#class analysis

[depsidase]

[ladydolomora]

Voldemort and Gender: A Meta

I've been reading all these fascinating analyses about Voldemort and gender that keep circulating, and some of them are genuinely compelling, I love the creativity. The interpretations of him as femme coded or exploring his relationship with traditional masculinity are interesting from a transformative fandom perspective, and some of the meta is genuinely brilliant.

That being said, I think a lot of people are operating under this incredibly reductive, contemporary American working-class definition of masculinity that equates "masculine" with loud, physically aggressive, overtly brutish behaviour, and that's not how aristocratic masculinity has ever functioned, which gets us into some fascinating territory about classism and how different socioeconomic strata perform gender entirely differently.

The Slytherins, and Voldemort by extension, are explicitly emulating upper-class, aristocratic sensibilities. In those circles, the jock-adjacent, chest-thumping, aggressively physical masculinity is actually coded as vulgar, uncivilised, and lower-class. That sort of overt physical aggression would be seen as gauche, even pathetic. There's this whole classist framework where "refined" masculinity is performatively restrained, intellectually sophisticated, and economically secure enough not to resort to physical displays.

What commands respect in those circles is restraint, composure, and the ability to dominate through poise and intellect, not brute strength. A gentleman doesn't roar or brawl or puff out his chest to prove his masculinity, that's considered beneath him, literally déclassé. Think Caesar, Augustus, medieval monarchs. The most formidable men in classical literature embody this controlled, calculated masculinity. They don't raise their voices because everyone already understands the consequences of defiance. Physical violence is something you had others do for you, which is its own form of power projection. It's insidious precisely because it appears "civilized" while being structurally far more violent than any street fight.

Voldemort is written as masculine in the way a dark emperor is masculine. Silent, calculating, absolutely assured of his superiority. He speaks softly and rooms fall silent. He gestures and death follows. He doesn't need theatrical displays of dominance because his mere presence bends others to his will. There's nothing more masculine-coded in the classes that have historically wielded power than that level of control.

The classism here is crucial because when we code aristocratic restraint as "effeminate," we're inadvertently reproducing this false binary where working-class masculinity gets positioned as more "authentically" masculine than upper-class masculinity, but both are expressions of patriarchal power, they just operate through different mechanisms based on available resources.

Also, power is expressed through magic in the Wizarding World. Nobody's throwing punches lol. In a society where you can kill with a word or gesture, measuring masculinity by physical aggression is completely nonsensical. Voldemort's magical prowess is infinitely more formidable than any amount of posturing. The man literally split his soul to achieve immortality, which is the the most aggressively masculine thing imaginable, just expressed through magical rather than physical dominance.

Speaking of soul splitting, a big part of his arc is rooted in toxic masculinity taken to its extreme. His relentless quest for power, his inability to process emotional vulnerability, his complete rejection of anything that might be perceived as weakness. These are textbook examples of how patriarchal conditioning destroys men. He literally fragments his soul rather than confront his own emotional reality. That's masculine socialization so severe it becomes pathological. The way he handles his abandonment issues, his shame about his Muggle heritage, his terror of mortality. He doesn't process these emotions but weaponizes them. Instead of grieving or seeking connection, he transforms pain into domination, vulnerability into violence. 

His level of emotional avoidance and the compulsive need to convert every feeling into power and control is really peak toxic masculinity, as is his obsession with immortality, being the most powerful, his need to have others literally unable to speak his name. That's not someone rejecting masculine ideals but someone who's internalized them so completely he's willing to destroy his own humanity to achieve them. He's basically what happens when masculine conditioning around emotional suppression and power accumulation gets taken to its absolute breaking point.

There's also this persistent misreading of young Tom Riddle's charm and sophistication as somehow feminine-coded, which is absolutely baffling. The dude was performing gentlemanly masculinity to perfection. Cultivated, articulate, magnetically charismatic in that distinctly genteel way. That whole "suave, seductive, manipulative" persona isn't femme coded but literally the playbook of every male aristocrat, politician, and cult leader throughout history. 

