In Which We Discuss Whether Hermione is White

 I live in a society where the default is assumed to be white, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, and neurotypical. If you were to draw a stickman or mention the "hero" of a story, those are the traits that person has unless you specifically tell the audience that they aren't. This is why, for example, cartoons and costumes get things like eyelashes or bows added to them, to signify that they are women. In this society, people act like you need very, very weak evidence to assume a character matches that default and very, very strong evidence to think they are something 'other.'

Take Sherlock Holmes, for example. Personally, I think it's very clear that he is asexual. But, every adaption I've ever seen has treated him as straight, based purely on him admiring one single woman who appears in one story. Arguably, since he admires lots and lots of men, it would make more sense for him to be gay. But we don't imagine Sherlock Holmes as gay, because we would need something stronger to think that about him.

Similarly, take the Doctor, of Doctor Who. One of the earliest things that we learn about the doctor is that s/he is changeable. Their body changes. And yet, people argue that he is a man. Assuming he has some control over his regenerations, it does tell us something about him that he has repeatedly chosen white, male bodies, but that doesn't mean he must always choose white male bodies. If I got to have twelve different bodies - or twenty-four, or however many the Doctor gets now - I would definitely choose to be a man at least once, just to see what it was like. Why shouldn't the Doctor?

There's a concept called 'death of the author', that is, when you consider a work only based on what is in the work itself and totally ignoring the author as part of it. Alternatively, you can choose to include the author in how you interpret the work. Another way to think about that is to consider, when you ask "why did this happen?", are you asking Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or are you asking Dr John Watson? If you wanted to know "Why is Sherlock Holmes beating up a corpse when Dr Watson first meets him?" then Dr Watson would explain that Sherlock wanted to know what bruises looked like when they were caused after death. That's the Watsonian perspective. The Doylist perspective might be something more like "I wanted to show the reader the amount of research Holmes does, that he doesn't shy away from the gory elements, and that he is a strange man who cares more about the truth than about being polite."

So, when we ask, "is Hermione [of Harry Potter, not A Winter's Tale] white, are we asking JK Rowling or Hermione?". JK Rowling tweeted out her answer a while ago. 

[I should be totally clear here; Rowling is a TERF and has made multiple offensive tweets clearly stating her views, which are based on unfounded fears. I'm not saying or implying that her tweets are right or relevant to literally anything except the exact question of 'What does the author have to say on this element of her work?']

As far as Rowling is concerned, Hermione can be black. I suspect that Rowling intentionally avoided describing Hermione's race because it was totally irrelevant to the story. That's why she felt confidently able to say that "white skin was never specified."

And yet, some people have argued that, from a Watsonian perspective, Hermione is white. They base this on a quote about "Hermione's white face peering out from behind a tree." This is an example of what I was saying above, about people generally only needing very, very flimsy evidence to say a character matches the default, but strong evidence to say she is anything else. 

Let's think about the information being conveyed by that sentence. Do you seriously think that the middle of a dramatic scene, three books in, was when you would receive information about a character's race? You looked at that line and thought "yes, this is a good time to learn about Hermione's skin tone, that is very relevant information here"? Really? You're sticking with that? You're a fuckwit.

The sentence is there to tell you that Hermione is scared, that she is "white with fear." Guess what? I'm not white but I could go white with fear. Meghan Markle isn't white and she could go white with fear. Lots of non-white people are pale enough to go white with fear. And if you have any fucking doubt about whether Rowling was conveying information about race or emotion with that sentence, she outright told you. To think otherwise is to be wilfully ignorant.

This makes me very angry, because the context I see it brought up in is generally people of colour pointing out that it's totally fine to picture the character as looking like you/them, and then white people say "BUT YOU HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SHE ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE ME."

No. Sit the fuck down. Shut the fuck up.

No one told you you weren't allowed to picture Hermione as white. No one even said you were wrong to do so. I'm pretty sure Rowling was picturing Hermione as white, even though she decided that wasn't important enough to mention. But you, seeing other people happy to imagine a character looking like them, couldn't bear that it wasn't about you and pulled the flimsiest, stupidest reasoning out of your arse to make it about you again. If you do that then, yes, you are being racist. That is why people call you that when you make that stupid argument. They call you a racist because you are being racist.

The alternative is that you genuinely think the author decided to randomly inform you of a character's race three books in, in a scene where it could not be less relevant, and then, when she told you she didn't, decided that actually...what? She's lying? She's mistaken? The "true wording" of Harry Potter exists objectively apart from her and she just wrote it down and didn't understand it properly? Rowling invented Hermione. If she says Hermione doesn't have to be white, you can't use her own words to claim that Hermione does have to be white. At best, that argument shows that she misspoke, that she did not make it clear enough to you that she wasn't randomly bringing up skin tone three books in. That argument does not mean that Hermione has to be white. Sit the fuck down. Shut the fuck up.

On a lighter note, guess what? If you want to picture Sherlock Holmes as a trans man, go ahead. I do not believe there is anything in the text to contradict that. We never hear anything about his chromosomes, hormone levels, genitals, he never impregnates anyone...It's unlikely that he would be trans, but it's not impossible. Dumbledore could also be a trans man or McGonagall could be a trans woman, based on the same reasoning. Reading is an entirely personal experience that happens between the reader and the page. If you don't like those interpretations, you don't have to like them. You can totally ignore them and carry on picturing those characters in your preferred way. You can even picture Dumbledore as straight, with a totally platonic brotherhood with Grindelwald if you want to. Like how the Russian commentator explained the 2018 Irish Eurovision entry. Point out that you can technically "go out" with someone platonically, or say "till death do us part" in circumstances other than a wedding. You're not technically wrong, but if you insisted everyone else had to agree with you, including the author, that would be as ridiculous as claiming that the only people who can go "white with fear" are white people. White people aren't literally white, you dribbling ham sandwich.

"Ah, such a beautiful platonic brotherhood"

- Russia, probably

If some people picture Holmes, or Dumbledore, or McGonagall as trans, that does not affect you or your experience of the books in any way at all. Sit the fuck down. Shut the fuck up.

If you want to point out that the authors did not intend those interpretations...so what? If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cared about Sherlock Holmes' chromosomes, or genitals, or hormone levels, and he thought they were important to the story, he would have put them on the page. He didn't. He doesn't get to stand at my bedside every night telling me how he wants me to interpret each sentence, and nor do you. Well, he can, if that's really what he wants to do with his afterlife, but I can't see ghosts so I don't care. You can't do that, I'll call the police.

Note that, because of the 'strong evidence to assume non-default' thing, I don't think Rowling deserves much, if any, credit, for want of a better word, for writing a gay character in Dumbledore or a black character in Hermione. By not writing that on the page, by letting readers still picture those characters as the 'default', she's having her cake and eating it. That stage - of telling her readers "I saw this character as gay", or "it's cool if this character is black" - was a sadly necessary step, but we should be long past it now and able to freely show the audience that characters are non-default. It's not enough to just whisper, "Psst, weirdos, there's something for you too!" (google Queer-baiting, Race-baiting, etc for more on the subject). It's not good enough. Put it on the page, you coward.

NB, Rowling does get credit for writing a character with a amputation, because I can count on one hand the number of books I've read that portrayed that, and that one was actually on the page. That isn't to say or imply anything other than "hey, cool,  some people are amputees, it's weird more of them aren't openly portrayed in fiction."

Actually, if anyone wants to find a quote that proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Sherlock Holmes does not have a wooden leg (left, specifically) please let me know. Otherwise, feel free to picture him as an amputee as well. Or not. It's your reading experience. You can always call an exorcist if Conan Doyle doesn't like it.