#it's the greatest dichotomy I've seen in a fandom anywhere except Naruto

[rickktish]

Don’t you just love how HP fanfic AUs where someone catches the Dursleys abusing Harry are more likely to have Vernon be the main abuser rather than Petunia? Vernon who, canonically, 1) knows nothing about wizards beyond what his wife has told him and 2) is afraid of said wife? Like, isn’t it so great how we automatically assume that Vernon is both the instigator and greatest perpetrator of most of the abuse? 

In-book, Vernon is definitely very loud and verbal with his disapproval, desperately attempting to bellow out any abnormality he finds himself confronted with. He yells at people at work, he yells at Harry whenever he says anything that makes him uncomfortable, certainly. We also see him being the one to order Harry into his cupboard in book one. But if I recall correctly-- and I can’t be certain, because it’s been several years since I read through the books-- Petunia is the one who takes swings at him with her frying pan. 

I guess... I’m mostly just really tired of looking for good fics where I get to see the results of the Dursley’s abuse on Dudley, and finding a whole ton of “Petunia wants to get Harry away from Vernon’s abuse” stories. Like, can we please take some time and acknowledge, as a fandom of reasonable, thinking, non-sexist people that the Dursley’s decision to “Stamp [the magic] out” of Harry was at best a mutual decision and even then, instigated if not entirely then very nearly so by Petunia’s own opinion and the way she depicted the wizarding world to her husband? Stop making her out to be the one who would get Harry out for his own sake just because she’s a woman. If you read the scene in the first book in the chapter “The Keeper of the Keys” in which Vernon and Petunia are arguing against Harry learning about his magic and going to Hogwarts, you’ll note that Petunia’s argument is very personally motivated while Vernon’s is based more on monetary concerns,  second-hand ideas and fear. 

Vernon:

(Hagrid about to tell Harry he’s a Wizard)

“STOP! I FORBID YOU!” yelled Uncle Vernon in a panic.

...

Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight. 

“He’s not going,” he said.... “We swore when we took him in we’d put a stop to that rubbish... swore we’d stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!”

...

“Load of old tosh,” said Uncle Vernon... he was glaring at Hagrid and his fists were clenched.

“Now you listen here, boy,” he snarled, “I accept there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured -- and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdos, no denying it, and the world’s better off without them in my opinion -- asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types -- just what I expected, always knew they’d come to a sticky end--”

...

“Haven’t I told you he’s not going?... He’s going to Stonewall High and he’ll be grateful for it. I’ve read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish -- spell books and wands and --”

... 

“I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!” 

Vernon has no idea how the wizarding world works. He thinks it’s all a load of nonsense, but nothing so real or structured as an entire world hidden away with its own economy and laws and society. His speech seems to indicate he understands it to be some kind of occult thing-- “getting mixed up with these wizarding types” like someone gets mixed up with the wrong kind of alleyway scam artist-- and he’s afraid of something that might occur should Harry be informed of his inheritance, but we can’t really be certain what. 

(also as a side note, do whatever you want in fanfiction regarding the extent of Harry’s abuse, but “ there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured” seems to imply pretty clearly that Vernon, at least, has never given Harry “a good beating,” whatever that means. It doesn’t put aside probable casual smacks, but it does pretty well settle the idea of a sadistically motivated curb-stomping.)

Petunia:

“Knew!” shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. “Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-- that school-- and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was -- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!” 

She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years. 

“Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you’d be just the same, just as strange, just as -- as -- abnormal-- and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!”

Petunia knows about the wizarding world, at least to some extent. Frog spawn? canonical potion ingredient. Turning teacups into rats? actual transfiguration assignment. Petunia is personally motivated and vindictive about it. She was the only one who knew, the only one who saw the world as the truth of it must have been, and Lily’s death should have proved her completely right about everything-- look at that, those freaks are so mad they can’t even stop from killing each other for no reason, she should have known it would end badly for her being a freak like that-- but then she got dumped with her sister’s kid and she has been personally offended by that for ten years. She hates this. She hates Harry. She hates Lily. She hates the situation. She hates magic. 

*sigh.*

I can’t make people think critically about things, either canon works or fan works. I can’t make people put serious thought into their own fan works. I just... I wish I could find a better reason in the canon for people to assume that Vernon is Harry’s main abuser. I wish I could find something, anything, that tells me clearly that Vernon has more likely to be the one delivering beatings, and punishing Harry for minor infractions, and leaving AU-Petunia to divorce him or leave him or otherwise run away with Harry in tow, anything at all beyond the fact that he is the man of the house. I have not read a single work along that plotline that has given Vernon a reason of his own to despise Harry; they just kind of assume that he does, even when Petunia is willing to accept him, because reasons. Except that it’s not even because reasons because no reasons are ever discussed. Whatsoever.

I just... I would love a change of pace. A fic that acknowledges the motivations behind Harry’s treatment by the Dursleys. A story where Vernon leaves instead of Petunia, because sure, he has very little experience with childcare-- Petunia was always the one at home, he’s usually at work-- but however much she hates her sister, it just doesn’t sit right with him seeing a boy Dudley’s age that small and quiet. A story where Vernon is a decent enough fellow, if rather loud and somewhat close-minded, who is willing to consider that doing this won’t fix his nephew, won’t make the weirdness go away, and his wife is just doing this to hurt him because she can’t hurt Lily anymore, and maybe he should change something about this.

Just once... let a woman who is an abuser not get overshadowed by the less severe actions of her male partner and go excused just because he’s male and she’s female. As far as we can see in canon, Vernon’s abuse of Harry is mostly verbal, with some imposed neglect and isolation. Petunia is the one who actively hurts him and forces him to do things: assigning him to do all the chores and yardwork, making him do the cooking, taking a swing at him with the frying pan (I really don’t think I’m misremembering that since it’s playing in my mind in Jim Dale’s voice but also I have no idea where it is in the series and I only have books 1, 3, and 7 with me in my dorm 2000 mi away from my parents’ house where the rest of my books are)

But who am I kidding. This is the same fandom that took a man with an unhealthy obsession with a woman to the point that he was willing to sacrifice her husband and firstborn child so that he could see her live and turned him into a tragic and noble hero, sacrificing his own desire to help children for the sake of looking evil enough to qualify for Voldemort’s evil squad. The same fandom that took a character canonically acknowledged as flawed but well-intentioned, a character who made mistakes and regretted them as mistakes, who was motivated by a desire to see a boy live a happy life before what he saw as an inevitable sacrifice, who acknowledged that he ought to have behaved differently and apologized for it, into a manipulative bastard who intentionally screwed a kid over because he believed the kid needed to grow stronger. The same fandom who took a boy who was willing to ride or die from the very beginning for his best friend, who sacrificed himself very literally in a game of chess when he was eleven and stood on broken bones to put himself between said friend and a madman when he was thirteen and turned him into a whiny brat whose only purpose in befriending Harry was to leech off his fame. 

I don’t know why I still expect critical thinking to fall into this fandom’s skillset.