[HPforGrownups] Hate crimes (was ... uh, I forget, surely it was something....)

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 155829

> Ken:

> For me to spend so much time discussing the ton tongue toffee prank
> on a spoiled bully who has had several years to wrap his pea brain
> around the fact that his live in cousin is a wizard and who's own
> mother should have helped him deal with this his entire life is to
> strain at a gnat while swallowing the camel that is the practice of
> obliviation. I don't hear anyone who is so bent out of shape by this
> "muggle-baiting" candy expressing any outrage at this staple of
> the wizarding world that is a million times worse.

Magpie:
Actually, many of us do express outrage at memory-charms.  I think it's one 
of the reasons it's impossible for Wizards to treat Muggles with 
respect--they regularly decide when it's okay to violate their minds "for 
their own good."  It's a total abuse of power and a violation and, I agree, 
permeates the entire culture.  Even Hermione has developed a maternalistic 
attitude towards her parents.

I think the reason the Toffee incident is because people think there's one 
obvious way to read the scene and then it turns out people actually have 
different opinions on it.  There's a number of incidents like this, I think, 
and they usually center around the same kind of thing--some kind of 
punishment or place where somebody "deserved it."  This is something that 
the books themselves seem to turn on, so I don't think it's a strange thing.

Ken Hutchinson:
This concern over the toffee is an example of "zero tolerance"
> thinking. Don't you see what it has done to you, and does to you in
> the real world too? It focuses your mind so strongly on tiny details
> that you lose sight of the big picture.

Magpie:
It's not zero tolerance thinking--I think that's intentionally exaggerating 
the position of the other side to make it less credible.  It's not like 
anyone is saying the Twins should be put in jail or that this makes them 
Death Eaters.  It's just saying how one views what's actually going on in 
the scene.  If anything is asked of the Twins it's just that they think 
about what they did a different way--which is what their own father tells 
them to do in canon.  Granted as a Muggle I seem to have less tolerance 
about wizards giving Muggles what they deserve than some other Muggles on 
this list, at least when it comes to myself.  You also seem to find 
practical jokes mostly funny and I don't--common difference in taste. (It 
may also be connected to who a reader identifies with in the scene, the 
Muggles because they are Muggles or the Wizards because they are the 
heroes.)

This just turned out to be a scene in a book that generates discussion. 
Plenty of people are tying the incident into the bigger picture--which 
includes tying the casual punishment of Muggles with Magic to the casual 
mind-rape of Muggles with Magic.

Ken:

 The toffee prank is not an incident worthy of our consideration,
> not when the WW maintains its culture by raping and pillaging the
> minds of innocent muggles.

Magpie:
It's not worthy of our consideration, but I notice you, like everyone else, 
are happy to tell us how we should consider it: Nothing to see here.  It's 
funny.  Boys will be boys.   The Twins' view of things is to be agreed with; 
Arthur's anger should be dismissed as exaggerated and because it's 
hypocritical.

Ken:
> A ton tongue toffee? Heck, I'd eat one of those myself if I needed a
> good laugh or thought someone else did! The Twins are the least of
> the muggle's problems and if they live I bet they expand their joke
> shop business into the muggle world with great success.

Magpie:
So you see the toffee as unrelated to the memory charms while some of us see 
it as more related, even if it's less serious.  Seems to me that explains 
why the toffee incident is not something unworthy of our consideration. 
Nobody who is merely saying that yes, they think this is Muggle-baiting, has 
claimed the Twins are anywhere near the biggest problem to Muggles.

As an aside, I think the memory charms are far more sinister myself, of 
course.  The people at the QWC are wandering around wishing people Happy 
Christmas and Arthur seems to think it's cute--something I doubt he'd use to 
describe the Longbottoms' own mentally damaged state.

However, the reason that I wind up talking endlessly about the Toffee 
(having the same conversation over and over for years) is because it keeps 
getting brought up and characterized in a way I disagree with.   When that 
happens I say that I read it differently. Especially when things seem to be 
getting distorted.

I don't consider it more of a major scene in canon than anyone else does, it 
just happens to be a scene that people read differently.  And as Betsy 
pointed out, it's a scene that kicks off the book that introduces many of 
the forms of cruelty that become more important later on.  Cruelty that it 
seems to me later books show is not really as meaningless as the incident is 
laid out to be.  We've seen in canon pranks that go awry, that have 
consequences, that aren't so funny in retrospect.  Honestly, this just seems 
like the last series in the world where this kind of thing doesn't matter. 
It sometimes seems like exactly what makes the WW tick.

-m