[HPforGrownups] Arthur right or not? ( was Hate crimes (was Re: muggle baiting vs. muggle tortur

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 155839

> Tinktonks:
> Muggle baiting is for pleasure. Not for any purpose or in response to
> any wrong done. It is pure voyeristic enjoyment of suffering, whats
> more it is done by cowards who enjoy hurting anyone who they feel
> they can get away with hurting. This is NOT F&G's motivation and we
> see nothing suggesting that they have anything like those character
> traits.

Magpie:
Why can't it be both?  Because I have to admit I find it odd to say that two 
characters whose favorite thing in the world is practical jokes are 
strangers to voyeuristic enjoyment of suffering.  They're not getting off on 
watching peoples' limbs hacked off or crucio-ing people to hear them scream. 
They like making peoples' tongues swell, sending them dragon dung at work 
and covering them with boils.  But how is giving someone boils because it's 
funny not taking voyeuristic enjoyment in suffering?  What are they taking 
pleasure in after the Dudley prank if not the enusing panic etc. of the 
family?  And who doesn't enjoy someone's suffering more when they have 
reason to dislike that person?

Spookedook:
> So why should F&G be persecuted for what others decide to do with
> their products? Anything can be abused? Should we all be deprived of
> water because someone may use it to drown another?

Magpie:
I don't think they are persecuted. Canonically, aside from threats to their 
family members the Twins have had incredible good luck throughout the 
series, skipping from one good fortune to another.  I don't think they would 
be responsible for a wizard using their products on Muggles.  However, I 
also don't have a problem with assuming that someone who makes something 
that hurts people does accept the responsibility that it might hurt someone. 
I think there can be a balance between blaming the manufacturer for anything 
someone does with their product, especially stuff that's obviously not what 
the products was intended/advertised as, and not having any thought at all 
for actions that follow from your own.  They don't have to think along those 
lines.  It doesn't make them Death Eaters not to do so.  But I do think it's 
a natural next step of development--one that the books seem to be heading 
towards.  (I hope they are, anyway.)  Is it so important that Fred and 
George not feel for any prank victim at all?  Because that doesn't seem like 
too much of a sacrifice to me. Staying in knee-jerk defensive mode, never 
questioning themselves...it's hard for me to imagine them as adults that 
way.

 I don't think it will be a huge failure if the Twins just continue on 
having the joke shop and providing weapons.  But I don't know that that that 
would represent any sort of ideal in the author's eyes, or that it would 
make them as ultimately happy as they could be.

-m