Ginnyās reaction to Cho offering to take Harry to the ravenclaw common room never fails to irk me. She has no trust in Harry nor does she seem capable of comprehending the idea that maybe Cho is trying to be nice without an ulterior motive.
The problem is that from an in-universe perspective, Ginny Weasley's response is completely reasonable.
I've said it before and a lot of people have said it before me, but the wizarding world is a society that does not give a rat's ass about sexual consent and rape culture is incredibly prevalent. However, one of the things that I've noticed when look at the various instances of sexual assault and rape throughout the entirety of the series is that portrayals of men assaulting women are relatively rare by comparison to the numerable accounts of women assaulting men, but that when men do commits sexual assault, there is either a consequence for their actions (like in the case of Corvus Lestrange and Laurena Kama) or that those observing the situation do actually acknowledge that what the men in the situation are doing to the women is generally bad (like with Harry and Bob Odgen's reaction to how the Gaunt men treat Merope). And, yes, we can talk about how there absolutely is a problem with the fact that there does not seem to be any actual legal consequences for what Corvus, Marvolo, and Morfin do to their victims, but at the very least, we do seem to have someone wagging their finger and thinking that what these men are doing to their female victims is wrong. By comparison, when women rape or are even just accused of rape, no one gives a fuck. In fact, it's something that women just do in this society.
Fred and George specifically market love potions to women as part of their "violently pink" WonderWitch line and say that they work dependent upon the attractiveness of the girl that administers them. During Rita Skeeter's anti-Hermione smear campaign, people are more concerned with the fact that Harry might have gotten his heart broken than the fact that Pansy publicly accuses Hermione of having drugged Viktor Krum. Molly made a love potion as a joke when she was a young girl. Dumbledore accuses Merope Gaunt of drugging Tom Sr. with a love potion without even the slightest hint of proof that she might have done so, but also does not damn her for what was undoubtably her raping a man after she took away his ability to consent. Romilda faces exactly zero punishment for what she did to Ron nor what she and all of her friends were planning on doing to Harry. And while it's not a love potion specifically, the effects of Veela upon men (and only men, as women seem to be invulnerable to their charms) are seen as something fun for men to indulge in at their best and a means through which rule breaking and cheating might occur at their worse. In this society, it is just expected that women will use magic to ensnare men into loving, desiring, and wanting to be romantic and/or sexual with them. It's not a big deal, and certainly not as bit a deal as when men do it to women. And, yes, absolutely, we can and definitely should talk about how JKR being the bigot that she is contributed to her writing a world where "Rape is fine so long as women do it to men" is a thing. But from a purely Watsonian perspective: women committing sexual assault is not only not a big deal, but something that they are expected to do.
[ And before anyone brings up JKR's 100% intention to imply that the centaur's gangraped Umbridge after Hermione lured her into their territory... Given that the anti-trans vibes are so violently there with Umbridge that the parody musical picked up on it and played it straight, my point still stands because we are supposed to think that Umbridge's femininity as so performative that Rowling views her as a man, and therefore punishes her with sexual assault as a man. ]
This is very likely why women's sexualities are so incredibly controlled within the wizarding world, and specifically amongst those within the old pureblood families. And while I definitely think that Ginny was raise relatively non-traditionally by comparison to other girls within her peerage, the fact of the matter is that she is still the daughter of two ancient pureblood houses and that her mother is still very traditional in her beliefs about women and how they should be behaving on a sexual level. Molly's beliefs are most obvious in how she behaves around Hermione throughout GoF, but given that Ron points out that he's learned the term 'scarlet women' specifically from his mother, we can also assume that a lot of the control that he, Fred, and George (and potentially even Harry, as her pseudo-brother) feel entitled to regarding Ginny's dating life come from Molly as well. In fact, a lot of the control that they exhibit over her seems to be a direct mirror of how much control Marvolo and Morfin have over Merope's sexuality, right down to Ron all but calling his sister a slut before attacking her for daring to date someone that he did not approve of. But at the same time, it also how that mirrors a lot of how the Black sister's own marriages worked alongside how Tonks' marriage to Remus is perceived.
