It's not only the past that is another country

[fpb]

Almost as soon as I started this LJ a few years ago, I fought my first flamewar – the first of many. The issue was my frank statement that I detested one particular fanfic genre, namely Marauder slash. Among my stronget reasons to object to it was what I described as an ignorant and jealous female reaction to male friendship: hello, here are a bunch of guys doing everything together – they must be having it off in secret, since of course guys only ever think of one thing, and it is inconceivable that they should have any interest in anything except the one thing.

I detested and still detest that attitude. You may therefore imagine my pleasure when I found that JKR had, not just declared that Dumbledore was homosexual, but that he was homosexual IN THAT, as a teen-ager – as a teen-ager, mind you – he had been infatuated with the handsome and brilliant Grindelwald. Because, you know, infatuation – especially in the case of a brilliant intellect starved of intellectual companionship – has no proper home except the crotch!

This has confirmed something I was already sure of in my own mind: that male love, of whatever kind, is a closed book to JKR. She knows that it exists, but has no more access to its grammar and syntax, its content and meaning and forms of manifestation, than I to Chinese. I became certain of this when, in Half-Blood Prince, JKR tried to chronicle the journey of Harry’s mind towards the realization of his love for Ginny. The climax of this sequence is the famous (for all the wrong reason) image of the “beast” within Harry “roaring in triumph” – which is, I believe, the most widely mocked passage in JKR’s whole work, and not for no reason either. But the whole sequence, from beginning to end, rings as false as brass for gold. There are perhaps some aspects of daily life in which I am less qualified than others: but the way and the stages by which men fall in love are not among them. I have been deeply, intensely, painfully in love four times in my life, and I remember them all with a blinding clarity. And JKR simply got everything wrong. To begin with, Harry’s melodramatic fears about the reaction of Ginny’s brothers to his loving her (which assumes that all males, even decent Weasleys, suddenly turn into gibbering monsters where anyone shows interest in their sisters) are nonsense. A man experiencing love, and, what is more, experiencing it for the first time, does not envisage obstacles. If any happen, he assumes that they will go down, like the walls of Jericho, at the sound of the trumpets of his love. The only thing he fears is the girl herself; he will turn up at her door twenty times before he finds the courage to ring the bell once, he will send her unsigned Valentines written with his left hand from improbable places, and if he ever gets up the nerve to tell her what he means (and she will, by then, have got the point long since – unless she is preternaturally stupid), he will be in an agony of terror till she has finished going through the usual platitudes about being just friends. Roaring beasts? Love is more likely to make Bayard or Achilles into a terrified sheep; or, as I put it rather more poetically in some lines to Debbie,

O Love, the mountains bend their proud heads down,
And lions hide in your lap their royal frown.

JKR’s language suggests someone who regards male love as something wholly aggressive, brutal in nature, and vaguely threatening: the opposite of the effect of actual love on an actual male human being.

What I find strange, passing strange, is that this beautiful and attractive young woman, twice married, a writer of great talent and keen observation, should be so unfamiliar, not only with the inwardness of male love, but even with the visible externals – the convulsions of terror, the profusions of poetry, the lover turning up at her address forty times only not to ring the bell once. In her three decades of life, and in spite of her beauty and charm, has no man ever courted her in the normal way? Or is it that she is, somehow, simply incapable of perceiving these things? In the following essay, I point out how a masterpiece of the movie art was almost, but thankfully not quite, ruined by the incapacity of its all-male creative crew to even perceive how women acted and moved; and I do wonder whether we are getting to the point where women suffer from a similar disconnect to men. It would not be a good thing, if so.

Comments

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

I am really looking forward to that essay.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you mean the one I mention, it's actually just before this entry in the LJ. Go back one post.

[leia-naberrie.livejournal.com]

No. I meant the essay about Rowling.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Now I am not sure what you are talking about. But if I ever mentioned that I am writing an essay about her religious ideas, it will be ready in a day or two.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I agree--I really hate that people always assume, these days, that passionate same-sex friendships have to involve sex. It really seems as if people have equated all passion with sexual passion.

detested and still detest that attitude. You may therefore imagine my pleasure when I found that JKR had, not just declared that Dumbledore was homosexual, but that he was homosexual IN THAT, as a teen-ager – as a teen-ager, mind you – he had been infatuated with the handsome and brilliant Grindelwald. Because, you know, infatuation – especially in the case of a brilliant intellect starved of intellectual companionship – has no proper home except the crotch!

I know!! Why couldn't he just have admired him/been jealous of him/been stimulated by his company/been attracted-repelled by his dubious morality?

sigh

[filialucis]

"In her three decades of life, and in spite of her beauty and charm, has no man ever courted her in the normal way?"

