Content Note: Nice GuyismTwilight Recap: Edward has explained to Bella that he and his family are "vampire vegetarians" who don't want to be murdering monsters.
Twilight, Chapter 9: Theory
Every so often, there are pieces of Twilight where I'm not quite sure if I like what's going on in text or not. (I know, blasphemy, but stick with me here.) Chapter 9 is one of those pieces because while Edward is being an utterly self-absorbed, selfish, oblivious jerkface, the narrative almost seems to accept that he's those things. And to maybe call him out as though those things aren't wonderful, romantic, delightful character traits in a lover.
"Were you hunting this weekend, with Emmett?" I asked when it was quiet again.
The car is "quiet" because Edward is rapidly withdrawing into himself. Bella is trying to keep him talking because she's terrified that he's working himself up into an internal turmoil that will end in an announcement that he can never see her again because it's too dangerous, but she's also trying to walk a fine line between accruing more information before Edward clams up again and keeping everything light and airy so that he will hopefully remain relaxed. The whole situation is very fraught, and the text seems to acknowledge that this is overly burdensome on Bella.
And I want to emphasize something here: Edward absolutely should have a say in whether or not he keeps seeing Bella. I want to emphasize that very strongly; Edward doesn't "owe" Bella a relationship, nor should he be forced into a situation that makes him feel uncomfortable. If Edward comes to the decision that as much as he loves Bella, he can't be with her for his own sake because he doesn't want to risk murdering the woman he loves, then Bella needs to respect that and allow him his space.
However, like pretty much every Edward-need in the series, that is not the direction from which this issue will be approached. Instead of grappling with the actual needs and desires of Edward, almost the entirety of the will-they/won't-they relationship issues will revolve around whether or not Edward has to leave Bella for her own sake and this I do not like at all because once again it's a lazy way of pushing Edward's needs onto Bella and then stripping her of the agency to deal with her own 'needs' (because they never were hers to begin with).
What I can't tell, though, is whether or not the text is aware that Edward is doing this and whether or not it's calling him out for it. Bella's near-panic that Edward is about to quit her cold-turkey and disappear from her life forever is genuine, and I think that concern is realistic: Edward may not owe Bella a relationship, but after all his (broken) promises of explanations, I think he at least owes her the courtesy of a clean break-up and a clear understanding that it's Not Her, It's Him. Bella isn't sure he's going to grant her this courtesy, though, so she's trying to keep him talking and grasping at the first things she can think of: feeding, Emmett, his location over the weekend, etc.
"Yes." He paused for a second, as if deciding whether or not to say something. "I didn't want to leave, but it was necessary. It's a bit easier to be around you when I'm not thirsty."
"Why didn't you want to leave?"
"It makes me . . . anxious . . . to be away from you." His eyes were gentle but intense, and they seemed to be making my bones turn soft. "I wasn't joking when I asked you to try not to fall in the ocean or get run over last Thursday. I was distracted all weekend, worrying about you. And after what happened tonight, I'm surprised that you did make it through a whole weekend unscathed."
And then there's this. It's more victim-blaming, but it's wrapped up in this soft declaration of near-love that is possibly the closest Edward has come to expressing the depth of his affection for Bella. I basically read this as I love you, you inferior clumsy oaf-person, and I think we're probably supposed to interpret it generally along those lines. There's a sweetness to it -- he cares about her, he worries about her when he's away -- but there's an underlying harshness to it as well.
If Edward cares so deeply about Bella, why does he do so little to ensure her safety? Why did he ask her to take care of herself in the most condescending, dismissive manner possible (and therefore guaranteed that she wouldn't register the request as something to take seriously)? Why did he fail to ask any of his dear siblings -- Alice, perhaps, since she's sympathetic enough to be at the "returning Bella's truck home" stage -- to look after her while he was feeding? Why did he follow her all the way to Port Angeles to look after her, and then do such an incredibly poor job of keeping tabs on her that she very nearly was violently gang raped?
There's almost a sense here -- and I can't decide if it's meant to be in the text or not -- that Edward is so privileged and so set apart from the rest of us mere mortals that he simply doesn't know how to relate to someone in a polite, realistic, romantic fashion. He's Mr. Darcy dialed up to eleven! And that's not actually a bad thing: it's kind of a staple of vampire-lit and god-lit and superhero-lit for the overpowered being to need to learn to relate to the heroine on her level, but then we're back to just a few pages ago when Edward was openly dazzling and wooing the wait staff at La Bella Italia and I'm left poking half-heartedly at the text wishing some consistency would shake out.
Does Edward know how to relate to us mere mortals or doesn't he? Maybe this is supposed to be the "good at flirting, crappy at relationships" trope, but doesn't that belong with the highly-sexed playboy hero, not the virgin vampire hero?
[...] I looked down at my palms, at the almost-healed scrapes across the heels of my hands. His eyes missed nothing.
"I fell," I sighed.
"That's what I thought." His lips curved up at the corners. "I suppose, being you, it could have been much worse -- and that possibility tormented me the entire time I was away. It was a very long three days. I really got on Emmett's nerves." He smiled ruefully at me.
I've remarked in the past that the most appealing aspect of Edward as a lover (in my opinion) is his family. This is partly because his family is for the most part filled with interesting people who have intriguing superpowers and varied personalities (as well as being valuable clique members for sharing secrets), but I think it's also because it is through Edward's family that a lot of his love for Bella is expressed. Edward's love for Bella is demonstrated through Rosalie's jealousy, through Alice's visions, through Jasper's innate understanding of emotions, and through Emmett's rowdy acceptance of his new little sister.
But though there is a certain romance here -- both in the explicit demonstration of Edward's love through his family, and in the "buy one boyfriend, get one closely-knit nuclear family free" bargain that Bella seems to secretly long for -- here is still another case of Edward making their relationship about everyone except Bella. Edward was anxious being away from Bella; Emmett was made to be annoyed by Edward's fretting. At no point did it apparently occur to Edward that Bella might be made anxious by his absence or that she might be annoyed by being left out of the information loop or by being yo-yo'd around emotionally as Edward pings back-and-forth in his will-I/won't-I game of deciding whether or not to be friends (or more) with her.
