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JoshuaZ comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Which is true, but also completely missing the point. What matters to a large extent is the scale of things. Harry does big stuff. Sometimes that results in what may end up as massive screw ups, but his total scale of what he is impacting is much larger.
If someone wrote a book where all the #Gender1's were Stalins, each responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, and all the #Gender2's were ordinary people who didn't do much, I think that would be an anti-#Gender1 story, even though it's the #Gender1's who do big stuff.
It might be anti-both. If you insinuate that everyone of gender 1 is liable to become a genocidal dictator, that's an insult to people of gender 1. If you insinuate that no one of gender 2 is liable to do anything substantial, that's an insult to people of gender 2. Neither insult ceases to be insulting merely because you said something bad about the other people too.
It's not about whether the story is pro-women or anti-women. It's about whether the story reiterates common tropes that reinforce stereotyped roles for women and men that are harmful to one or both.
Just to be clear, the name of the story in question is "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", which was based off of a series of seven books also titled with the name "Harry Potter". The name of the story is not "Hermione Granger and the Methods of Rationality". If it were, then yes, I would expect to see her impact be the larger one.
In the original though, Hermione does big stuff. It is her Time-Turner that saves things in book 3. And throughout the series (with the exception of book 7 where Rowling took a somewhat anti-rationalist stance), it almost always Hermione that figures out what the big plot is or the like. Part of why Hermione in fact looks so much weaker here is because she was the most rational character in the original, and increasing Harry's skill set while doing much less to hers makes her look less impressive.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, Hermione wasn't powered up at all.
Without diminishing the arguments of the feminist side, I think that's pretty damn impressive.