Some women apparently attract men whose idea of "normal" courtship is light-years removed from yours. Ask me how I know. :S

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Er, dass Sie sind, wie JKR, schoen und klug, und, wie mich, haben kein Glueck mit der anderner Sex?
(sorry about the rotten German, but personal matters are perhaps best left to you and I)

[filialucis]

Sowas ähnliches. Näheres gerne per e-Mail, wenn's Dich interessiert.

(Im Internet sind übrigens alle per Du.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Ja, bitte.

[purple-mirie.livejournal.com]

Love is more likely to make Bayard or Achilles into a terrified sheep;
Ah, unfortunately men like this seems to be in short supply nowadays (at least for my generation). And this makes it hard to write romance from a male's perspective.

[notebuyer.livejournal.com]

They are there. But part of the trick lies in being in places where you will find those who introduce you, and requesting introductions, and (shudder) having the nerve to go on a few blind dates with a sense of humor.

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

I don't know what your generation is or where you live but ... ah we're out there.

This is pretty simple advice - and it's not really advice so much as me gassing along ..

If you want a rugged outdoorsy type of guy, you won't find him in New York City. If you're looking for a witty urbane metrosexual, the one in Billings, Montana is spoken for.

Guys like that tend to be maniacs about .. something. Startups, or the military or hackers ... chock full of passionate men looking for something .. or someone ... to be passionate about.

[redcoast.livejournal.com]

This is very well written. One thing to consider, however, is that I do know of some gay men who see it (homoeroticism, I guess) in the young Marauders. Perhaps this isn't just a gender difference and it's also a difference between gay and straight men.

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

and she will, by then, have got the point long since – unless she is preternaturally stupid
Actually I think, based on my own experience and observation, that girls really do need to learn how to identify the signs that a decent boy is interested in her. My instinct, and I think that of many girls, was that a boy who liked me (but was not ready to ask me out) would show it by being interested in what I had to say, in going out of his way to interact with me, by being in a good mood around me. I am not likely at all to notice the boy who avoids interacting with me, and if he stares at me I am rather apt to think him simply creepy.

All of my adolescent admirers came as bolts from the blue; for example, a boy thrusting a note into my hand between classes in seventh grade, with me absolutely mystified and wondering as I opened it if he wanted some help with schoolwork. Even up into college, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I believed a male friend who was overtly friendly was interested in me; actually he had a crush on my friend, was drawn like the moth to the flame to her, but dared not speak, and thus interacted with me as an excuse for being in the vicinity. I have come to the conclusion that if my gut says a guy is interested in me, that's the strongest proof he's just a friend.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, JKR got it exactly right in her description of Ginny's reaction to Harry. Put my arm in the butter dish is exactly the kind of thing I would do if Debbie or Kathy suddenly came into the room unannounced. I guess you might start by asking yourself how you would behave if you were helplessly in love. I doubt you would have the courage to just go up to the person you love and start talking about his interests. Although you would probably find - I did - that suddenly his interests became of enormous importance to you. I developed an interest in the German writers Kafka, Werfel and Rilke, after failing to see their point for years, purely because the first girl I ever loved loved them.

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

There was an article in our local paper last week that asked if men could be pals with each other. I did a doubletake. What the heck are they thinking? Of course men could be friends with each other. When I found out this new "development" from JK Rowling I was pretty much shocked disgusted. Of course I am not male, but in my teenage years I became close to a female friend and we had a falling out of sorts, with jelousy arising. I loved my friend but I certainly never had any sexual attractions to her. My mother, who is now divorced has been complaining that she never goes out anywhere because she never has a date. I suggested that she find a female friend or a support group, so that she could go out with others. She told me that if she went out with another female that everyone would think she was gay and when I told her that was preposterous and asked her if she thought that way if she saw two women out together her answer was "yes". Somehow I missed the memo that said that all friendships, even passionate friendships have to be linked to sex.

[cleverthylacine]

The wonderful thing about slash and about platonic friendship stories between men and women is that they make it clear that people of any gender combination can be platonic, passionate friends and people of any gender combination can be lovers. Why be offended that Dumbledore loved Grindelwald? It's not as if there weren't plenty of male BFFs in the books--James and Sirius, for example?

If a man kept hanging around my house and never rang my doorbell 40 times, I'd call the police. I wouldn't want a man with a chest monster to court me but I'm not into creepy stalkers either. Guy hangs around and stares and never speaks, convinced he's unworthy of your love--next thing you know he's shooting the President and telling everybody he did it because you're so wonderful.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Honey - I described my own behaviour. I thought I had made that clear enough. You are either extremely foolish or so caught up in modern crap notions about "stalkers" that you cannot tell the difference. Either way, you have completely failed to understand what I was saying.

Well, if you wanted to unleash a roaring animal, you just managed it. I am angry and disgusted at your reaction.