"Then why weren't any of you in school?" I was frustrated, almost angry as I thought of how much disappointment I had suffered because of his absence. [...] "You might have called me," I decided.
He was puzzled. "But I knew you were safe."
"But I didn't know where you were. I --" I hesitated, dropping my eyes. [...] "I didn't like it. Not seeing you. It makes me anxious, too." I blushed to be saying this out loud.
He was quiet. I glanced up, apprehensive, and saw that his expression was pained.
"Ah," he groaned quietly. "This is wrong." [...] "Don't you see, Bella? It's one thing for me to make myself miserable, but a wholly other thing for you to be so involved." He turned his anguished eyes to the road, his words flowing almost too fast for me to understand. "I don't want to hear that you feel that way." His voice was low but urgent. His words cut me. "It's wrong. It's not safe. I'm dangerous, Bella -- please, grasp that." [...]
And now we get a glimpse into Edward's twelve-dimensional stickle bricks plan for how he intends to get what he wants (i.e., to spend time soaking in the exquisite misery that is Bella's perfect presence) while still protecting her from himself and being totally morally absolved from emotionally hurting a young woman. He's just going to hang out with her, be her best friend at school, drive her on day trips to nearby towns for shopping, but not get involved with her romantically. And he's going to do all that without having any clear, upfront conversations with Bella about why he's behaving this way. Edward Cullen's plan is, essentially, to be the polar opposite of the Classic Nice Guy but with all the same essential drawbacks and creepiness.
A "Nice Guy", as most of you will recall, is someone who believes that once zie inputs a certain quantity of emotional investment in a relationship, zie is "owed" something by the other party at the end: whether that debt takes the form of a long-term romantic relationship or a sexual payoff will vary from Nice Guy to Nice Guy, but the underlying theory is the same in each case. The Nice Guy believes that human interaction can be boiled down into predictable I/O responses, and that social relationships simply depend on mastering the correct inputs in order to receive the proper outputs.
So while your average Nice Guy is bound to throw a fit at the unfairness of a neighbor failing to fall in love with zem after precisely sixteen instances of holding the stairwell doors open for hir and three car pool rides to the grocery store when the neighbor had car trouble, Edward is going the opposite route: he's going to do all the classic nice inputs that usually signal the potential for a relationship, and then throw a fit when Bella actually suggests that she might like to have a deeper relationship with this guy. And the problem with both these approaches -- or, at least, one of the many problems -- is that each approach basically (a) relies on emotional manipulation and communication avoidance and (b) is utterly unconcerned with whether or not the other party ends up happy.
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| @xkcd |
And in a bizarre, backwards-universe kind of way, this is how I see Edward Cullen's relationship plan with Bella. He seems to have it in his head that if Bella is going to be plopped into his lap like this, he might as well stop trying to avoid her and just bask in the excruciating loveliness that is her beautiful soul. But he's going to justify him hanging around her and being her friend and going through all the motions of being a lover without actually committing to same, because it's just his feelings on the line. Bella won't take all this seriously, she won't fall in love, she won't be hurt by Edward slumming around with the humans like this.
He has no evidence for any of this, of course, but it seems to be what he assumes will happen. (I'd say "Because Jasper", but Jasper actually could make this happen, regardless of the ethics involved, so Edward clearly isn't going to go the route that might actually work.) And -- again -- Edward doesn't owe Bella a relationship. His romantic-y inputs into their interactions doesn't mean he has to be her boyfriend now because Rules.
But if he wants to be a decent person, he does owe it to Bella to have a serious sit-down conversation with her about what he does and doesn't want out of his unlife. "I like hanging out with you, and if you want me to I'll gladly stay here until the day you die, but I can't live with the idea of turning someone else into something like me," is communication. But it's communication that features a possibility for rejection -- Well, I don't want to be involved with someone who is going to stay 17 no matter how old I get, so thanks but no thanks. -- and so Edward is cheating by holding off the conversation just a little bit longer. Like you do.
"What are you thinking?" he asked, his voice still raw. I just shook my head, not sure if I could speak. I could feel his gaze on my face, but I kept my eyes forward.
"Are you crying?" He sounded appalled. I hadn't realized the moisture in my eyes had brimmed over. I quickly rubbed my hand across my cheek, and sure enough, traitor tears were there, betraying me.
"No," I said, but my voice cracked.
"I'm sorry." His voice burned with regret. I knew he wasn't just apologizing for the words that had upset me.
Edward didn't plan for Bella to become so involved with him that his withdrawal would make her miserable. He thought that he was the only one really drawn into this relationship; he apparently believed that his feelings were the only ones at risk here. It was irresponsible for him to believe that -- he does, after all, live with an Empath and an Psychic and he is additionally capable of reading their minds any time he wants. But he did somehow manage to make himself believe it and now he knows otherwise. Now his character will be defined, in part, by what he does in response, now that he realizes that this very young, very innocent, very vulnerable human girl cares as deeply for him as he does for her.
"Tell me something," he asked after another minute, and I could hear him struggle to use a lighter tone. [...] "What were you thinking tonight, just before I came around the corner? I couldn't understand your expression -- you didn't look that scared, you looked like you were concentrating very hard on something."
"I was trying to remember how to incapacitate an attacker -- you know, self-defense. I was going to smash his nose into his brain." I thought of the dark-haired man with a surge of hate.
"You were going to fight them?" This upset him. "Didn't you think about running?"
"I fall down a lot when I run," I admitted. [...]
He shook his head. "You were right -- I'm definitely fighting fate trying to keep you alive."
