Ginny's Behavior

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 152340

Ceridwen:
> > Ron, as her brother, will be more critical of her than anyone 
else...  On who Bill decides to marry, Ginny has no business butting in.

Bruce:
> Hold up a moment!  It is OK for a brother to object to whom his sister
dates, but a sister must accept whom a brother hooks up with?

Ceridwen:
When the sister is fifteen and the youngest, can you doubt that the 
elder sib will yell, scream and hollar at her behavior?  And can you 
imagine a fifteen year old butting into your presumably adult love life?

Bruce:
> Surely you can't mean anything so sexist.  But, if not, what DO you 
mean?

Ceridwen:
How sweet of you to chivalrously stand up for us defenseless females.  
We need you boys to come charging to the rescue.  You are reading 
something into the situation that DOES NOT EXIST.  Younger sib makes a 
spectacle of herself, elder sib objects strenuously at finding younger 
sib in a clinch in the middle of the shortcut to Gryffindor Tower.  Ron 
handles it differently than the twins would have, but I'll bet that if 
they found him snogging in the same circumstances in his fifth year 
(their seventh), they would have crawled all over him like lice on 
scalp.

Conversely, we have elder adult sibling who is (Ginny fifteen, Ron 
sixteen, twins eighteen, Percy twenty iirc, Charlie twenty-three, Bill 
twenty-five) around twenty-five years old, on his own, earning a 
living, dating the same girl for a year (OotP evidence, much too lazy 
to look up the citation), engaged to the girl he's been seeing for that 
year, being criticized by a snot-nosed fifteen year old sib who adores 
him and probably doesn't want him to marry *anybody* who will take him 
away from her, which pretty much means anybody at all.  Can you see the 
difference beyond the sex of the two in question?

Adults can do things kids can't.  Adults can sign contracts.  Adults 
can be tried on their own merit in a court of law.  Adults must take 
responsibility for their actions without having Mummy and Daddy charged 
by implication.  Adults are not kids.  Adults will have the benefits as 
well as the responsiblities of age.  Bill is an adult.  Bill is 
engaged.  Bill is his own man and not even subject to his parents' will 
and whim.

Ginny is still a child.  Her parents ultimately have to pick up her 
slack.  Her family will be at the least shamed and looked at askance 
for her misdeeds.  This is the way of things with children.  They can't 
sign contracts.  They can't get Apparation licenses.  They can't agree 
to marriage on their own.  Elder sibs babysit/child mind younger sibs, 
elder sibs remind younger sibs how to act, even if the elder sibs make 
exceptions for themselves unfairly.  Elder sibs are held accountable by 
parents when the elder sib is the only one present while the younger 
sib is making a spectacle of herself/himself.

You can choose to see it as a sexist issue if you like, but you're 
purposely missing everything else that goes along with being the 
yuongest of seven as opposed to the eldest of seven.  And I would love 
to see your reaction to your younger sib trying to dictate your adult 
love life no matter what sex that sib happens to be.

Ceridwen.