Any gender combination

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

"The wonderful thing about slash and about platonic friendship stories between men and women is that they make it clear that people of any gender combination can be platonic, passionate friends and people of any gender combination can be lovers."

We have here a perfect statement of the modern notion that reality is optional.

Re: Any gender combination

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Deleted and banned. And I have to say that there must be some residual sense even in the f_w stalker crowd, since even they regard you as a lunatic.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

I married a fairly nice one, and he does romance about as well as I drive racecars. (Fortunately, so do I. Romance is a thrill we're saving for our respective mid-life crises.)
Some people just "don't do passion" and I suspect JKR and I are among them (so she can get a divorce and I can preach the "never get married/never have children" message to anyone within earshot).

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

There is romance and there is romance.

Women mean romance to mean hearts and flowers and lanky fellows strumming a guitar while he paddles a boat with his beloved in the bow. It's flowers and poetry to his lady fair while she poises on the balcony admiring his skill at sneaking into her parent's garden while the guards are asleep.

Men don't speak of romance - it's forbade. But what we mean by romance we mean uniforms, honor and dashing swordplay. It means making a home in the Regiment and admiring Kipling for putting into words what we can't express.

We mean Lawrence of Arabia winning a war for the crown and coming home in glory. Episcopal priest with their vestments and the U.S. Marines with their dress blue uniforms that hearken back to an earlier era are cut from the same cloth - both are outward expressions of an inner passion.

A man would not sneak into the garden to wonder at fair Juliet - he'd smash his way in, declaim his love and exit, slaying and bashing heads.

...

The reality - for us - is somewhere short of this. Cops and judges frown on people who break down fences and bash heads. Swordplay is right out. We express our passion by joining the military or racing cars. We excel at something - and it might be something arcane like hacking code or building bridges but .. guys do all these things because we're romantic fools and the modern world frowns on explicitly saying this.

There are exceptions of course and you and your man might be one. But .. a guy racing cars .. that IS romantic.

[prylliepwns.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear! I would much prefer a man to smash his way into my garden, declaim me and exit, slaying and bashing heads along the way to some stodgy ponce strumming a guitar and weilding flowers like arrows to my heart. As much as I love flowers, they have no place in romance. They should be given solely because someone thought they looked pretty and wanted to give them, not out of some misplaced attempt at romance.

And I am one of the girliest of girls. I just happen to share more of the male ideals about relationships. Give me companionship and like minded goals and interests over passion and romance anyday. Passion and romance can be rekindled over time, but compatibility either is or isn't, there is no in between.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

In her three decades of life, and in spite of her beauty and charm, has no man ever courted her in the normal way?

But what exactly is "the normal way"? Because if a guy turned up at my door every 20 minutes and didn't ring the bell (and I somehow found out about this), I'd be more inclined to think of it as creepy than romantic. That's just not how you do things these days.

And whether you like it or not, occasionally men do fall in love with other men. And I should remind you that JKR, at least, left the Marauders as great, platonic, straight male friends. Just because she made one character gay doesn't mean she assumes all male friendships are sexual.

hello, here are a bunch of guys doing everything together – they must be having it off in secret, since of course guys only ever think of one thing, and it is inconceivable that they should have any interest in anything except the one thing.

I think you misunderstand slashers here. The slashers I know write slash because they think it's sexy and fun. They like to pair off young good looking guys (and for this reason are completely uninterested in the fact that Dumbledore is gay). They don't assume that men who are friends must be secretly having hot gay sex. Male friendships are simply an easy starting point for their own fantasies.

Other slashers write slash because they enjoy the challenge of writing unlikely pairings. And let's face it, if you wanted to write believable slash, you'd have one hell of a challenge convincing people that in some universe, Harry could actually fall in love with Draco Malfoy.

And others still write slash because most of it is so bad and it's damn funny to write. I've never had as much fun writing as I did with my crackfic slash parody. (Though I'm slightly disturbed by the number of people who seemed to take it seriously!)

Oh, and I don't believe JKR falls into any of these categories. All she said was that Dumbledore was smitten with Grindelwald as a young man. These things do happen, you know.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And whether you like it or not, occasionally men do fall in love with other men. And I should remind you that JKR, at least, left the Marauders as great, platonic, straight male friends. Just because she made one character gay doesn't mean she assumes all male friendships are sexual.
Where the Hell did I say that? I thought I had made it fairly clear that I objected to the misrepresentation of these "great... straigtht male friends" (if you had read as much Plato as I have, you would find the use of the word Platonic for non-sexual friendship indescribably hilarious) as lovers, BY SLASHERS. To quote my exact words, I detested one particular fanfic genre. Are you telling me that JKR writes fanfics?