I suppose a vague, unspecific, non-pology followed by a light-hearted topic change that manages to blame Bella for trying to defend herself from rape because obviously self-defense is way more dangerous and doomed to fail than running when one has a disability that specifically prevents running and what have I told you about remembering?!? is pretty much about what I expect out of Edward at this point.
287 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 287 of 287 Newer› Newest»It's also unclear whether or not it causes brain damage - see the person who was left thinking it was Christmas in the middle of summer. That sounds like more than a bit of confusion to me. (I really wish I could take a look at that scene and a few others, since - ha - people seem to have somewhat differen tmemories of them, but I don't own any of the books and none of the right ones are currently at my library branch.)
The thinking-it-was-Christmas scene actually came later, after the Death Eaters had abused Mr. Roberts and his family, and Ministry wizards had then removed their memories of the experience:
Mr. Weasley woke them after only a few hours sleep. He used magic to pack up the tents, and they left the campsite as quickly as possible, passing Mr. Roberts at the door of his cottage. Mr. Roberts had a strange, dazed look about him, and he waved them off with a vague “Merry Christmas.”
“He’ll be all right,” said Mr. Weasley quietly as they marched off onto the moor. “Sometimes, when a person’s memory’s modified, it makes him a bit disorientated for a while… and that was a big thing they had to make him forget.”
I'm still waiting for a citation for the Rowling-said-a-muggle-with-a-gun-could-beat-a-wizard thing; personally, I'm skeptical about it. (Perhaps because last winter I spent some time tracking down the origin of a likely-spurious Tolkien quote. No, he did not say "we were all Orcs in the Great War"; at least, there seems no evidence of any kind that he did!)
I'm still waiting for a citation for the Rowling-said-a-muggle-with-a-gun-could-beat-a-wizard thing; personally, I'm skeptical about it.
I haven't seen a direct source; I did see someone claim that it was in a video interview and therefore hard to track down by websearch. Dunno. It's certainly repeated by the fandom often enough, but... HP fandom... nah.
first thing I do want to say is how sorry I am for the abuse you've had to endure.
That's nice, but it really has nothing to do with the situation and I hope you don't dwell on it. I just used that as an example because I didn't want to say something along the lines of, "This is like with racism where..." when I have no experience personal experience with that.
I have a lot of privilege, like Harry less the fame I suppose, and there are plenty of arenas that I've never entered so I couldn't be the less privileged party so there are only so many places where I can speak to being the unprivileged party from experience.
That was the only such place that came to mind where the power and privilege dynamic was similar to the wizard-Muggle one. So, like I said, don't dwell on it.
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Wendolin the Weird
And here I thought the jerk was male. I suppose that shows consistency though, the named example of a burned witch would of course be female. Though credit does go toward acknowledging that both genders were targets.
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I could extrapolate in a different direction and close the logic gap by suggesting that Wendolin made a habit of identifying people who had been targeted as (not real) witches, transfigured herself to resemble them, took their place and sent them on the run with a bag of gold, thus saving 47 lives and treating herself to flame-tickling to boot.
Except that contradicts the verb and the stated motivation.
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but the conspiracy-to-provoke-witch-hunters hypothesis is not canonical.
You know I that I said there was no such conspiracy because you quoted the part where I said it. I really wish you'd drop the strawman already.
If you want to argue against what I said, address what I said. Here's a good argument: I said that the text said there were multiple witches and wizards allowing themselves to be caught, the text only says there was one. It simply affirms that others were caught and enjoyed it, not that they allowed it. Therefore what I said was wrong, and you don't need a strawman to get there.
TW: Torture
Off-topic, but that "pretend to shriek in pain" thing is starting to irritate me in the repetition because it doesn't make any goddamn sense. You would have to research witch-hunts with VERY little vigor to miss that the prosecuting/persecuting parties almost *never* went straight from "grab the suspect" to "pile them onto a pyre and walk away while it's still burning and assume everything went to plan as though this were a James Bond movie".
That little world-building detail erases centuries of pre-execution torture and post-death body dismemberment in order to make a "tee-hee funny!" joke that doesn't even make sense! I just... argh! And this isn't even getting into the part where they usually wouldn't kill you until *after* you'd implicated someone else -- that's usually how they kept getting an endless supply of victims until the hunt petered out from various factors.
(Mind you, I take witch-hunt history *very* seriously, so again, YMMV.)
Ana: Now I'd love to see a discussion on Men In Black, which carries a lot of the same issues with memory altering.
I don't have much in the way of recurring dreams, but ever since I first saw Men in Black I've had nightmares of being chased by people with neuralysers who think I Know Too Much. (Which I guess I do, if I know they have neuralysers.) I get the feeling this is not the reaction one is expected to have from watching Men in Black.
(I have a toy neuralyser I got in the Burger King equivalent of a Happy Meal ages ago. I was kind of weirded out that they thought it was an appropriate thing to make a Happy Meal toy out of. I most certainly did not want to play with it.)
People who stand there and say 'The ethics of memory alteration are bad' and others who say the opposite probably have different mental models, in their head, of a _completely imaginary_ thing
Does that mean we can't discuss the ethics of anything fictional? About half the discussions on this blog revolve around the ethics of imaginary things. Or do you mean we should simply explain our mental models better so that those of us with different models could better understand where the other is coming from?
But things are not their analogies, and we have no way of knowing how disruptive memory alterations would be in real life unless we actually had a way to make them happen. (And then we have to assume that fictional magical alterations are the same.) They might be right up there with cutting off an arm...or they might be closer to cutting hair, or even telling someone a story. We really have no idea.
It's not about how disruptive they are (except for the question of brain damage) it's that you are changing a person's mind without their permission. I really don't see any version of that that comes out on the ethical side. Except possibly in the "well, this sucks, but the alternative is worse" sense.