What becomes very clear very quickly is that women from pureblood families are potentially given a little bit of leeway to pick their spouses, though the range of what an acceptable partner might be is very dependent upon what each family is willing to put up with. For the Gaunts... Well, it's not outright stated that the sibling incest is canon, but a very basic reading of the text will tell you that Marvolo would have only ever accepted her choosing Morfin. The Black sisters could only marry a pureblood man from an acceptable family, and a failure to do so would result in them being cut off from their family in what would have absolutely been intended as a death sentence. Fleur is only allowed to marry into the Weasleys once she proves herself as worthy and even then is still expected to put up with the fact that people don't like her. And Ginny? Who is someone that was absolutely born into the same social class as Merope and the Black sisters regardless of the standing of her family? Ginny is allowed to date, sure, but not anyone that her brothers don't like. There's likely a reason for why she hides her relationship with Michael Corner from them, and why she's at her most public with her dating/sex life when it comes to her being with Harry. Her family approves of Harry but didn't of Michael and Dean, just like with the Gaunts and the Blacks even if their reactions are supposed to come off as more extreme (but are arguably operating in lock-step with how the Weasleys treat Ginny). This means that it's very likely that had Ginny decided to date and/or marry someone that her family didn't agree with, it's likely that she would have become just as estranged from them as Andromeda is with her family or Merope's from her's, as the Weasleys aren't adverse to kicking their kids out due to them having ideologies that differ from their own. So what happened to Percy absolutely could have been something that happened to her if she and Michael/Dean had actually worked out and her family didn't approve, and it would be a very common and socially acceptable thing amongst their peerage to do because all of the banished Black women in the series were disowned for wanting to have sex with someone that their family didn't like.
But what I think is also very important to remember is that there is actually an intermediate step in between these two extremes of picking an acceptable partner or rebelling and choosing someone that your family hates, as Ginny implies during HBP that she believes that her mother is trying to set up Bill and Tonks because she doesn't approve of Fleur as a daughter-in-law. Not only that, but Ginny also wants this to be what is happening, implying that this might actually be something that actually does occur within the world that she grew up within. And if we're going to draw parallels back to the Gaunts, it's important to remember that Marvolo does threaten to give Merope away to Bob Ogden because she's not considered good enough for whoever he'd find acceptable for her to marry otherwise (again, heavily implying that an acceptable partner would be one of the other two men in that room, her own father included). So it's very likely that we're looking at a cultural norm where if a child from these ancient pureblood families brings home a partner that the family does not approve of, one will be found for them and it will probably be a cousin because the pureblood family tree is a slinky. So if that's the case, then it's very probable that Ginny believes that if she loses Harry, either to another woman or just out of pure disinterest, then her family is going to set her up with someone that they do find acceptable instead. And if she doesn't like that person? She's done. She's fucking gone, just like Percy was gone or any of her father's female cousins through his mom's line were gone. And, yeah, okay, she's got a lot more leeway to pick and choose than most of the other girls in her peerage but the leash around Ginny's neck is still a leash, and her being wedded, bedded, and fucked until pregnant is an inevitability and not something that she gets to choose. Because if a woman's marriage wasn't important in this society then Bellatrix Lestrange would have remained Bellatrix Black (or perhaps even became Bellatrix Riddle), and this would not be a world that solely seeks to control female sexuality because of how powerful and dangerous it thinks that it is when left untethered.
This is why, in-universe, Ginny's reaction to Gabrielle Delacour's puppy crush on Harry is completely reasonable because not only does an eleven year old Gabrielle have the ability to compel the grown-ass-adult that is Harry Potter into fucking her, but considering that no one even brought it up as a possibility when they were hating on Fleur for shacking up with Bill, or cared that she planned on compelling Cedric Diggory into going to the Ball with her, or cared when she actually compelled Roger Davies into going to the Yule Ball with her and then fucked him while he was unable to properly consent... Again, we are running up against the fact that this is a world where no one gives a rat's ass about sexual consent while also completely expecting a woman in full possession of her sexuality to use magic to rape and ensnare men against their wills. A lot of flack has been rightfully given to Dumbledore for making the assumption that Merope used a love potion to ensnare Tom Sr. But given the society that Albus lives in, it is not only a completely reasonable assumption for him to make given the prevalence of women using magic to ensnare men into desiring them romantically/sexually but also the fact that he doesn't even seem to care that Merope might have raped someone at all is reasonable too given that no one gives a flying fuck about how Romilda wanted to rape Harry and ended up subjecting Ron to sexual assault by accident. No one cares when women rape, and the only people who suffer the consequences are the girls that get left behind because they can't keep their man when someone else comes in to steal them from her.
