The Harry Potter Alliance is an organization that uses parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights. Their goal is to make civic engagement exciting by channeling the entertainment-saturated facets of our culture toward mobilization for deep and lasting social change.
A lot of the issues the HPA is engaged in are near and dear to my heart. These include fighting bullying and advocating for the rights of LGBTQ people.
Recently, after a discussion that involved gender identity concerns on a Harry Potter mailing list went a bit awry, the HPA and I wound up in contact about issues of bullying and how they impact people who are gender non-conforming.
As part of their current campaign to stop bullying against LGBTQ kids and to highlight how that bullying can lead to the acceptance of human rights abuses like those against queer people in Uganda, I’ll be participating both in their blog (with one piece going live soon, and another after I get back from Los Angeles) and in a Livestream event they’ll be holding tomorrow night, February 15 at 8:30pm. You can participate by visiting the Livestream channel at http://www.livestream.com/imaginebetter. The agenda items include youth bullying, depression, suicide and awareness of transgender issues.
I may be a Slytherin, but that doesn’t mean I’m on Voldemort’s side. For me, it’s about being ruthless and ambitious, and, having seen the dark, choosing the light.
Please take a chance to check out the HPA, and I hope you’ll join us on the Livestream. I’ll update this post with links to my blog entries there as they are posted.
Thank you!
Letters from Titan 
You know, it’s ambiguous, but I think there’s a hell of a case to be made for Snape being bullied as an adolescent because James’ clique thought he was insufficiently masculine.
YMMV.
*claps hands excitedly*
Yes. Wait til you read the blog entry. While I don’t call that out specifically, I do call out Snape being identified as or at least treated as if he’s gender non-conforming. (Reason I don’t cite the bullying, because it required too long a digression and an analysis of how sexualized the bullying incident is or isn’t, and it sort of wasn’t the place). But yes.
Thank you. That was beautifully written.