I have two responses to this and the memory research bit. One is that actually, the biggest objection is that the existence of memory charms allows wizards to do whatever the hell they want to non-magical humans without recourse because they can make their victims forget it even happened. I don't think we need to have a real life memory charm to say that that is bad. The other is that while our recall of our memories may be akin to making up a story, that doesn't mean that our experiences don't matter. If you remove the memory of an experience with a memory charm does it remove the effect the experience had or not? (The only real life comparison I can think of there might be to ask the question does Alzheimers change a person. But that seems kind of flipant about a real, horrible disease.)
Back to the first: if, instead of using memory charms, the culture of our heroes involved taking over a campground at gun point and forcing the owners to let them use it for something would paying them afterwards make it okay? I say no. Others might say yes.
And I'm out of break again...
I can agree that using magic to cause someone to forget things so you can keep up your masquerade is selfish. But is it wrong to use magic to help someone forget a traumatic event that you did not cause? Would it be wrong if they agreed that they wanted to forget it? Not letting them chose denys them agency, but I don't know if I'd mind having an event of senseless torture wiped from my mind. It's not an experience I want to shape my future.
TW: Graphic Description of Date Rape
I don't know if I'd mind having an event of senseless torture wiped from my mind.
For myself, I would mind muchly.
When I was a teenager, my boyfriend held me down and raped me. (That was traumatic, and it definitely shaped who I am today, but that's not the point of this comment.) After I broke up with him -- some months later -- an ex-girlfriend of one of his friends confided in me that my boyfriend had also raped me *prior* to that incident: we'd been on a roadtrip to a museum I wanted to see, and after I'd passed out from exhaustion after a long day, he raped me in my sleep. (I honestly don't know if drugs were involved; she either didn't know or didn't say.)
This was third-hand knowledge -- he'd told his friend, and his friend had told her, and she told me. But... as soon as she said it, I felt very strongly that it was true. I remembered strange dreams that night of something heavy on me, and of... well. That's about as much as I want to talk about it. Anyway, I'd brushed it all off as weird dreams after a long day, but when she told me it all came flooding back.
In some ways, I'm more bothered by the rape-I-don't-remember than by the one I do. Now, one could argue that's just because the "memory charm" in this case wasn't fool-proof; maybe a magic charm would have magically taken care of all shreds of the incident as though it never happened. Because magic. But I feel a strong, visceral revulsion at the idea of knowing even LESS about the rape-I-don't-remember, because it's the Not Remembering that makes it extra traumatic for me.
My experiences, of course, are not a gauge for everyone on earth. But I think there is definitely more here than just removal of agency. The idea of having certain tortures removed from my memory is a VERY strong Do Not Want. *shiver*
I... a happy meal toy neuralyser? I...
*brain melty*
I really feel like it's a slur, not a neutral term, so I'm switching to this.
The term literally means 'a buffoon or fool, an inconsequential person', so... yeah. A fictional slur, but still a slur. And it's all they use
That little world-building detail erases centuries of pre-execution torture and post-death body dismemberment in order to make a "tee-hee funny!" joke that doesn't even make sense!
I figured it was probably in-universe propaganda to disguise any hint of vulnerability, and even if the flame-freezing charm *did* exist at the time, a *lot* of witches and wizards died of torture/beheading/drawing and quartering/the myriad ways people made damn sure the suspected witch was dead. (Because, after all, they were convinced that if you didn't do it enough, they might come back to life...)
But... but... that would make the person who "let" hirself get caught 47 times recklessly careless to the point of suicidal, no?
The other thing is, it feels like such a missed opportunity. The witch-hunts could be used as an example of why the Masquerade is so important: "NMHs (Non-Magical Humans) *kill* our kind whenever they encounter us!" If Harry Potter is set in modern day times, witch-craft has only been legal in Britain for, what, 50 years? A blip in history, not nearly enough to undo centuries of persecution.
That up there could have given a very good reason for the Masquerade AND would have given NMHs power and agency in the story. Which is PRECISELY the problem we're having in Twilight: there's no *reason* for the Masquerade because NMHs pose zero threat and have no power and no agency.
WHY DO I SEE TWILIGHT EVERYWHERE?
Ana: Which is PRECISELY the problem we're having in Twilight: there's no *reason* for the Masquerade because NMHs pose zero threat and have no power and no agency.
WHY DO I SEE TWILIGHT EVERYWHERE?
It appears, looking back, that this comparison* is how we got onto the topic of Harry Potter in the first place. So it makes sense.
*Click the "in reply to depizan".
If the mind-wiping was with consent, I wouldn't have a problem with it. In that circumstance. But there's no indication of it and mind magic was already being used on the non-magical humans so that the campground could be used in the first place.
Honestly, I find using a non-magical human ticket taker to be horrifically irresponsible in the first place. No one knew about Voldie, but they did know (or should've known) that magical KKK members would be there. I'm wildly uncomfortable with making the obvious real world analogies, but I have trouble imagining a modern book in which the protagonist's side forced people of color to work a gathering they knew the KKK would attend. (And, regardless of the fact that the campground people were being paid, if you demagic the scenario, you're kind of left forcing them through threat if some nature. If you have to magic people, you didn't get their permission.)
Quickly passing through to say that this is one of the places where I agree with you. I never could figure out why the largest magical gathering in the whole wizarding world needed to take place in a non-magical campground. They couldn't find a nice deserted moor somewhere? Especially if they're serious about the secrecy?
I presume it was, plot-wise, so that there'd be a reason for non-magical people to be around to be horrifically abused by terrorists, so that we'd know how nasty the terrorists are. But that's not enough to make it convincing.
I still say, though, that just because the magical people are the protagonist's "side," that doesn't make them the always-good side. They're not the good people, they're the people, with mixed motives and mixed results and all-too-human thoughtlessness.
...oops, being called away... just passing through...
They're not the good people, they're the people, with mixed motives and mixed results and all-too-human thoughtlessness.
But there is a question of presentation and narrative choice.
