terms of books being banned from school curricula and libraries and suchlike; on the other hand, the same writers sometimes mention getting feedback from adolescent readers who wish they'd written more and discussed things in more detail. Clearly there is at least sometimes a substantial disconnect between what adults who work with teenagers believe those teenagers are prepared to read and know when it comes to sex and the kinds of information and content those teenagers themselves need and want.
Doubtless Ms. Rowling knows all this, and she will make her decision by her own lights, perhaps with the input of her editor(s). But personally, I hope that she does decide to show us Harry Potter becoming actively sexual with other people.
Why? Several reasons, really, none of them having to do with the intensity of the glee (and also the inevitable disappointment) such an event would no doubt engender in the huge HP slashfic community... which is a whole different discussion and one I'm neither prepared nor really sufficiently informed to have.
First and foremost, Ms. Rowling has a chance to show us, from the inside, a sympathetic male character losing his virginity. Technically speaking, she could potentially give us more than one, and at least one or two female characters as well should she so choose (she has got a whole boarding school to draw upon, after all). But the subject of primary interest here is Harry himself. Male virgins get short shrift in fiction, in pop culture generally, and in our culture. As Smokey Robinson sang, "How come people say / a lady virgin, that's okay / but when the situation's turned around / a virgin man, they always put him down." It's true enough, and there aren't a whole lot of depictions of male virgins that are sympathetic... or that treat male loss of virginity with any particular sympathy.
Even in pathbreaking books like Judy Blume's Forever (1975), one of the first YA novels to treat virginity loss with dignity as a normal rite of passage without it having to trigger some sort of horrible payback, male loss of virginity is handled primarily offscreen, without allowing the reader into the heads (let alone the bodies) of any male experience of either virginity or its end. The relative lack of male virginity-loss stories in YA fiction only underscores the strange quality of the silence that is both expected from and imposed upon men in our culture on the subject: men are expected to lose their virginity (and it's often assumed that they'll do so at the earliest possible opportunity and if they don't there's something wrong with them), but they are by no means expected to voice any emotion about it that's any more complicated than "yeah, I got some" or at most "last night, I became a man." Rowling's Harry, whose adolescent emotions have been an enormous component of the books, constitutes a grand opportunity to do some long-overdue exploration of what the end of virginity, and the beginning of partnered sexuality, might mean to a young man... and from one of the most potent and much-loved bully pulpits currently available.
Secondly, Harry Potter's sex life doesn't have to follow muggle rules. And in fact, there's no reason it particularly needs to. Ms. Rowling has predictably not broached the subject of sex prior to Harry's sixteenth year, not only because of the real-life (and very muggle) British law that makes consent to sexual activity impossible for those under sixteen, but because on several fronts in our contemporary culture, sixteen is something of a watershed year where sex is concerned: sexologists have a fairly well-established tradition of limiting their research in most cases to individuals ages fifteen and up†, and statistically speaking, the years between 16 and 19 are the years during which the greatest number of Western teenagers make the transition to partnered sexual activity. There is, in other words, a sort of critical mass behind the idea that one's sixteenth year opens the possibility of sexual debut.
But beyond that, there is nothing in the Potterverse that says that sexual relationships in the wizarding world have to replicate their muggle-world equivalents. This clearly opens the gate to the potential that Harry might indeed feel and express complex emotion about sexuality, but more than that, it opens the potential that Harry's introduction to sex could follow its own script on any number of levels. Think of all the cliches you know about virginity loss, all the worn-out tropes, all the thoroughly-flogged horses. Ms. Rowling is, simply put, bound to none of them. The Potterverse has its own social conventions and its own ways of handling things like finance, bureaucracy, political power, and even things like transportation and postal service. (And I may not be a HP fan, but in a world with potions, invisibility capes, flying Ford Anglias, time-twisting pendants, and patronus spells, there has simply got to be some efficient and reliable everyday magic in regard to things like contraception and STDs.)
I am loath to suggest what alternatives, or what combination of known or predictable quantities even, might be appropriate or most desirable instead when it comes to dealing with young Harry's sexual existence. That's Ms. Rowling's job, and if she's at a loss, I'm sure she can avail herself of what I know for a fact is a gargantuan supply of fan-generated exempla, some of which would doubtless be of interest primarily as examples of what doesn't, or wouldn't, work. Regardless of their quality, the reams and reams (pun intended) of HP virginity-loss fanfic do make one thing clear. Rowling has a huge territory to explore where Harry's sexuality is concerned, and his virginity and its end (if it happens in the span of the next two books at all) is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
I'm eager to see what happens in this respect in the next two books. To be completely honest, I hope it happens in the seventh book, not this one, but that's purely selfish, since I'll feel compelled to include it in my own book if it happens in the one that goes on sale this weekend and that'll throw something of a wrench into my schedule and my plans for the last chapter.
But I do wonder whether Ms. Rowling will include Harry's sexual debut in the remaining novels, and I do wonder what it'll be like if she does. And I have to be honest... the prospect of finding out is probably the only thing that would get me to read one of the books all the way through rather than waiting for the movie.
-- Hanne
† Whether this is always the most desirable condition, from the perspective of the kinds of information that might be beneficial to social and medical scientists, is a whole different issue. There are many good reasons that sexological studies might reasonably include people of ages younger than 15, not least of which might be studies on things like, say, younger adolescent men's attitudes and emotions about sexual activity and virginity, a field about which almost nothing at all is empirically known.
