Caution: intellectual masturbation zone. Watch for flying spooge.

[mad_maudlin]

Okay. Here's Teh Essay, since I'm on my "lunch break." Sorry it's not more fandomy.

Comments

[pre_raphaelite1]

Here from hogwarts_today

You have brought up some fascinating points that I really love. I've been doing a lot of work on the portrayal of Lupin and the elements of queerness in both the book and the film. (And I teach on monstrosity at the university, particular Vampires) And your conversation is sending me into nerdgasms. *laughs*

Yes, they are flawed metaphors, but what isn't, right? But it's fun to play with, mental masturbation or otherwise. *grins* Just as Lupin may be a man, his body is under control of the moon (menstrual connotations here): the duality again. Though this could be taken as the feminization of the male which could be traditionally read as a marker of homosexuality. Yet, in the film he literally walks the line between worlds: in his transformed state he goes from walking on four feet to walking on two and back again. He is supposed to respond "to the call of his own kind" and yet he responds to Hermione, neither wolf nor male. Perhaps the "love that dare speak its name" here is bisexuality. Unlike in the book, movie!lupin can't bring himself to say that he is a werewolf ("someone like me" remember?). I wonder if this is more indicative of the denial of a bisexual identity more than one of homosexuality? Afterall, he is rather strongly coded. It's frustrating that in a day when the media is so gay-friendly (verging on seriously gay-obsessed) we don't have any real, positive attention paid to the bisexuals.

So then in light of your conversation about passing... Do you think the werewolf is really more of a metaphor for the bisexual female than a more universalized one? Or I wonder if in general bisexuality is typical understood/encapsulated as female. Afterall, society is clearly more accepting of bisexual females than males.

Okay, I'll stop nerding out and rambling insanely in your journal. Feel free to delete this, ignore me, or prattle back. *grins*

By the way, HI! I'm pre_raphaelite1, bisexual HP fan and babbling nerd extrodinaire.

[ellie_nor]

Afterall, society is clearly more accepting of bisexual females than males.

::nods:: The number of people who seriously don't believe in male bisexuality - he's really gay (cf. Freddie Mercury et al. ad nauseam). ::rolls eyes::

[mad_maudlin]

Hi, Pre-Raphaelite! (Can I call you "Ralph"? :-D) Don't mind the babbling.

I've got a confession to make: I've never seen the PoA movie. And I didn't mean this little blurt to be about Lupin specifically, though that was my jumping-off point; it's more about bisexual identity in general. What really pinged on me wasn't the lunar/feminization aspect but the potentially false dichotomy of identity: from the outside, werewolves (and bisexuals) look like they're switching states, but from the inside there's no change. Well, a limited change. Myths and universes vary in what the mental state of a transformed werewolf is like, but I think a true bi-metaphor werewolf would retain a big chunk of human reasoning faculties in the wolf state (and probably a chunk of wolf instincts in the were state).

I used female examples because, well, I am. I think in general society is more accepting of queer women than men because it's less threatening to the social hierarchy, or it's threatening in a managable way; it also makes good pornography.

Go ahead and ramble insanely! That's about all that I do. :-)