Some bad things the good people do are clearly meant to be seen as wrong. For example, Ron and Hermoine are both wrong in their approach to House Elves (Ron is the person who has internalized the justification, Hermoine is the person who wants to help them without actually seeing them) which is as nothing compared to Sirius'* treatment of one specific House Elf. These people are all on the good side, they all numbered amoung the heroes of the books, but they're all wrong, and shown as wrong.
The mistreatment of Muggles doesn't get the same attention unless it's, you know, by the bad guys. It's not unrealistic that they act that way, it's highly realistic in fact, but that it's never called out when the text doesn't mind calling out prejudice against other groups, provided said group is magical, is problematic.
There's also the narrative choice to not have any sympathetic Muggles except as sacrificial victims. It didn't have to be that way. There could have been onscreen Muggles who were neither buffoons nor monsters, who served a role other than being cut down by evil. Perhaps one of them could have suffered the ill effects of the good side and that in itself without any moralizing, would have called out that maybe the treatment of Muggles by the good side also wasn't acceptable.
There's the narrative choice to feature characters who will stand up for members of other species, bit not a single Muggle-born who will stand up to the good side for the people still in their culture of origin.
In real life real people do comment on the lesser prejudice in addition to the greater. Rowling didn't include that when it comes to anti-Muggle actions even though the lesser in this case included actions that were pretty big.
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* I want to make a joke about Sirius Black being related to Jacob Black, but it's not coming. Any suggestions?
Thank you depizan. I'm glad someone brought this up. My issue with DavidCheatham's argument is one of agency. It's not that it is unethical to wipe one's memories (although I'll probably argue that to the bitter end), but that it's done without the victim's consent. Is that really hard to understand?
And in this specific situation, you add the problematic issue that depizan raised: not only are you doing something to someone without their approvals, but you can then make them not remember said thing. This is awful, and it has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of memories to the individual's existence.
Sorry, that irked me so much I had to delurk to say this. Going back to hiding now.
Huh! So it was. We've come full circle. :D
It's not about how disruptive they are (except for the question of brain damage) it's that you are changing a person's mind without their permission.
'Changing a mind' is rather begging the question. Most memory spells seem to, basically, involve rewinding memories backwards a very small amount, resulting in someone being basically the same people they were five minutes ago.
I kind of feel like you're missing the point about agency in the rush to quibble over whether the mind is changed. If you re-write Depizan's statement as:
It's not about how disruptive they are (except for the question of brain damage) it's that you are PRACTICING MAGIC ON A SPECIFIC PERSON without their permission.
...we come back to the same point. Memory charms are, iiuc, practiced ON people. It's not a world-wide, universal, time machine thing that affects everyone.
I always thought trying to set a 'behind the Masquerade' world in one that is _exactly_ like the real world is a mistake, and it would be a much better idea for writers to aim for '99% like the real world'.
Because in Harry Potter's world, the Masquerade seems be very leaky, and one of the differences would probably be how society views things like witchcraft. It's hard to see how we could ever get to the point of thinking it's not real. Half of society should think it's a trick (and view it with suspicion), and the other half should think it's real (and view it with even more suspicion).
This wouldn't be a society that repealed laws against witchcraft because of, basically, disbelief. Belief in people with supernatural powers should be right up there with religious belief. (And have much the same variation WRT to how cultures think about them.)
It's worth pointing out that Masquerades -- both in Harry Potter and Twilight -- almost always end up in Protagonist Centered Morality. I.e., if the Masquerade is broken in the course of the narrative, it's not "well, the Protagonists suck for breaking it for everyone; it was nice while it lasted". Instead, the nameless person who witnessed the Protagonists breaking the Masquerade will be memory charmed or turned or eaten or any number of things. Frequently this will not be presented as a terrible thing because the IMPORTANT THING is that the Masquerade is preserved in service to the protagonists.
And you think there's some sort of obvious reason that spells 'on' people are unethical?
You are analogizing 'putting magic on someone' to something like 'touching a person', probably with various levels of magic corresponding to various levels of touch. This seems like such an obvious analogy you don't notice you're doing it.
Here's a fun actual discussion I've actually had online, about a decade ago: Is it more, or less, ethical, to cast a spell on someone else so that they see you slightly different, vs. casting a spell on yourself so that same person sees you slightly different? (If it matters, I mean something like 'hiding a pimple' level of 'looking different'. Usually called a 'glamour'.)
Is there any difference in those besides the designation (in the fictional system of magic) we're using of who the spell is 'cast on'?
And let's add a third spell : Is it more, or less, ethical to cast it on yourself so _everyone_ see you different?
Have you reached the conclusion that the third spell, a spell that change _more_ people's perceptions is more ethical than the first spell, a spell that only changes one person's, because of the imaginary designation of who is it 'cast on'? Do you think this is a correct conclusion?
I'll be back later, have to run for a bit.
And you think there's some sort of obvious reason that spells 'on' people without their consent are unethical?
(I added the bit you forgot in bold.) I do.
What with my being a practicing Wiccan and that being one of the first things they teach you in Wicca 101.
But even if you're not a Wiccan, I do feel that it should be fairly self-evident that doing something to someone without their consent is generally considered to be unethical, barring life-saving measures and even then, etc. etc.
David, one last thing: if you keep up this tone about me not even noticing what I am and am not doing, you ARE going to get on my tits real fucking fast. I haven't had a meltdown at anyone yet since my surgery and the 8 billion narcotics boiling through my veins right now and I'm proud of that fact, but I have a limit. I'm an adult and you can disagree with me politely without telling me that you have more insight into what I'm doing than I do. (If I've misunderstood your statement, apologies, but I don't see how to take that any other way at the moment.)
Because here's a fun actual fact that you actually don't seem to know: there are people on this board who believe in magic outside the Harry Potter fandom and we've put a bit more thought into the ethics of magic than you seem to assume we have. If you'd like to have a discussion on the Ethics of Magic -- and I think that could be interesting -- the best place to start is not with the assumption that (1) you've put more thought into this than me because you Had A Discussion Once and (2) I haven't put any thought into this whatsoever as evidenced by the fact that I may not hold the same conclusions as you on this subject. Those are not good starting points.
