Harry Potter – Gendered?
Today, a girl in my daughters class asked my daughter “Why are you reading Harry Potter – that’s a boy’s book”. My daughter doesn’t care – she reads Harry Potter because she likes the story. But I’m confused – is Harry Potter really considered a boy’s book? If so, why?
The only thing I can really think of is that the gendering madness has reached a point where everything children do must be gendered, and hence a gender choice must be made for HP. It’s absurd, of course – why would HP be considered gendered? Sure, like so many children’s books it tends to cast boys as active and girls as passive, but it’s far from uniform (HP has a refreshing number of examples of girls in the active role), and anyway that’s such a cliché that it’s hardly specific to boy’s books.
Either way – it’s annoying that 10 year old children worry about this rather than just reading the books they like.
Harry Potter is a boys book? Well that would be news to my 14-year-old daughter who was pretty much raised on Harry Potter….. that’s ridiculous.
Yeah, I know. OTOH, with the huge emphasis on gendering everything, I can see how some children can be confused an believe that Harry Potter has to be either a boys or a girls book – and if you really must pick, what do you do?
Happily, my daughter pays no attention to things like that. She reads the books she likes to read, and really don’t care what gender they’re supposed to have.
I’m ten and read it when I was nine, but Im a girl and I loved it. Well, actually I do read gory books like Of Dooms and Death!