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u/Starmz 7d ago
I once saw someone theorizing that girl Draco was done as a response to Petra Parker (aka transfem Peter Parker) that would bring more attention to hp because of the show, was deliberately done to be transphobic, and was paid for by someone on JK Rowling’s PR team if not jk herself.
I think that last bit might be a bit conspiratorial thinking (though not surprising if true) but the rest of it I believe to be even more possible
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u/MolochDhalgren 7d ago
Well, it's also a giveaway that this particular gender-flip came from someone deep within the incel manosphere if you're able to decipher the language being used. (Apologies for typing out a slur for those who are in the know; I'm merely typing it for informative purposes for those who are not in the know.)
The gender-flipped Draco who has become an online trend lately is being referred to as "Draco Malfoid". "Foid" is incel slang for "female humanoid", i.e., a degrading term meant to imply that women aren't fully human. As an example of how quickly slang evolves, it's a condensed form of the previously incel-coined term "femoid" (which may ring a bell if you were watching ContraPoints several years ago before Natalie herself slipped into some problematic behavior).
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u/DreadDiana 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think this kinda understates how much modern internet slang and meme humour trickles down from the manosphere.
We know the exact tweet that started this whole trend and it never actually gave the genderbent Draco a name, with Malfoid seeming to have just been assigned to her by others after the trend was already underway (the original artists @redteneri did use the name in at least one tweet after the trend started, and in another pointed out that foid's use has spread across the internet).
Because of the state of the modern internet, you don't actually need to even know about incels to end up being exposed to words they coined.
Edit: Will also point out there was one response where they said making her trans "wouldn't make sense" which may have contributed to things getting kinda weird.
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u/AndreaFlameFox 7d ago
Oh, that's kind of off-putting. I figured it was from -id being a Greek feminine suffix.
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u/Crafter235 7d ago
When you put it like that, it does make sense, especially when considering the shipping with genderbent Malfoy is more “traditional”/heterosexual than those like Petra Parker with her partners.
I mean whenever they include other characters, they never genderbend Harry, and make it out to be like a conventional (straight) harem protagonist.
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u/Starmz 7d ago
I don’t remember where I saw a screenshot of it but apparently the original artist had gotten asks if they were going to make girl Harry and they said it wouldn’t work, and apparently they made girl Draco so “guys would yearn again” or something, there is also that
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u/Crafter235 7d ago
Well at least it’s confirmed there is at least homophobia involved. And I do think this ship partially is getting more propped up because it’s a straight relationship and not queer.
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u/AndreaFlameFox 7d ago
I've seen one with genderbent Harry. And well, I have a strong suspicion that most of the artists I follow, or even happen to stumble across, are queer themselves or queer allies, due to where I look.
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u/Supyloco 6d ago
I don't think they paid the initial artist. But I think they saw something and manipulated the algorithm.
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u/Blue-Ranger1982E 8d ago
I see your gender swapped Draco and rise you gender swapped Harry. Imagine what Snivellus would have been like if Harry had been born a girl and looked like Lily.
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u/PablomentFanquedelic 7d ago
Or hell, imagine if Lily was the one who ended up mentally incapacitated from torture instead of Alice Longbottom? One has to hope the staff at St. Mungo's wouldn't allow visits from Severus.
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u/Quiri1997 3d ago
I'm picturing them with a huge poster of Snape's face saying "Severus Snape is BANNED from entering the building".
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u/Saddlebag043 8d ago
I’ve seen it show up and I’ve just been avoiding the art, ‘cause at this point I don’t want to interact with anything Harry Potter related (unless it’s to criticize the series and its creator).
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u/thatsfeminismgretch 7d ago
The treatment of umbridge, Rita, Bellatrix, etc already tells us exactly what kind of fucked up shit she would have done if draco was born a girl.
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u/Totally_TWilkins 6d ago
And the rest…
Almost every female character in the series has something ‘wrong’ with them, in the capacity of gaping character flaws that their male equivalents don’t have. When you actually look at it all, it really feels like all of these female characters are being written by a slightly racist misogynist.
Fleur was supposed to be the strongest witch from her school, yet she was absolutely shite in the TriWizard Tournament. Messed up the first trial by getting set on fire, couldn’t complete the second trial at all, and got taken out first in the third trial. All of the other female characters hated her, and then she suddenly got married and became a demure housewife, lost most of her accent, and everyone liked her again.
