#is even having an impact or is worth it (ik that sounds so horrible)

[anxious-gryffindor]

Harry Potter acting like abuse is good and even necessary

Ik this has been said before, but HP totally acts like Harry being abused for 11 years straight and then again for every holiday until he’s 17 is a good thing and that is honestly despicable.

Like, it starts with Dumbledore. Yes, the internet has recently decided Dumbledore was trash and I agree, but, originally, he’s framed as a really good guy who does the best for Harry whenever he can. And, still, he thinks it’s okay to send harry to live with the Dursleys even though he obviously had the power to keep Harry safe from Voldemort somewhere where he was *actually* safe!

But the big problem is not even that he does this, it’s that it works! Dumbledore wanted Harry to grow up humble and understanding, to not be swept up by the fame and prejudices he’d be exposed to in the wizarding world. And that’s exaclty what happens. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if the books showed us clearly that this is Harry’s merit and not his environment... but it doesn’t. In fact, it often makes it sound like Harry is a good person parly BECAUSE of the way he was brought up, not DESPITE of it.

And, like, recently, I even saw some fan theories about how the reason Harry’s able to learn to resist the Imperius Curse so fast because he’s used to questioning authority, bc he’s been constantly abused by the authorities in his life - and that’s just... Fuck, it makes sense, but it puts that much more merit in Harry’s abuse and how it’s technically a "good thing".

The HP books are telling us over and over that horrible, abusive homes may be horrible, but they are necessary for you to become a good person! (It's worth noting that Malfoy, who is supposed to be Harry's antithesis at least in the first books, is painted as a child who hot everything he wanted, who was rich and spoiled and never knew hardship when he was young ((I'm not against fandom interpretations, but I'm pretty sure it's safe to say this is what JKR intended)) and that's just telling).

Plus, this is all made worse by how the books largely gloss over some of the worst effects childhood abuse can have - yk, like crippling mental illness; difficulty trusting anyone at all; having a hard time forming and maintaining healthy relationships and friendships; irrational, intense and even paralising fears; an ingraned belief that you really are worthless and how that lack of confidence stops from doing things bc you’re convinced you will fail, or, alternatively, turns into such a hige disregard for your own life you become almost or even fully suicidal (which harry shows some of, but not nearly enough to be a big obstacle like it should) and so on...

Within the story, Harry’s abuse, aside from the few instances in which it makes him sad, is widely positive... and that is disgusting.

So, lastly, I wanna leave you with the counter-argument:  Dr. Alan Kazdin, child psychology researcher from Yale, has a theory that more than the fact of a child being spolied or deprived, what really impacts them is the role models they have to follow. Therefore, parents who are good people and have good values tend to raise children who are the same, even if they teachnically “spoil” them. In other words, Harry could have grown up happy and fulfilled, with all his needs met and no major problems, and he still would have likely become the great person we know as long as he had parent figures who cared about those things (like, say, any of the people who would have happily taken Harry in as a baby, like Lupin, McGonagall, Hagrid, Mrs. Weasley, Sirius if he’d gotten out of jail sooner, etc).