The morality of love potions/Merope and Tom Sr. (Was: Snogging and Love Potions

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 152330

Potioncat:
So if something like Confundus is not dark, I'm not sure why love
potions should be. Although I would think the way Merope used it
should be illegal, just like stabbing someone with a pencil would be
illegal. <snip>

Well this tennis match has been fun, but we aren't getting anywhere
and no one else seems to want to join in. (Unless I've missed a
post.)

a_svirn:
At risk of being a tedious bore I'd like to try again. 
Your analogy with stabbing one with a pencil brings back the issue 
of using and *mis*using basically innocent things. But you yourself 
say that love potions (unlike pencils) aren't innocent. Or at least 
you did say that they are not good. Therefore, it is not the 
question of misusing. They can only be *used* for some wicked 
purpose or none at all. Whether such purpose can be classified as 
*dark* I have no idea, and since we don't know what *dark* is the 
point is moot anyway. 

But. About innocence. I simply cannot square your description 
of "normal" potions' effects with everything we've learned of love 
potions so far. We know that they create powerful infatuation and 
obsession. Somehow the words "infatuation" and "obsession" do not 
conjure a picture of some innocent Yule Ball date before my mind's 
eye. I quite believe that such date was what Romilda had in mind in 
the first place. I doubt very much that the result would have been 
the one she'd imagined, however. A powerfully infatuated hormonal 
sixteen year old boy wouldn't settle for chaste kisses even in the 
best of times. With all inhibitions and restraints he might have 
otherwise exercised "magically" removed he would have wanted much 
more than kisses. And Romilda (who in her innocence would have 
probably given him every encouragement) would have got much more 
than she bargained for. I do hope Fred and George provide 
contraceptive potions along with other WonderWitch products. 

Also I don't think that what Merope did was all that different from 
Romilda's intention. Do you really believe that Merope schemed to 
trap Tom into a forced marriage from the start? Somehow 
the "defeated creature" from that Ogden's memory does not strike me 
as a designing jade. I quite believe that she wanted the same thing 
that Romilda did: so that he would notice her, ask her out, take her 
for a ride, share a kiss
 And one thing led to another. 

Carol: 
It might be different if a boy used a love potion on a girl, and
certainly if he wanted something more than "snogging" from an
otherwise unwilling girl it would be reprehensible. (Sorry, 
Lupinlore.
Your favorite word is the one that came to mind.) There's a reason 
why
girls can enter the boys' dormitories but boys can't enter the girls'
dorms, as Ron finds out when he tries to run up the girls' stairs. 
But
these are children's books, and JKR's very young girls aren't 
seducing
boys, nor are they in any danger of getting themselves pregnant, as
JKR has made clear in an interview. 

a_svirn:
Frankly, I don't remember the interview in question, but I don't 
agree that it is all that different with for a boy to use a potion 
on a girl. The rule concerning dormitories is quite ridiculous and 
reflects a rather misguided Victorian-like attitude towards the 
issue of female sexuality. Teenage female sexuality I might add. If 
anything is glaringly clear in the books is that this rule as well 
as this attitude is a mistake. It is females of the species that act 
as sexual predators within and outside Hogwarts.  


Carol:
If Tom were merely the victim of unwanted sex with a girl he was
repulsed by, he could have gotten over it just as men get over having
sex with girls they don't know after having had too many drinks, or
encounters with prostitutes that they later regret but don't spend
their lives reliving and repenting. Men don't make a big deal about
losing their virginity or undesirable sex partners unless there are
other consequences like venereal disease or the woman's pregnancy.


a_svirn:
Women can "get over" random sexual encounters too. Some of them, 
anyway. Some don't even have to "get over" anything and see in them 
nothing to repent or regret. Still it's not the same thing as rape. 
There is a bit of a difference between casual sex and forced 
intercourse. 

I agree with you that for Tom a forced marriage to the likes of 
Merope was nothing short of disastrous. But it doesn't make his 
forced intimacy with her any less damaging.