julieta ˖᯽ ݁˖

So my headcanon is that the Black women were probably very dominant and the real heads of their households, which ties nicely with traditional witchcraft myths, where covens were matriarchal and women were the leading figures. And it makes sense, because Regulus is described as kind of a puppet with a brainwashed mind too. Honestly, the Black men don’t inspire much, while the Black women all seem to have a terrible temper — to varying degrees — but they’re the ones who actually take charge.

The Black family exists in a patriarchal, aristocratic system. Pureblood society is a closed, upper-class elite modeled on old-money aristocracies and in this structure power formally resides with men (especially in lineage control, inheritance, political influence, legal authority, family name and estates). This is not a world where women can independently shape social structures. Even powerful-seeming women operate inside patriarchal boundaries (they are pressured into roles tied to marriage and reproduction, especially in families obsessed with heir-producing marriages, "keeping bloodlines pure", dynastic continuation...). This is explicitly sexist. Blood purity fundamentally relies on controlling women's bodies (who they marry, when they have children and to whom), so from the outset, the idea of a female-led dynasty or matriarchal power structure is already incompatible with the canon's class system.

Household dominance ≠ structural power. Yes, characters like Walburga or Bellatrix are loud, violent and personally forceful. But having a temper isn't the same as holding power. Running the domestic sphere doesn't change the patriarchal structure. Walburga may have run the household emotionally, but the system she operated in was still patriarchal, she enforces Orion's ideology, not her own. Orion's silence signals approval, not weakness and she is maintaining a worldview created by men. It's a mistake to mistake personal aggression for political authority. This is why the "Black women are the real heads of their houses" theory falls apart to me, they're not shaping the system, they're enforcing it. These women do not derive power from being women or from some matriarchal heritage. They derive their cruelty from total ideological submission to blood supremacy, patriarchal lineage culture and Voldemort's rule. Their viciousness is not feminine, it is fascistic. They are instruments of the system, not creators of it.

When we say that "it ties nicely with traditional witchcraft myths", we're collapsing two totally different frameworks of "witchhood" into one. It'd only make sense if we were talking about folk magic, historical witchcraft, matrilineal spellcraft traditions, coven-based social structures, women outside patriarchal power systems... but the Black family is none of that. They're aristocracy, not "witchcraft culture". Traditional witchcraft myths = outsider women. Historically and in folklore, witches are marginalized women, living outside state/church control, practicing magic in lineage groups led by women, feared, persecuted or outside society. These women can be matriarchal because they exist outside patriarchy. Their power comes from removal from the patriarchal system, not being its elites. The Black family, by contrast, is the wizarding equivalent of the british aristocracy. Trying to "tie" them to folk witch matriarchy is like saying the royal family are secretly earth-mother hedge witches. It simply doesn't fit. I do think coven matriarchies can exist in hp and it's an interesting concept to explore, just not among pureblood elites. If anything, coven-style matriarchal witchcraft would fit working-class magical families, rural witches, herbalists, seers, healers, people far from ministry politics, those who learned magic outside Hogwarts canon pathways... These could easily have lineage-based, woman-centered magical traditions. But the Blacks? They don't have covens. They have inheritance law. The Blacks would hate traditional witchcraft.

And then I don't think Sirius "asserts his masculinity", he asserts his autonomy. Nothing in Sirius canon behavior suggests he is performing or asserting masculinity. In fact, he rejects traditional pureblood masculinity (he's emotionally expressive, aligned with empathy-driven figures, uninterested in political male heir duties). What he is asserting is individuality, morality and the right to choose his own identity. Sirius is rebelling against ideology, not gender expectations. The conflict between him and Walburga is not just "two powerful temperaments clashing", it's an authoritarian parent vs. a noncompliant child.

The argument about “traditional witchcraft” has the same problem. You’re treating my comparison as if I were claiming the Blacks historically descend from European covens, when that’s clearly not what I said. Rowling’s canon claims that the wizarding world lacks gender roles, an assertion at odds with the clearly patriarchal dynamics visible in the text, but nonetheless a canonical premise. If the universe supposedly does not encode strict gendered constraints, then declaring that aristocratic witches cannot mirror aspects of traditional witchcraft cultures is an arbitrary restriction. The “this aristocracy is patriarchal, therefore witches cannot have culturally central female figures” line of reasoning collapses under the weight of Rowling’s own worldbuilding. The comparison to coven traditions was never literalist; it was about narrative resonance, about how the Black women function symbolically within a supposedly gender-neutral magical society. If one takes the canon at its word, the argument that elite women cannot be ideologically central simply because aristocracies are patriarchal is unsustainable. If one takes the canon at its practice, the prominence of Black women reflects the common reality that patriarchal aristocracies often rely precisely on women to enforce lineage culture. Either way, the rigid rejection of the comparison does not hold.

About Sirius, the idea that he is rejecting masculinity is, frankly, a complete misread of what he actually does in canon. What he rejects are his aristocratic origins and his family’s ideological rigidity, not his gendered conditioning. In fact, Sirius repeatedly performs hegemonic, toxic masculinity throughout his youth: his reckless violence escalating to attempted murder; his sadistic behavior toward those he deems inferior; his hypermasculine aesthetics (the motorbike, the leather, the performative bravado); his bedroom walls covered in objectified female bodies; and his hierarchical submission only to another male of identical social rank (James). These are not marks of someone rejecting masculinity, they are classic expressions of patriarchal masculine performance. Presenting Sirius as a gender-avant-garde figure contradicts his canonical behavior. His rebellion is political and personal, not gendered. He abandons his family ideology, not the very masculinity that ideology helped shape in him.