Plus, there's something deeply troubling about how "effeminate" gets deployed in these analyses. Are we saying that anything that isn't overtly aggressive and traditionally masculine must be feminine? That's its own form of gender essentialism. We'll see a character who speaks eloquently, dresses well, and doesn't resort to physical violence, and immediately code that as less masculine, when historically, that's been the masculinity of the ruling class. It's worth interrogating why we've internalized the idea that "real" masculinity has to be working-class masculinity, especially when that framework often erases how different communities and cultures construct gender entirely differently.

Given JKR’s views on gender and her rather conventional approach to gender roles throughout the series, she would never intentionally write her ultimate villain as anything other than unambiguously masculine. For someone with her investment in traditional gender binaries, coding the most terrifying figure in her universe as feminine would fundamentally undermine his menace bbecause in her worldview, feminine-coded traits simply don't carry the same weight of existential threat. Voldemort's horror stems partly from his embodiment of patriarchal power taken to its most monstrous extreme, and Rowling's own biases would prevent her from subverting that in ways that might complicate her readers' ability to recognize him as the ultimate threat. The terror he inspires is inextricably linked to his masculine-coded dominance, control, and violence. Remove that framework, and you lose much of what makes him frightening within the moral universe she's constructed.

Moreover, Rowling constructs Voldemort and Harry as representing two archetypal forms of masculinity: the noble knight versus the tyrannical god-king. Harry embodies the "good" masculine ideal of the protective, self-sacrificing, brave knight, while Voldemort represents masculinity's darkest potential when untethered from empathy or moral restraint. This isn't a subversion of masculine archetypes but a a reinforcement of them, positioning both hero and villain firmly within traditional masculine frameworks while simply coding one as virtuous and the other as monstrous. Rowling's moral universe depends on this binary remaining intact and legible to her audience.

[maxdibert]

your essay about Snape and classism made me think of the implications behind the Weasleys being the definition of poor in the magical society, according to the books.

They're pureblood, think less about muggles and they never speak about their only muggle relative, yet they don't seem to fit with the aristocrats because they're "blood traitors"?? What does that mean?

Despite being poor, the father and breadwinner for the family works at the Ministry, and Percy joins him later in a higher rank. Meanwhile, the eldest brother works on a bank (THE bank? is there any other banks that isn't Gringotts?) and we have no clue about how people see dragon breeding as a job.

I don't know where I was trying to get to, the Weasley's place in society confuses me. Any idea?

This is a very European dynamic that happens in most countries that still have monarchies or a strong aristocratic elite and a tradition of class systems based on nobility: the figure of the poor aristocrat. In Spain, for example, there is the figure of the hidalgo, which is the aristocrat with a title but without property or land, perhaps even poorer than a bourgeois, but still maintaining their aristocratic status. And this figure exists in other countries too; in fact, it's quite common in popular culture.

The problem with this is that many people (especially from the United States, obviously) think that in old Europe, class is defined by money. But that's not necessarily true, because an aristocrat will always be socially above —even for other aristocrats— regardless of being poor or a "class traitor," as opposed to a bourgeois without a family name. And this is something that is very well reflected in the fact that even Slytherins consider Ginny a "catch." The pureblood Slytherins don’t consider Ginny a catch just because she’s pretty, but because even though she’s poor and a “traitor,” she is still pureblood. She still has “aristocratic” ancestry and comes from the same roots as them. A pureblood would choose a “traitor”—as much of a traitor as she may be—a hundred thousand times over someone who can’t help continue the bloodline. This is pure traditional European aristocratic mentality.

So yes, the Weasleys may be traitors and perhaps not as wealthy as the Malfoys, but the Weasleys are still far above any other wizard in the magical society because of their blood status. Because in an aristocratic society, economic capital is not enough to match social capital: you need both. Lucius is above Arthur because he has both social and economic capital. But Arthur is still above any Muggle-born or half-blood wizard who might have as much or more money than Lucius. Does that make sense? Because despite the hatred and contempt Lucius has for Arthur, he would still be willing to save Arthur twenty thousand times before saving any half-blood or Muggle-born, no matter how wealthy they might be, because Arthur can help preserve the bloodline, and the others can’t. And this is something those of us who grew up in societies deeply affected by these value systems understand quite well.

