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montpahrnah · 8 years ago

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Hi! I know this might come out as a strange question, but do you think that gay marriage exist in the hp universe? And what are your thoughts on gay wizarding culture (is that even a word? Pardon me for my absolutely horrible english)? Anyway, I hope you're having a good day

beatrice you are the loveliest and i hope everything is bright and beautiful for you

so, as far as canon/word of jkr goes, i know she’s said something similar to what a lot fantasy/sci-fi writers do whenever this comes up, which is that ~wix~ are more tolerant than muggles and being queer just doesn’t matter, or no one cares, etc, which is an incredibly cheap cop-out for all the obvious reasons (and like, “it just doesn’t matter!!” et al is just… such a clueless, straight thing to say. of course it matters). the thing is, blood purity just doesn’t work as a catchall or replacement for real-world oppressions–as in, within canon, it doesn’t even work that way: we have plenty of examples of sexism and misogyny throughout the series, very few explicitly non-white characters play significant roles, and the single canonically gay character is a chaste old man who has learned the error of his ways via a bad romance* and remains closeted for the entire series. THUS, i think blood purity is best (and most interestingly) viewed as another layer of oppression in addition to racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia etc rather than a one-size-fits-all exchange for those things.

because of that, i tend to think wizarding society would progress along similar routes as muggle society re: gay rights, liberation, marriage etc. especially because i think queer wizards would necessarily have to have a knowledge of both worlds/learn to exist in both–given how small and insular wizarding society is, the muggle world definitely has more going for it! there are absolutely gay wizard bars/clubs/groups/resources etc, but they’d be far fewer/possibly feel a bit claustrophobic given the relatively tiny population of magical folks in general (on the other hand, it would foster an intimate, invaluable sense of community), so i feel like straddling that border between muggle/wizard is inevitable! as a result they bring muggle ideas back with them/bring wizard ideas to the muggle world, and as they got involved in muggle movements, they’d come back and start their own concurrently in magical society.

as far as modern-day magical society is concerned, i see no reason why gay marriage wouldn’t exist! i do think it’d take a bit longer for them than for muggles, and let’s be real, strict pureblood families are never going to go for it (tbh purebloods in general probably don’t take well to it), though i’ve always had a headcanon that queer witches and wizards from those families typically try to seek each other out for sham marriages lol, though that obviously wouldn’t work every time. given that muggle-magical duality i think they’d probably opt for a joint ceremony to make everything official in both places, or maybe just have two separate weddings for both since that might make things a little less complicated… i was trying to think of co-magical/muggle spaces for this where that might have a lot of symbolic meaning but atm i can’t come up with much. also this is kind of tangential, but something i’ve always been interested in is thinking about non- and part-human populations that function mostly outside of both magical and muggle societies, i.e. kelpies, veela, even werewolf packs, because there’s no way they would conform to mainstream muggle or magical ideas about gender and sexuality and i’d kill for a fic that explores any of that someday!!

other than that, i think at hogwarts and even after, a whole lot of queer content both magical and non-magical would get passed around like contraband. certain of auden’s poems, rimbaud’s letters to verlaine, orlando, some of nin’s better short stories, illustrated magical copies of things akin to the joy of gay sex and various zines, mixtapes ft. queer artists/obsessive queer yearning, sleater-kinney’s music later on, my beautiful laundrette, g.l.o.s.s.’s demo, new bloods’ lone album passed around like a sacred heirloom… i like to think they sometimes come to muggle stuff years or decades later and are so extremely enthusiastic about it their muggle buds can’t even bring themselves to tell them they’ve already read it fifteen times. (though part of our shared history, i think, has that ageless quality: given the scarcity of art about and for us, and given how close we hold those things that are ours, there’s something about them that always feels relevant–and such joy in seeing other people discover them.)

AGAIN, i’m always desperate to hear what people think about queer magical culture–tell me your headcanons!!!!! we don’t talk about this nearly enough as a fandom, u know?

*as i wrote this i remembered that i don’t think we actually have confirmation that grindlewald reciprocated dumbledore’s feelings, so maybe “romance” is a strong word? idk

#bisiirius #self-insertingly i hope there's a lesbian witch somewhere out there who finds her way to the old deerhunter blog #long post #kinda #harry potter #reference

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