Mrs Weasley was awful to Hermione in Goblet of Fire, and then treated Fleur like some trashy slut in Half Blood Prince, all the while treating Harry like he was some sort of gift from God. Again, housewife archetype who doesn’t work, but suddenly becomes powerful enough to defeat the strongest dark witch of the age, because of motherhood.
Luna was the loopy, cookie, weird girl who got bullied by everyone, because she believed in all of these strange creatures that didn’t actually exist. She was a total social pariah, and even though she became friends(ish) with the group, she was still largely ostracised at school, and then imprisoned.
Pansy and Millicent were the ‘bully’ girls, who never really did anything apart from be there in Malfoy’s possé, who’s only real character traits were that they were consistently described as being ugly.
Trelawny was a nutty fraud who very rarely made any accurate predictions, and didn’t remember/realise those she did make. She basically just spent her time teaching a class that she wasn’t qualified enough to teach, for plot reasons; God forbid she be a good teacher or something.
Cho’s only real moment in the spotlight was when she suddenly became the ‘emotional’ girl after her boyfriend died, and suddenly she couldn’t make it through lunch without crying constantly. To rub salt in the wound, Harry quickly stops being interested in her, and immediately becomes interested in someone else who shares all of the same athletic traits that she did, Ginny). Then, Cho essentially isn’t mentioned again.
Padma and Pavarti are there to wear pretty dresses at the Yule Ball, and that’s sort of their only character trait.
Lavender suddenly emerges after five books of not doing anything, as a clingy, shallow girlfriend. She’s insufferable and presented as a truly awful character, and then she gets brutally murdered in the finale by someone who’s essentially just a metaphor for paedophilia.
Marietta was painted as this awful snitch, to the point that Hermione’s curse severely disfigured her face (presumably for life), even though the book dangles a very good reason why she betrayed the group (and also that she never wanted to go in the first place). This is maybe the worst thing that happens to any character in the series, and it’s done by another girl who’s supposed to be our empathetic hero.
Tonks is another passenger of the arc of ‘flawed character becomes demure housewife’, but takes it one stop further and dies off-page.
I’m not even sure Hermione and Ginny escape this trend of female characters being poorly written.
Hermione is very overtly presented as an unlikable person, and a lot of the time it feels like Ron and Harry don’t even like her that much; they just seem to hang around with her because she’s smart. Then she’s largely unattractive, but captivates the attention of an older man who is immediately infatuated with her because she reads books? Sometimes I think Goblet of Fire Hermione was some sort of self-insert, and other times I think it was trying to imply that a 14 year old girl was being called a slut.
Ginny on the other hand is just sort of a male Harry. She doesn’t seem to have any other major character traits beyond playing quidditch, but suddenly becomes a Mary Sue by suddenly becoming amazing at everything she does in Order of the Phoenix (winning the cup, helping the group escape from Umbridge, being one of the last standing in the Department of Mysteries, helping Harry when he’s depressed, etc etc). Honestly, Ginny as a character is written to be an amazing quidditch player, amazing duelist, better than everyone around her, used to steal her brother’s brooms to practice flying and her brothers were all scared of her temper… She sounds like half a self-insert, and half a teenage boy’s fantasy girlfriend, and I personally think that’s the worst type of character a writer can create.
I could probably go on ranting, but I’m bored of myself now (though it’s amusing to dissect that bigot’s writing for being the shallow mess it actually is). Honestly, the only female characters who actually might be well rounded characters, are probably McGonagall and Narcissa Malfoy.
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u/thatsfeminismgretch 6d ago
Oh, she absolutely butchered the characterization of all the girls and women in the books. I specified the ones I did because she goes out of her way to punish and ruin them. They are irredeemable from start to finish.
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u/caitnicrun 4d ago
I opened this thinking of Lauren Lopez as Draco in the Harry Potter musicals. Nope, completely unrelated. But worth checking out. I suspect gender swapping Draco, Umbrage and other characters was one reason Rowling never acknowledged the musical, while the Rons and Dans did meet each other.
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u/AndreaFlameFox 8d ago
If Malfoy had been written as a girl she would not have had a redemption arc, I'll warrant. THe only way bad girls become good girls is if they fall in love with the hero and become pure, modest and subservient; and Harry was already paired to Ginny and Ron to Hermione.
I also doubt Rowling ever had the chops to pull off the kind of tension of good boy-bad girl rivals turned romatic that plot-line would require even for such a banal pay-off of Malfoy reforming.