Real Life Hermione

Recently Emma Watson gave a speech about how she’s a feminist and everyone else should be too. It was powerful, heartfelt and well-received. But it wasn’t perfect.

I’ve suspected for some time now that Emma Watson is actually Hermione Grainger in real life.

She has all of Hermione’s good traits - she’s brave, incredibly clever, proud and strong. But, like Hermione, she’s also flawed.

When Hermione seeks to liberate house elves, she does so with the best of intentions. As a muggleborn, she has a unique outsider’s perspective to the problem, and refuses to accept a status quo that magic folk don’t even realise is there. She sets up a Society, fiercely defends it when others mock it, and challenges children and adults alike on their beliefs on the matter.

But she doesn’t really consult the house elves.

I think there is no more classic moment in the books then when Hermione stops eating in protest. How will this help? If it were even noticed, it would surely only insult or endanger the elves. By not eating their food you are devaluing their work/lives, and if she had managed a full-on boycott of Hogwarts dinners, she would’ve done them out of a job, their only means for fulfilment and safety. 

Now, it’s incredibly clear that house elves are hard done by, but it’s not a clear cut issue. Culturally, the elves are linked closely with their ‘families’, and we meet a number of them who completely define themselves as their masters’ slaves. So you can’t just walk in and free them. Hermione sees a clear problem, devises a clear solution, and finds that unfortunately, even the magical world isn’t so black and white.

Hermione tries to comfort Winky in the kitchens - art from Pottermore

Similarly, our real life Hermione - Emma Watson - has tried to simplify gender inequality to a clear cut problem with simple solutions. While watching her speech I was impressed and excited, but there were a number of things that niggled. And on further watchings/readings, there are some pretty glaring problems.

Firstly, there is no mention of people who fall outside the gender binary. It’s just men, and women. Women being oppressed and men standing by. The issue is far more complex than that. For one, men are so often the ones doing the oppressing or benefiting from the oppressing. For another, there are plenty of people who don’t fit so neatly into those boxes at all. Feminism *must* include transwomen, it *must* acknowledge the issues faced by genderqueer people, by transmen, by men and women who don’t “look like” men and women. My concern is that the UN and Watson want to make feminism palatable to the mainstream, which I understand, but you can’t exclude people just to make it easier for the oppressors, that’s wrong on so many levels.

Next, there’s a line in the speech about gender inequality hurting men, and how their freedom from gender constructs will also free women. Now I completely agree that men are hurt by the patriarchy every day, but I really don’t like the way it’s implied that men should only care about gender inequality because it hurts them (or women they know and love). Further, I don’t like this stuff about “when (men) are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence”. Like… we should free men from gender inequality and then women can just ride the equality train all the way to the finish? No. It wouldn’t be a natural consequence, and nor should we be expecting it to be. Equality is and always has been a fight, I feel like the implication that it will just all nicely flow now that we know it’s not about man-hating is kind of offensive.

Finally, what is the He for She campaign exactly? It’s men standing up for women, and declaring themselves feminists. Which is great. I am all for that on about 300 levels. But as far as I can gather from the website, He for She is asking men to click a button and then that’s it. So where to from here? Hermione’s made her S.P.E.W badges, she’s signed up Ron and Harry, but now what? I completely agree that gender inequality is a men’s issue, particularly when it comes to sexual and physical harassment, which is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men. That’s a men’s issue if I ever heard one, but is clicking a button and tweeting about it enough? Of course not, there needs to be actual, real changes to attitudes and actions. 

Our real-life Hermione is, as far as I can gather, a really wonderful and excellent human being. I’m glad she’s not fictional, I’m glad she’s brave and kind and clever, and I’m glad she’s standing up for something I believe in. But at this point, I need her to be more than Hermione. I need her to be real, to acknowledge the complexity of this very real problem, and to be seen to be highlighting very real solutions to it. I’d also like to see her pointing out the women who’ve gone before her, who maybe aren’t so 'palatable' to the mainstream, women of colour, women with disabilities, transwomen, women who say things that rile people up. Because as wonderful as a speech about feminism going viral is, Emma Watson’s wasn’t new or ground-breaking and it won’t have particularly long-lasting effects, unless she takes this campaign so much further than a website and a hashtag. 

Hermione Grainger is one of my all-time heroes, and I believe Emma Watson can be one too. But she’s not there yet. 

Want to read more about this topic? These two articles say it way better than I do:

Why I’m Not Really Here For Emma Watson’s Feminism Speech At the U.N. - By Mia McKenzie (Black Girl Dangerous)

Emma Watson Speech Hardly a Game-changer - By Clementine Ford (The Age)