As for the rest of what you say, it seems to me wholly irrelevant to anything I said either now or anywhere else. I suggest you read my next post on the subject, and that you do so with some care, before you comment. If this were an essay and I was your lecturer, it would come back covered in red ink and with a request to read the source material again.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

The rest of what I say is relevant to this particular portion of what you say:

hello, here are a bunch of guys doing everything together – they must be having it off in secret, since of course guys only ever think of one thing, and it is inconceivable that they should have any interest in anything except the one thing.

And I was merely pointing out that I don't think this is the thought that underlies slash writing - Marauders or anyone else.

And no, you don't say that JKR is a slasher, but you do say that she doesn't understand anything about male love of any sort, and I was pointing out that she did, in fact, write about the friendship of the Marauders, which you seem to respect. So JKR isn't wholly clueless on the subject.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not think that even the Marauders are done as well as they could be, and when I dealt with them, I modified Peter's position in particular (would three people like that ever have put up with someone as stupid as JKR makes him?). But by love, I meant sexual love, and JKR is quite hopeless on the subject. Whether homosexual or straight.

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

I was thinking along the lines of your last paragraph, but then I read the transcript thingy. What she said was:

JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Memory is one of the easiest thing in the world to retcon. I would have believed what she says here, except for the closing sentence: If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago! - which sounds as though she had not read one fanfic in all her life. Sorry, nobody is that ill-informed.

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

I just read a book, several chapters of which were about retconning memory, so I know exactly what you mean!

I do know that some SF/Fantasy authors never read fanfic based on their books, so they can't be sued later for using fan ideas, but I didn't think JKR was one of them from other things she's said.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

IN the next essay, which I just posted, I argue that JKR does address fannish concerns in specific ways. So you and I agree.

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

I thought Bayard was the horse...?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11363/11363-h/11363-h.htm

[maglors-finch.livejournal.com]

(Sorry to barge in, fpb, but I think I may know what this is referring to.)

Bayard is both a medieval knight without fear or reproach - see the reply of the lj-owner - and the horse of the four Aymon Brothers in a Carolingian epic.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That is right. The link I posted is to an old biography of Bayard the hero. As for Bayard the horse, I hope to prove in research to come that he is a most important figure in comparative mythology, and that the importance of his role has not yet been understood. But it was the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche whom I meant, exactly because, like Achilles, he was said to be - in the ordinary way of things - totally fearless.

A gap in my reading!

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

I first came across Bayardo as the steed of Rinaldo in ORLANDO FURIOSO. I read the amusing John Huntington translation, where Huntington displays a lawyer's wit in trying to argue that the outrageous or salacious parts of Ariosto's poem are actually disguised sermons showing proper Christian piety and Aesop-like sound moral lessons.

In any case, the delightful idea of a horse smarter than its rider is a useful metaphor for any man whose heart is wiser than his head; and the medieval tradition of the wise horse shows up (as most medieval traditions do) in Tolkien: Shadowfax the steed of Gandalf is Bayardo reborn.

Re: A gap in my reading!

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

You might then (I never took you for the horse-mad sort) enjoy Connie Willis' Lincoln's Dreams. She does this up a treat.

But unless you're the sort who cried when Rosalind (half as high as my heart!) died in Born to Trot, you mightn't be as struck by it as are most women.

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

Very nice analysis.

[mrmandias.livejournal.com]

Yes. See here:

http://www.timesandseasons.org/?p=4195

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

A man experiencing love, and, what is more, experiencing it for the first time, does not envisage obstacles. If any happen, he assumes that they will go down, like the walls of Jericho, at the sound of the trumpets of his love.

I think you're assuming that everybody thinks the same way you do. Not everybody is necessarily entirely absorbed by their emotions. Some men and women, when being in love, are still capable of retaining a sense of logic and thus a fear that something will go wrong. For one thing, people who are pessimistic or cynical, are very likely to do that.

JKR’s language suggests someone who regards male love as something wholly aggressive, brutal in nature, and vaguely threatening: the opposite of the effect of actual love on an actual male human being.

Or perhaps it's just Harry. Perhaps Harry is different to you, and that some guys experience love that way and others experience love more along the lines of what you said.

In any case, I have difficulty in believing in non-platonic love if nothing has actually happened. Therefore, for anybody to be in love for the first time, they should actually be in a relationship first. But that's just me. I think to be 'in love' with somebody who you aren't in a relationship with is more of a mixture of platonic love and lust.

But even if you disagree, and I know a lot of people do... many men who are in love for the first time happen to be in a relationship already. Therefore there would be no creepy hanging around a girl's door or anything like that. Plus love can be a slow simmering fire rather than something that incapacitates.

I think you're assuming that every guy on the planet falls in love the same way you do. This is untrue. JK's description of love may not be valid and ring true to you, but it does and will ring true to many people out there.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

The love would ring truer for me if Harry was a girl.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

I've met far too many guys who act like that though. And it's entirely possible that Harry could act like that. I mean, he did spend all of book five being OHSOANGRY.