So when Cho offers to help get Harry into the Ravenclaw Common Room when he's searching for the Diadem, it doesn't actually matter to Ginny if she's doing it to ensnare Harry or not because the normal cultural expectation is going to be that she is and that Ginny cannot take that chance. Because the fact is that if she wanted to, Cho absolutely could do that to Harry given that Hogwarts has been teaching students mood-altering charms since they were in third year. Hell, for all she knows, Ginny's own brothers sold Cho the means in which to ruin her life in the exact same way that they sold Draco Malfoy the Instant Darkness Powder that he used in his plan to sneak Death Eaters into the castle and murder Albus Dumbledore. Consent in this world is a joke sold in her brother's shop, so why wouldn't she be suspicious of the intentions of any woman that she knows is attracted to Harry, because every woman has the ability to take him from her while there is also a cultural expectation that she will. And while a lot of flack has been made about how oh my god, Ginny, we're in the middle of a warzone, get your priorities straight, I think that if we offer Ginny even the slightest ounce of compassion, we can actually take that statement and turn it into a truly horrifying question:
How much danger is Ginny Weasley actually in if she loses the ability to date and eventually marry Harry as a woman existing in this world that it takes precedence over a fucking war?
Because it is very important to remember that Ginny is basically a CSA survivor due to what happened between her and Tom. One can certainly debate on whether or not the sexual assault she experienced was metaphorical or literal, but the fact of the matter is that her ability to consent to things that were happening to her body was horrifically ripped from her at the tender age of eleven and no one gave a shit. In fact, Ginny seems to have been the one that got blamed for not being protective of her mind and body enough by her own parents when they find out what had been happening to her for that entire year. And that implies that had Ginny actually lost Harry to Cho, Gabrielle, or Romilda because she'd been inattentive enough to allow it to happen, the only person who'd have actually faced a consequence would have been her. Because that means getting set up with a cousin, or some other man that her family might find acceptable, because Ginny never really had any consent in whether or not she'd be married off at all. She is a girl in this society, which means that there are expectations on how she will act and react within it, and if she sets out of those constraints for even a moment, then she will be subject to injury, disownment, and possible death at the hands of her family members just like Andromeda and Merope experienced simply because they wanted to have some form of control over their own bodies.
And this ideology goes far beyond just Ginny's access to her own sexuality, by the way. It's highly implied that Ginny was not allowed to play Quidditch like her brothers were growing up simply because she was a girl, resulting in he Holyhead Harpies becoming her favourite team growing up simply because they were the girl power team within the league. Also, she is deliberately not allowed to go near things that her family deems too 'dangerous' for her, again because she is The Girl. Ginny isn't allowed to go on the family vacation to visit Charlie in Romania with her parents in PS and his held back from looking at the old tombs in Egypt by her mother despite it being hinted at that she really did want to participate in the activity alongside her brothers. She is also the only sibling that is told that she is not able to fight in the Battle of Hogwarts and it's definitely not because she is a girl or even underaged because no one has a problem with Luna fighting; rather, it's because she's Molly's girl, or Ron's sister, or because she's Harry's girl, and they have a similar claim of ownership over her that they don't claim to have over Luna and thus don't interfere in her family's matters.
There has only ever been one person in the entire series who has ever actually given a singular flying fuck about Ginny's thoughts and opinions and not only encouraged her to speak up but gave her the means in which to be heard. That person was Tom Marvolo Riddle, who loves when people break societal rules because it allows him to see himself within them, and it is no surprise to me that he absolutely took a shining to Ginny until she became suspicious of what he was making her do without her consent and threw him in the shitter like yesterday's trash. But the fact that the only person who's ever cared about what Ginny had to say was Lord Voldemort himself is going to fuck anyone up, especially in this society that is constantly telling her to sit down, shut up, and wait for the men in her family to solve her problems for her before she's packaged up to sell to an acceptable man to breed his children upon her (which, given the naming of the Next Gen Potter children, absolutely seems to have been what happened). And should she dare to not do that, or to fail in any way because she was bested by a competitor like Cho? Or Gabrielle? Or Romilda? No one will care.
Because rape is just something that women do in this society when their sexualities are left untethered and unleashed, and Ginny can't be that girl. Not if she wants to survive in this world. Not if she wants to be good, for her family, for her brothers, and specifically for Harry, because there really isn't any other way for her to live within a society built around the fact that a woman's sexuality is so feared that it needs to be controlled and contained to benefit the men that rule it.