There’s also the fact that Rowling has never truly grasped what poverty is. For Rowling, being poor means not being as privileged as the most privileged. She doesn’t know what it’s really like to be poor or to suffer from true poverty. The Weasleys always had a hot meal on the table, they could dress themselves, and they could buy things for their children and even spend lottery winnings on a family vacation. A truly poor family could never afford the luxury of spending lottery winnings on a trip, they literally need it to avoid starving. The Weasleys are poor from a privileged perspective, but they are not poor from a class perspective, nor are they truly poor from a sociological standpoint. And even less so considering the author of the books is British.

[landbacklashback]

Unschooling Is A Problem, Lets Talk About It 👏

Look, I'm an anarchist. I fucking hate the American education system. It's a tool of capitalist indoctrination designed to create obedient workers, it enforces white supremacist curricula, it criminalizes disabled and neurodivergent kids, and it operates as a pipeline to prison for Black and brown youth. The public school system as it exists is violence.

So when I say unschooling is a bourgeois fantasy that abandons kids to educational neglect, understand I'm not defending traditional schooling. I'm saying unschooling is somehow worse.

What Unschooling Actually Is

For those who don't know: unschooling is the idea that children should direct their own education entirely based on their interests, with no curriculum, no structure, and minimal parental guidance. It's 'child-led learning' taken to its most extreme conclusion. The theory is that kids are naturally curious and will learn what they need to learn when they're ready.

Sounds nice, right? Very libertarian. Very 'trust the process.'

It's bullshit.

The Class Politics of Unschooling

First off, unschooling is almost exclusively practiced by middle-class and wealthy white families who have the resources to make it work. You need:

At least one parent who doesn't have to work full-time (or at all)

Enough money to buy educational materials, fund 'interest-led' activities, travel for 'experiences'

Social capital to connect kids with mentors, classes, and opportunities

A safety net so that if your kid reaches 18 without basic skills, they won't end up homeless

Poor and working-class families don't have these luxuries. Single parents working two jobs can't facilitate unschooling. Families in food-insecure households can't prioritize whether little Timmy feels 'called' to learn fractions today.

Unschooling is a privilege that only the comfortable can afford, and it's sold as some kind of radical educational philosophy when it's really just another way wealthy people opt out of systems the rest of us are trapped in.

Disability Justice and Unschooling Don't Mix

As a disabled person with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia, let me be clear: unschooling is a fucking nightmare for disabled and neurodivergent kids.

You know what I needed as an autistic, ADHD kid with learning disabilities, and multiple mental illnesses? Structure. Routine. External scaffolding. Accommodations. Explicit, systematic instruction that worked with my brain, not against it. Someone who understood my disabilities and could help me navigate learning despite them, not just wait around for me to stumble into education on my own.

Unschooling assumes kids will naturally seek out what they need. But neurodivergent kids often need explicit teaching of skills that neurotypical kids pick up incidentally. Social skills. Executive functioning. Self-regulation. These don't just emerge from 'following your interests.'

And here's the thing about learning disabilities specifically: I have dyscalculia, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. You know what doesn't help those? Waiting for me to become 'naturally interested' in reading, writing, or math. I needed specialized instruction. I needed someone who understood how my brain processed information differently. I needed interventions, strategies, and tools designed for people with learning disabilities.

If I'd been unschooled, I'd have avoided everything that was hard—which was reading, writing, and math. I would have never developed the skills I have now, limited as they still are. That's not educational freedom. That's abandonment.

And let's talk about mental illness. I've lived with depression. Some days, my interests include 'staring at the wall' and 'not dying.' If my education had been entirely interest-led during those periods, I would have learned nothing.

Unschooling also tends to ignore learning disabilities entirely. Kids with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, or processing disorders need intervention, not the hope that they'll magically become interested in reading or math when they're 'developmentally ready.' That's just educational neglect with a progressive veneer.

The 'Natural Learning' Myth

Unschooling relies on this idea that learning is natural and kids will just... do it. But that's not how learning works, especially not for disabled kids.

Yeah, kids are naturally curious. But curiosity alone doesn't teach you to read, write, do math, understand history, or think critically. Those skills require *instruction*. They require someone with more knowledge scaffolding your learning, correcting misconceptions, pushing you past frustration, and adapting teaching methods to how your brain actually works.