You are analogizing 'putting magic on someone' to something like 'touching a person', probably with various levels of magic corresponding to various levels of touch. This seems like such an obvious analogy you don't notice you're doing it.
You're assuming you can read the minds of others based on nothing more than text they've read on the internet. This seems like such an obvious power you don't even notice you're doing it.
To elaborate for the general discussion, I have at least two books devoted wholly to the subject of the Ethics of Magic (including the thought-provoking "An Ye Harm None" by Rabinovitch) that I can see on my bookshelf from here. Considering that everything is stacked willy-nilly from our move a few months ago, I'm confident I could find more if I started digging. And that's just books *solely* dedicated to the topic of the Ethics of Magic. My other 30+ Wiccan books all at least touch on the ethics of casting spells on others. Almost all of them have very strong reasons for why casting magic on someone without their consent is a major nuh-uh.
So as I say, there's an interesting conversation to be had in all this -- one I frankly wish Rowling had been more willing to explore, but whatever, not my story to write, her place to decide these things, apparently some people felt the books were preachy enough already, it's not like the Wiccan world gets any nods to having thought about this stuff prior to HARRY POTTER or CHARMED or whatever, no I'm not bitter that's just how things go, etc. etc. -- but please don't make the mistake of assuming that everyone is totally new to the idea of Ethical Magic and having never thought about it prior to this thread.
I can't remember, but is it canon that memory charms only remove recent memories? I thought they could also remove older memories, in which case you don't go back to how you were 5 minutes ago, but you change into something you never were. My history has shaped my choices; if you cut out part of that history, a lot of choices suddenly make no sense, and I'd have to make up a whole new set of reasons and justifications to get back to a coherent self-image. And who knows who I'd end up being after that?
As I am right now watching Buffy season 6, this discussion is fascinatingly relevant. But I am not sure how many Buffy fans there are here, and I don't want to spoil people.
Lockhart became famous by meeting people who had done impressive things with their lives, learning their stories, erasing their memories of doing those things, and then taking credit by writing books about it.
He was thoroughly incompetent in all forms of magic save one, that being memory charms. He used the power of memory charms to steal peoples lives without them knowing what had been done to them.
-
That said, see the note above about me having less than perfect memories of the book in question.
Is it more, or less, ethical, to cast a spell on someone else so that they see you slightly different, vs. casting a spell on yourself so that same person sees you slightly different? (If it matters, I mean something like 'hiding a pimple' level of 'looking different'. Usually called a 'glamour'.
Huh, in everything I've ever incountered (fictional or otherwise), glamours were a bit more powerful than "damn, I need to hide that awful zit in the middle of my forehead."
At the "hide a zit" level, a spell cast on oneself (presumably with one's permission) seems no different from wearing makeup. And, to me, would be ethical. (I can think of no ethical objection to people wearing makeup.) If you cast a spell on someone else without their permission to not see the zit, that would be unethical because you are acting on someone else without their permission. If you cast a spell on someone else with their permission , then it would be ethical because you're acting on someone with their permission.
Now, if we head into glamours as usually depected, then I would say it's unethical whether your casting it on yourself or other people because you're aiming to influence them in ways beyond hiding a zit. (That is, we start heading off towards things like con artistry, impersonation, and altering people's feelings against their will.) It is still more unethical to cast a spell on another person without their permission for the same reason it's unethical to do things in general to people without their permission. Sure, there are exceptions. Everything has exceptions. But outside of those objections (which people may or may not all agree on) most people default to "it is not ethical to act on other people without their permission." Magic doesn't change this.
You are analogizing 'putting magic on someone' to something like 'touching a person', probably with various levels of magic corresponding to various levels of touch. This seems like such an obvious analogy you don't notice you're doing it.
Well, I personally am not analogizing 'putting magic on someone' to 'touching a person' but to an invasive procedure. Is it assault? Absolutely!
** TW: Surgery/medical procedures
In fact, as far as I'm concerned, a memory-affecting charm is no different than a lobotomy or electroconvulsive therapy. If it's done without the person's concern, it is unethical.
**End TW
Not only do you need consent, but also informed consent, i.e., the person must know what the expected consequences are (to the best of our knowledge), what the benefits and the drawbacks are. It is, for all intent and purposes, akin to a medical procedure!
That being said, even if it was only equivalent to 'touching', this may come as a surprise to you, but yes, you do need the consent of a person to touch zir (I'm not used to gender-neutral pronouns, so apologies if this is not correct). Now, usually, this falls under the category of implicit consent, but it isn't systematically covered by that caveat. If someone has hyperalgesia (skin hypersensitivity), touching zir could elicit tremendous amounts of pain. So it is not alway the benign act we make it to be. We should have agency on our body, our whole body, every part of it. That agency implies consent for *anything* that might affect it.
@jill heather
Spoilers for Buffy season 4: (Do we really have to spoiler mark things a decade old?)
Ha. My example about 'spells on other people' vs 'spells on yourself' is actually from a discussion of the Buffy episode 'Family', from season 4. Or maybe season 5, I forget.
Tara (a good-guy witch on Buffy, for people who don't know the show) thinks she's part demon, and this part is going to shortly be visible. So she casts a spell to hide this part of her.
The way I described it there, most people would not have a problem with the ethics of it. Tara wasn't evil. Demons are not evil per se on Buffy, and part demons even less. If someone has demon horns or whatever, yes, it seems fine to use magic to hide it. It is no more unethical than a black woman in the 1950s who passes as white to avoid discrimination. Hiding it from her vampire-fighting friends (Who would eventually stumble over it, considering their life), perhaps not the best choice, but whatever.