...And then, you need to look at all of that and realize that JK Rowling meant absolutely none of that, that she thinks that she wrote a pop feminist gender egalitarian society, and instead just wanted Ginny to say that to get in one last dig at Cho in order to promote her as being the better girl for Harry because she absolutely refuses to write couples being together due to her pathological fear of showing men being attracted to women.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that JKR was absolutely shocked by the fact that a lot of people empathized with Cho during her break-up with Harry and didn't view her as the mean and awful ex-girlfriend who's over-emotionality ruined their relationship. As a result, I do think that a lot of our further interactions with Cho, and specifically with Cho alongside Ginny, are dedicated to proving that Ginny is the better partner for Harry over Cho because she cannot comprehend the idea that people might actually like and empathize with Cho and got very emotionally insecure about it. But the problem with that is due to Rowling being overly adverse to writing couples interacting with each other as couples, the only way for her to actually do that is by having Ginny beat Cho at things rather than just showing just why Harry likes Ginny (or even why he used to like Cho, for that matter) at all. It's why I think Rowling Macgyvered her plot to ensure that Ginny became Gryffindor's Seeker in the two end-of-year matches that they ever face against Ravenclaw alongside her general misogyny surrounding how women cannot possibly be equal to men (because oh my god, could you imagine Captain Harry's Quidditch rival in his final year at Hogwarts being a ~girl,~ let alone his pathetic, weepy ex-girlfriend even though Cho is arguably one of the best players at the school during his tenure as a player? Nope, gotta give that rivalry to instead Ginny because she's The Girl, and girls can only be equals and rivals to other girls because they can never be equal to that of men). By having Ginny beat Cho two years in a row, we can be told that Ginny is just better than Harry's ex-love interest despite the fact that Harry never actually watches either match and can see Ginny being better than Cho for himself. And the same thing goes for how Ginny is written to react to Harry when he makes the hard calls within their relationship, as she doesn't get openly emotional or confrontational when he breaks up with her like Cho did and instead takes what she is given lying down so that he can continue to engage in his own plot without her making herself a big deal within his life. We're repeatedly told by others that Ginny is not only incredibly attractive and sexually available (but still remains sexually pure for Harry when he eventually claims her, as she doesn't let her boyfriends get 'pushy' with her like Cormac and Ron do with their girlfriends), but that she far more popular and cool that Cho ever was in a way that just doesn't ever get shown on page despite how often Harry is supposedly watching her throughout HBP. Over and over, we are told that Ginny is the better match for Harry but never shown, and this boils over into how Rowling clearly wanted to portray the interact between Ginny and Cho in the RoR right before the Battle of Hogwarts.
Because during the scene in question, we're clearly supposed to see it as Cho being a desperate, whiny, crybaby loser who wants to get back with Harry after a year (maybe two) of dating the equally desperate whiny, crybaby loser that is Michael Corner, who is only notable within the plot because he's Ginny's own sloppy seconds. Rowling wanted us to think that Cho had realized what she lost far too late and is trying to gain back any inkling of what she once had by any means necessary, and Ginny is smart enough to sus that out and shut it the fuck down before it can happen. It's not about whether she trusts her man to not cheat on her but telling Cho to sit down and shut up because just like with how she reacts to Romilda asking about Harry's hippogriff tattoo, it's not about the characters that Ginny is having these interactions with so much as she's telling them Back off, bitch, I won. JRK wants us to understand that Hinny is endgame now, but she can't do that by having Ginny actually be a good and interesting character that will drive us to wanting to root for this pairing. But what she can do is tell the reader that every other love interest for Harry is inferior next to Ginny, because JKR cannot envision another way to raise her female characters up without having them putting other women down.
She took what was an incredibly complicated answer to an equally complicated question and reduced it into something so petty and frivolous that it might as well be coming out of the mouth of Pansy Parkinson, because being ābitchyā is only okay when the good girls are doing it.
And that, Nonny, is why it really bothers you. Because you're viewing both Ginny and Cho as people when JK Rowling is physically incapable of viewing either of them as such because they're Harry's rival love interests. Because JKR hates women, and the way that she hates Ginny is just the same as she hates Cho even if she goes about portraying it in a different fashion.
