muggle baiting vs. muggle torture

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 155278

jennathasania83:
> >  Respectfully, I think that we have strayed. My point was not that
Dudley is incapable of defending himself in some way, but that by
using magic the Twins *are* muggle baiting, and are thus being bullies
- which by definition usually implies picking on someone who is weaker
in some way.
> 
> Random832:
> The term "picking on someone" generally isn't applied to 'revenge'
against a bully, and I don't see how this is any different, other than
the bare fact that magic is used.

Carol responds:
I'm going to regret becoming involved in this debate because it's
clearly a ping pong match. Neither side is listening to the other.
However, I think jennathasania83 is right for several reasons.

1) What Dudley has done in the past has no bearing on whether what the
twins are doing is right or wrong. It's morally wrong to rape a
prostitute ("She was asking for it!") or to torture a murderer ("He
deserves it!"), and it's equally wrong to torment a bully, regardless
of what he may or may not have done in the past.

2) "The bare fact that magic is used" is important because magic is a
weapon against which any Muggle is defenseless. Dudley can't use his
fists to protect himself against a potion-laced candy, any more than
he could fight off a Dementor with his bare hands.

3) The Twins are taking justice into their own hands through an act of
revenge against someone who has never hurt them, whatever he may have
done to Harry. (If revenge is justifiable, and I don't think it is, it
should be Harry, not the Twins, who gets it.) The Twins are not acting
in self-defense, nor are they defending Harry. They are playing a
cruel practical joke, "baiting" Dudley (who has been on a starvation
diet) with a piece of potion-laced candy that they know he'll take,
exactly like a fisherman baiting a trout with a lure. The trout thinks
the fly is a treat when in fact, it's a hook. Dudley thinks the candy
is a treat, when in fact it's a torture device.

4) There is nothing funny about this sort of practical joke from the
standpoint of the victim and his parents. Dudley is choking on his
greatly enlarged and elongated tongue (try that some time, fellow
Muggles!) and thinks he's dying. To make matters worse, his mother,
who is also terrified that Dudley is dying, is pulling on his tongue.
If that isn't torture, I don't know what torture is. (Try having
someone yank on your tongue trying to tear it from your throat. Go on.
Try it.)

5) The Twins are bullying a helpless victim, two on one, much as
Sirius and James bullied Severus, knocking his wand from his hand as
he was putting his paper away. In a fair fight, Severus could easily
have defended himself because he's also a wizard. But a fair fight
between the Twins and Dudley is impossible--unless you take away their
wands and their potion-laced candies. Magic is a weapon just as a gun
is a weapon, and a Muggle victim cannot use that same weapon to defend
himself any more than an unarmed victim can fight against a gun.

James used to hex people in the hallways just because he could. That
was the act of a bully. But at least the people he attacked were
fellow wizards who had a wand and presumably could cast a hex or two
themselves if they weren't caught off guard. Dudley can no more cast a
hex than he can turn himself invisible. The Twins have an unfair
advantage, not to mention that it's two to one and they're tricking
him into eating something that isn't what it appears to be.

Muggle-baiting is wrong because Muggles can't defend themselves
against magical abuse. The  Dudley is a Muggle who cannot defend
himself against the Twins' magic. Therefore what the Twins are doing
is wrong.

jennathasania83:
> > This does NOT negate that Dudley himself is a bully, *but*
Dudley's being a bully doesn't make what the Twins are doing something
other than muggle baiting.

Carol:
Exactly. Dudley can no more return his tongue to its normal size than
the Robertsons could escape from being levitated by the Death Eaters.
If the Twins want to fist fight Dudley, fine. But they have no more
right to use magic on him than he has to use his fists on Mark Evans.
Two wrongs do not make a right.

Carol, wondering if the fanciful nature of this incident masks its
cruelty for those who find it funny