The problem is Tara cast this spell not on herself, but on _her friends_. This does not make much sense, unless Tara intended to never interact with other people. So this decision was like that probably for plot purposes, as the spell immediately went wrong and rendered all demons invisible to her friends.
I don't think we're supposed to assume it was a 'risky' spell, just that the 'Make the demon part of me invisible' misfired as she has no demon part (She was lied to about being part demon), so the spell decided to make all demons invisible. But, ignoring the misfire, I can't quite see the difference between a spell on _her_ that causes people to see her differently than she is, and a spell on _others_ that cause people to see her differently than she is. I didn't see it then, and I don't see it now.
Other people...disagreed. So I wondered what people here would think. (And a lot of people originally focused on 'it was dangerous and almost killed them!', so I left that part out. In the Buffyverse, random things being dangerous and almost killing everyone means it's Tuesday.)
Is 'changing' someone really the issue here?
Changing someone is an issue here. The largest issue is doing something to someone without their permission and (once we add in memory muckage) without even their knowledge. This is not ethical. At least not by my ethical standards. The fact that we're also quite possibly discussing changing a person just adds another issue to the pile of issues.
I agree that it would be lovely if the books had given us enough information to discus how things work in Harry Potter's world without having to speculate, but, sadly, they didn't.
Or, to put it another way: Would memory charms help with PTSD, by completely removing the experiences of events, or just make things worse by not allowing access to them anymore?
Good question. If the latter, you've just painted the wizards as even worse than they were already looking.
(Answer: It was an writing excuse to show how wizards in general interact with Muggles, including terrorism.)
And yet, I don't think that Rowling would agree that her series should borrow AvP's tagline.
Memory charms _in general_ can remove older memories. Marrietta Edgecombe has her memories of all the DA meetings throughout the year erased by Kingsley, using an unspecified memory alteration charm we don't know the name of. (Which was rather unethical, and in fact entirely pointless.)
I was talking more about a specific charm, Obliviate, and the use of it on Muggles. Which is generally just used to 'rewind' things back before whatever Masquarade breach just occurred. Almost exactly like the Neuralizors in Men in Black, which someone else mentioned, except that would be like an Obliviate then a Confund.
Whether or not you can use Obliviate in some other way is unknown.
It is not self-evident that doing 'things' 'to' people without their consent is unethical, because 'things' also includes things like 'brightening them by turning on a light' and 'talking to them'. The only things I know that you shouldn't to do people without their consent is almost entirely physical interactions. You have also put 'magic spells with a person as a target' under things requiring consent. This is not self-evident.
I have problems with your examples. In one, you seem to be mixing things done to an area with things done to a specific individual, and in the second, you ignore that society kind of has assumed consent written in (and this can be revoked, after which, yes talking to them is unethical - also possibly illegal, if restraining orders are involved). There's also the fact that you assume that magic is not a physical interaction. I'm not sure how the types of spells discussed can not be physical in some way. Perhaps you can explain how you see them as non-physical.
Indeed, there's an entire religion that seems to have no problem with doing magic 'on' people without their consent. They do this because they they assume that magic is less about altering a physical thing than it is about pleading with God to change what will happen. (I'm speaking of Christians, although they often bristle at 'prayer' being called magic.)
Not everyone would agree that it's okay for Christians to do that. Some would say it's unethical. Likewise, it's clearly considered perfectly ethical for people in the Potterverse to alter non-magical humans' memories. That doesn't mean that any particular reader will agree.
...
Actually, I take that back. I'm not sure the Potterverse is aware of ethics.
I'm not sure how the types of spells discussed can not be physical in some way. Perhaps you can explain how you see them as non-physical.
(Now I want Chris' comments about Bella's psychic shield and how it blocks everything because the line between "physical interaction" and "mental interaction" isn't as clear as we'd sometimes like to believe.)
TW: torture, murder
Spoilers for Deathly Hallows:
because what I remember of the scene in which Harry uses Crucio on the Death Eater teacher at Hogwarts is that a) the spell of mind breaking agony isn't actually depicted as causing agony (no description of the guy flopping about on the floor screaming or whatever)
Basically, Harry managed to hurl him across the room, and that's it. I think it's rather akin to the moral difference between hitting someone with a tazer, and standing there repeatedly tazing them while they're down screaming. (And in this case it's a very illegal tazer designed for torture.)
I vaguely recall Voldie Crucioing Harry's "corpse" and it not actually causing him pain for reasons unknown
It's complicated. Harry was still under the 'Lily sacrificial protection' that kept Voldemort specifically from hurting him. Not to be confused with the 'blood family protection' that was based on that, but broke already, or confused with the 'can't touch him' part of that Lily sacrificial protection that kept Voldemort from touching him, which Voldemort got passed by being made of Harry's blood, or confused with the 'Harry sacrificial protection' of everyone at Hogwarts that Harry just earned...so, yeah, it's nearly impossible to explain all the random magic stuff going on at that time. It's also possible it had something to do with Voldemort using Harry's wand. (Which screwed up another Unforgivable later against Harry.)
But, ignoring the misfire, I can't quite see the difference between a spell on _her_ that causes people to see her differently than she is, and a spell on _others_ that cause people to see her differently than she is.
If you do something to yourself, you a) have your permission to act upon yourself and b) suffer any side effects of said something. If you do something another person without their knowledge, you a) do not have their permission to act on them and b) they will suffer any side effects of said something.
You really seem to be coming from a very different place regarding permission/consent than either Ana or I come from.
(The odd thing is, from what you described, they could just as easily have written her logically applying the spell to herself and having it still misfire on account of her having no demon in her. Though that would rather nullify my explanation. *thinks* No, it just changes the analogous situation to a chemistry accident or the like. Messing around with chemicals based on incorrect knowledge endangers people because the chemical reaction causes a gas cloud... )
You really seem to be coming from a very different place regarding permission/consent than either Ana or I come from.