Furthermore, the insistence that Orion’s patriarchal authority supersedes Walburga’s disregards the actual textual dynamics. Sirius’s descriptions emphasize continual conflict with his mother, and he speaks of his father as a passive, inconsequential figure. Nothing in canon positions Orion as the primary enforcer of ideology or the dominant personality in the household. Projecting patriarchal authority onto him purely because he is male ignores what the narrative explicitly gives us: a mother who shapes the household’s emotional climate and ideological expression, and a father who barely registers. The argument attempts to read patriarchal dominance into a narrative space where it is not depicted, relying on abstraction rather than textual evidence.

Sirius’s arc isn’t about masculinity being threatened, it’s about morality being chosen.

He wasn’t running from femininity, he was running from fascism (and that obviously doesn't mean that Sirius didn't reinforced masculine roles/traits during the series, that's not the point here).

And honestly, the gendered framing gets uncomfortable for me because it treats femininity as the source of darkness, like the cruelty in that household was some kind of innate "female power" or "female demon" instead of the product of a fascist ideology that both men and women actively upheld. Turning abuse into something "naturally feminine" isn’t empowering, it’s misogynistic. It essentializes violence as a feminine trait and ignores the structural power dynamics that actually shape the Black family.

Walburga wasn’t abusive because she was a "wild" woman, she was abusive because she bought into and enforced a violent ideology.

And Sirius didn’t escape because he needed to assert manhood, he escaped because he refused to participate in that ideology.

So my headcanon is that the Black women were probably very dominant and the real heads of their households, which ties nicely with traditional witchcraft myths, where covens were matriarchal and women were the leading figures. And it makes sense, because Regulus is described as kind of a puppet with a brainwashed mind too. Honestly, the Black men don’t inspire much, while the Black women all seem to have a terrible temper — to varying degrees — but they’re the ones who actually take charge.

The Black family exists in a patriarchal, aristocratic system. Pureblood society is a closed, upper-class elite modeled on old-money aristocracies and in this structure power formally resides with men (especially in lineage control, inheritance, political influence, legal authority, family name and estates). This is not a world where women can independently shape social structures. Even powerful-seeming women operate inside patriarchal boundaries (they are pressured into roles tied to marriage and reproduction, especially in families obsessed with heir-producing marriages, "keeping bloodlines pure", dynastic continuation...). This is explicitly sexist. Blood purity fundamentally relies on controlling women's bodies (who they marry, when they have children and to whom), so from the outset, the idea of a female-led dynasty or matriarchal power structure is already incompatible with the canon's class system.

Household dominance ≠ structural power. Yes, characters like Walburga or Bellatrix are loud, violent and personally forceful. But having a temper isn't the same as holding power. Running the domestic sphere doesn't change the patriarchal structure. Walburga may have run the household emotionally, but the system she operated in was still patriarchal, she enforces Orion's ideology, not her own. Orion's silence signals approval, not weakness and she is maintaining a worldview created by men. It's a mistake to mistake personal aggression for political authority. This is why the "Black women are the real heads of their houses" theory falls apart to me, they're not shaping the system, they're enforcing it. These women do not derive power from being women or from some matriarchal heritage. They derive their cruelty from total ideological submission to blood supremacy, patriarchal lineage culture and Voldemort's rule. Their viciousness is not feminine, it is fascistic. They are instruments of the system, not creators of it.

When we say that "it ties nicely with traditional witchcraft myths", we're collapsing two totally different frameworks of "witchhood" into one. It'd only make sense if we were talking about folk magic, historical witchcraft, matrilineal spellcraft traditions, coven-based social structures, women outside patriarchal power systems... but the Black family is none of that. They're aristocracy, not "witchcraft culture". Traditional witchcraft myths = outsider women. Historically and in folklore, witches are marginalized women, living outside state/church control, practicing magic in lineage groups led by women, feared, persecuted or outside society. These women can be matriarchal because they exist outside patriarchy. Their power comes from removal from the patriarchal system, not being its elites. The Black family, by contrast, is the wizarding equivalent of the british aristocracy. Trying to "tie" them to folk witch matriarchy is like saying the royal family are secretly earth-mother hedge witches. It simply doesn't fit. I do think coven matriarchies can exist in hp and it's an interesting concept to explore, just not among pureblood elites. If anything, coven-style matriarchal witchcraft would fit working-class magical families, rural witches, herbalists, seers, healers, people far from ministry politics, those who learned magic outside Hogwarts canon pathways... These could easily have lineage-based, woman-centered magical traditions. But the Blacks? They don't have covens. They have inheritance law. The Blacks would hate traditional witchcraft.

And then I don't think Sirius "asserts his masculinity", he asserts his autonomy. Nothing in Sirius canon behavior suggests he is performing or asserting masculinity. In fact, he rejects traditional pureblood masculinity (he's emotionally expressive, aligned with empathy-driven figures, uninterested in political male heir duties). What he is asserting is individuality, morality and the right to choose his own identity. Sirius is rebelling against ideology, not gender expectations. The conflict between him and Walburga is not just "two powerful temperaments clashing", it's an authoritarian parent vs. a noncompliant child.