Left entirely to their own devices, most kids will pursue what's easy and pleasurable. And that's fine for hobbies! But education needs to include things that are hard, that you don't initially want to do, that require discipline and effort.

I'm not saying kids should be forced to memorize state capitals or do busy work. But there's a middle ground between authoritarian schooling and complete educational abandonment.

The Parental Ego Trap

A lot of unschooling is driven by parental ego. Parents who want to be the 'cool' parent, the one who 'trusts' their kid, the one who rejects mainstream society. It's homeschooling for people who read The Libertarian Manifesto and thought 'but what if we applied this to children?'

But kids aren't little adults. They don't have the metacognitive skills to design their own education. They don't know what they don't know. And when parents refuse to provide structure or curriculum because they're ideologically committed to 'child-led learning,' that's not respect for the child—it's neglect.

And it's especially harmful to disabled kids, who often need adults to advocate for them, seek out appropriate resources, and provide the structure their brains require to function.

What Kids Actually Deserve

Kids deserve educational liberation, not educational abandonment.

They deserve learning environments that are anti-racist, anti-ableist, and anti-capitalist. They deserve teachers who are paid well and respected. They deserve curricula that teach accurate history, including the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the realities of colonialism and slavery. They deserve accommodations for disabilities and neurodivergence. They deserve specialized instruction for learning disabilities. They deserve to learn critical thinking, not rote memorization for standardized tests.

They deserve schools that are democratic and community-controlled, where kids have real input but also real support. They deserve a system that recognizes education as a collective responsibility, not something wealthy families can opt out of while everyone else suffers.

Unschooling isn't radical. It's not liberatory. It's just individualism dressed up as progressivism, and it leaves the most vulnerable kids—disabled kids, poor kids, kids without stable home environments—behind.

Abolish the current school system, yes. But replace it with something better—not with nothing.

🏴✊

[inthemoodforblastt]

What philosophy or political science books would you recommend? Just your personal picks

Ugh, well i'm gonna make a list. Some titles are in spanish because are from Latin American o Spanish authors and idk if they have a translation: -Women, race and class by Angela Davis -Are prisions obsolete? by Angela Davis -Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones -Justice: What's the Right Thing to do? by Michael Sandel -The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx -The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friederich Engels -The Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson -Feminismo Decolonial by Yuderkis Espinosa -Cárcel y Mujeres en España by Ana Ballesteros -La clase obrera no va al paraíso by Arantxa Tirado y Ricardo Romero -Hood Feminism by Nikki Kendall -The invention of Women by Oyeronke Oyewumi -Calibán and the Witch by Silvia Federici -Marxism and Intersectionality by Ashley J Bohrer -Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bordieu -Pedagogy of the Opressed by Paulo Freire -Las venas abiertas de América Latina by Eduardo Galeano -Feminismos desde Abya Yala by Francesca Gargallo -Gender Trouble de Judith Butler -The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir -Visual and Other Pleasures by Laura Mulvey -The Prince by Maquiavelo -The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber -Patterns of Democracy by Arend Lijphart -The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt -La dependencia de América Latina by Fernando Henrique Cardoso

I think those are good from a start hahahahah

[herhideoutcollective]

Women: The new common and the substitute for the lost land

”It was from this alliance between the crafts and the authorities [banning and driving away women from paid work], along with the continuing privatization of land, that a new sexual division of labor or, better, a new ‘sexual contract’ in Carol Pateman’s word, was forged, defining women in terms – mothers, wives, daughters, widows – that hid their status as workers, while giving men free access to women’s bodies, their labor, and the bodies and labor of their children.

According to this new social-sexual contract, proletarian women became for male workers the substitute for the land lost to the enclosures, their most basic means of reproduction, and a communal good anyone could appropriate and use at will. Echoes of this ‘primitive appropriation’ can be heard in the concept of the ‘common woman’ which in the 16th century qualified those who prostituted themselves. But in the new organisation of work every woman (other than those privatized by bourgeois men) became a communal good, for once women’s activities were defined as non-work, women’s labor began to appear as a natural resource, available to all, no less than the air we breathe or the water we drink.

