Harry Potter meta: Muggles and disability

[sqbr]

The thought hasn't had time to coalesce yet, but this unfunnybusiness post about Snape fans denying the "blood purity=racism" metaphor got me thinking about how in some ways being a muggle is like a disability, and so muggle-borns are the able-bodied children of disabled parents. Like...hearing children of Deaf parents who grew up in Deaf culture (of course some Deaf people would argue that it's not a disability, just a different way of being, but I'd say that's just as true of being a muggle, whatever the wizards think on the subject) Plus of course there's the squibs.

On the whole I think anti-muggle prejudice functions more like racism, but it's interesting to ponder.

Comments

[elf]

The concept came up a while back, and there was a big wankstorm about whether ableism or racism was the more accurate metaphor, with charming examples of both in the comments.

I may see if I can scrounge up links this weekend.

My thots: there are similarities to both; JKR was obviously modeling the "blood purity" thing on racism, but it doesn't quite parallel--humans of different "races" have the same basic abilities; wizards and Muggles don't. However, JKR's writing is so loaded with kyriarchal assumptions (het-priv, cis-priv, white-priv, male-priv, etc.) that it's fairly pointless to pull out one aspect of discrimination and hash through it in detail, except as an attempt to understand minutia of the Potterverse in order to write fic about it.

Connecting the Potterverse !fails to the real world kinda falls apart, because the Potterverse is not a reflection of the real world; it's a reflection of JKR's take on the real world, with a lot of handwaving over the parts she didn't care to think about. Whether anti-Muggle and anti-Muggleborn prejudice are "really" more like racism or ableism is irrelevant; JKR is not a good enough worldbuilder to make either claim provable.

[sqbr]

Oh, I think making it strictly racism OR disability is a false dichotomy and not at all helpful. It's just another interesting filter to consider the books through. And oh yes, the books are FULL of kyriarchal assumptions, that's kind of the point: I've spent some time thinking about all the ways the "magical privilege as racism" metaphor is Deeply Broken, now for a change I can think about how fail-y the books/world are if you consider them as a metaphor for disability :) Also in general I've been thinking about doing a "disability in fantasy" essay-ish thing to carry on the ideas from the disability in sf panel I did, and thinking about HP in this context has been helpful.