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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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When Cho Chang cries in the tea shop, Harry is disgusted in the same way a woman would be to see a man she likes bawling in front of her.

I just read this scene last week to my 8 year old, and you are wrong. In this scene Harry feels confused, not disgusted. He is confused the same way that countless men have been confused when their woman starts crying for reasons they can't understand. And Rowling is not subtle about this confusion. There is a full 5 page dialogue between Harry and Hermione where Rowling clearly spells out how Harry and Cho are misunderstanding each other and this leads to confusion. Ron at the end even says: "Hermione, you should write a book" because women are confusing.

He is confused in this scene, yes, but there are plenty of other lines that support Harry feeling disdainful about Cho crying, or explicitly thinking of Ginny favorably because she does not cry, which brings to mind the obvious comparison.

From Order of the Phoenix:

"Yes, he had liked Cho for ages, but whenever he had imagined a scene involving the two of them it had always featured a Cho who was enjoying herself, as opposed to a Cho who was sobbing uncontrollably into his shoulder."

"Why does she always want to drag up a subject that makes her act like a human hosepipe?"

And in Deathly Hallows:

"She was not tearful; that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy."

To be fair to Harry and to Rowling, the scene in the tea shop was a complete minefield and I'm not saying it's unrealistic for him to have had no idea what to do.