This was for women a historic defeat. With their expulsion from the crafts and the devaluation of reproductive work poverty became feminized, and to enforce men’s ‘primary appropriation’ of women’s labor, a new patriarchal order was constructed, reducing women to a double dependence: on employers and on men. The fact that unequal power relations between women and men existed even prior to the advent of capitalism, as did a discriminating sexual division of labor, does not detract from this assessment. For in pre-capitalist Europe women’s subordination to men had been tempered by the fact that they had access to the commons and other communal assets, while in the new capitalist regime women themselves became the commons, as their work was defined as a natural resource, laying outside the sphere of market relations.”

- Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (2004), p. 108-109

[razortouched]

Are you a Marxist/ what are your thoughts on how Marxist analysis applies to gender theory ?(specifically in relation to trans people)

I wouldn't call myself a Marxist per say, but I definitely use Marxist analysis to study how class struggles overlap with gender issues.

I don't think I have any original thoughts here, but essentially class is one of the myriad of ways that gender roles and expectations are enforced on the populace.

For example, the lack of substantial social support systems and affordable childcare often forces women to stay at home to do child-rearing. Thus resulting in the family being forced into even harsher poverty as they now have to depend on the single income of the other parent.

Trans people are far more likely to live in poverty, due to being hired less, being paid less, and numerous other factors. There's also a very high rate of survival based sex work amongst the trans community, and many trans people become victim to various forms of trafficking.

Looking at this through a Marxist lens, this is an attempt by the ruling class to punish divergence from gender norms by means of economic deprivation.

Marxist Feminism theorizes that capitalism largely relies upon the unpaid domestic and reproductive labor of women, and that much of its institutions would collapse if women refused to partake in this.

Because trans people inherently challenge gender norms, other people may also become motivated to challenge the gender expectations they've been coerced into. This threatens the capitalist patriarchal hegemony, and thus trans people are often punished most harshly under these systems. We are made an example of, a warning of what happens to those who push back.

[gameshowtrainwreck]

the only difference between the weepy wendsday club and myself is that I've been fucked by the system longer than they have (D or R, both parties fuckin' 𝕝𝕠𝕒𝕥𝕙𝕖 the disabled), and now they're sad because there's a chance they might have to experience it themselves.

i am a reflection of what i deal with as shaped by the environment i occupy. people literally tried to argue that sometimes genocide is acceptable and that doing less than the bare fuckin basic minimum (e.g. 1% of the 43 million student loans forgiven) means we shouldn't criticize or talk bad about my betters otherwise trump will win.

trump still won, you dumb motherfuckers.

trump still won and none of these hateful pieces of shit will learn anything from it. losing to trump once can be a mistake, benefit of the doubt covers that. losing to him twice is a pattern of deliberate, willful decisions by those within the party that everybody else swears will defend democracy yet simultaneously are also too fragile to withstand criticism from someone who would have really liked for her to win. considering how fucking smug everybody had been about it before the election, even i thought harris had it in the bag. turns out that if i handled a fucking surgery the same way harris handled her campaign, i would still be in fuckin prison.

the same group of people who watched a genocide unfold and said nothing are now subject to the big sads. folks, nobody has any reason to be sad about something your candidates willfully chose to do.

if anything, y'all should be getting angry. get angry at the people responsible for this in your own goddamned party. or don't, because gosh we all know how much of a fuckin hassle it was actually giving a shit during the 1st trump admin.

i guess that's why a lot of harris voters are now talking about wishing more hurricanes on the south (even though black people will be the most likely to be hurt by it) or calling ICE on latinos for having the fucking gall to not vote correctly; makes sense to just go full-on masks-off.

that's why i'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and all these sadsack assholes start switching over to full-blown fascism. i would fucking jizz my pants if i was proven wrong, believe you me, but a lifetime of experience and a neurodivergent hyperfocus on world history has told me a lot of people simply ain't got that shit in them.

so fuck em, i will cuss them out if to provide some modicum of consequence for the democratic party failing the people they allegedly care about because god knows a lot of these motherfuckers have been sheltered by their economic status.