I think it's the problem with our "No Means No" culture where consent is assumed until explicitly revoked. Once you start thinking in terms of 'Yes Means Yes" and the idea that consent is assumed *absent* until explicitly given, then the whole thing is upside-down from how many of us were raised.
I haven't seen Buffy, but I doubt it's a much better source of Magical Ethics than CHARMED was. I won't read the season spoilers (mostly because I don't have time), but one school of thought is that a "Spell To Make Me Adhere To X Beauty Standards" is the magical equivalent of expensive makeup, body augmentation, corsetry and push-up bras, and the like. "Spell To Make Others Think I Adhere To X Beauty Standards" is something else entirely as it involves mucking with peoples' vision and perception. That would be the magical equivalent of any number of triggery things.
Incidentally, this is why the Ethics of Magic are not best received from Rowling, Whedon, or Gigax. They are looking to entertain, not to explore consent issues inherent in changing memory or perception magically.
TW: torture, murder
Spoilers for Deathly Hallows:
"because what I remember of the scene in which Harry uses Crucio on the Death Eater teacher at Hogwarts is that a) the spell of mind breaking agony isn't actually depicted as causing agony (no description of the guy flopping about on the floor screaming or whatever)"
Basically, Harry managed to hurl him across the room, and that's it. I think it's rather akin to the moral difference between hitting someone with a tazer, and standing there repeatedly tazing them while they're down screaming. (And in this case it's a very illegal tazer designed for torture.)
Oh, wow, Wizards really are Sith. *boggles* (Though Star Wars never fails to portray Force Lightning as painful.)
That still has the problem of leaving out the excruciating agony part. I never had the impression that that was from repeated use of the curse, but from use of the curse at all. Reducing it to, in this one case, hurling someone across the room is still defanging it, unless said person is described as or indicated to be in pain. Either the narrative doesn't care about DET's (Death Eater teacher) pain, or we're not shown it because it would make what Harry did seem horrible. Both seem problematic to me with regards to torture and the ethics thereof.
I'd also say that tazing someone when you have a non-painful option is still morally problematic, and very morally problematic when you add in the "very illegal tazer designed for torture" part. (Though repeatedly tazing someone is still far worse.)
Then there's Harry's statement about really having to mean it. If a hero uses Crucio/Force Lightning/really illegal tazers designed for torture/anything along those lines and then makes a statement that essentially says that he wanted to inflict horrible pain on his enemy and you don't ever deal with that or have any other hero go "WTF!?" in response to it, it looks as if the narrative is saying it is okay for people to do this. Or at least that it is not not okay.
I'm not comfortable with narratives not saying that things I consider really bad are okay or not not okay. This makes me have objections to the narrative.
Incidentally, this is why the Ethics of Magic are not best received from Rowling, Whedon, or Gigax. They are looking to entertain, not to explore consent issues inherent in changing memory or perception magically.
Though I'd love it if more fiction cared about consent issues and other ethical issues.
Though I'd love it if more fiction cared about consent issues and other ethical issues.
But then we wouldn't have a need for fan fic!!
(I kid.)
. The only things I know that you shouldn't to do people without their consent is almost entirely physical interactions.
Define physical interaction if I check your medical records without your consent (which is illegal as well as immoral) is that a physical interaction because I hit some keys on a keyboard to make it happen?
If I use a hypothetical magical memory charm to stop certain things from passing into long term memory (to prevent you from remembering what is currently happening after it stops) or to stop certain things from passing out of long term memory (to stop you from remembering things already committed to memory) is that physical because it alters the way that neurons will physically interact in your brain?
If I out you as gay without your consent by calmly describing supporting evidence to anyone who will listen, is that a physical interaction because a conversation is a physical action (my vocalizations physically move the air, the motion of the air physically moves parts of the listener's ear, and so on)?
What interactions would you describe as non-physical interactions?
I still say, though, that just because the magical people are the protagonist's "side," that doesn't make them the always-good side. They're not the good people, they're the people, with mixed motives and mixed results and all-too-human thoughtlessness.
This is true, but it all comes back to the protagonist and company not seeming to notice the flaws. And my uncertainty as to whether the narrative does. (And the fact that my sympathies eventually ended up somewhere the narrative never intended - with the non-magical humans, not the wizards.) There's also the matter of how bad the flaws are.
Aaand the fact that the books kinda set things up as good vs. evil. I'm a little more accepting of grayness when the set up is gray vs. black or grey vs. gray to begin with...sort of. I have similar problems at times with the way SW:TOR depicts the Republic. I'm certain the game designers intended gray vs. gray morality, but the game intro cinematics seem very Republic sympathetic, and there are parts of the game's stories that make the Republic seem like the better side, but other parts of the stories make them look every bit as bad as the Sith Empire. And I can't tell whether this is intentional or whether it's bad writing. I realize that that probably shouldn't matter to me as much as it does, but it matters a hell of a lot to me.
(Now I want Chris' comments about Bella's psychic shield and how it blocks everything because the line between "physical interaction" and "mental interaction" isn't as clear as we'd sometimes like to believe.)
I think that comes from No cookies for human decency, but it was spread accross multiple posts and went in two directions.
On the one side the power blocks nothing because everything is physical. If it has physical effects in the real world, even if those effects are someone screaming at illusions their brain has been tricked into seeing, then it's a physical power. If the brain were not physically altered the screaming would not have been triggered.
It's all particles and waves, no purely mental stuff to deal with.
On the other hand we have some gradations. Consider someone planning to throw a van at Bella using telekinesis. Clearly a mental attack. They're using their mind, not their body, to move the van so the attack is mental. Bella's mental shield can protect her from a van to the head.
But what if, instead of telekinesis, superstrength were used to throw the van at her head? Well that require many mental processes, the idea must be come up with, the physical motions of picking up and throwing the van must be preceded by mental commands for the limbs to do so. Aiming is likewise a mental process.
Clearly picking up and throwing a van at Bella is a mental attack, and her shield can protect against that.
Throwing a punch relies on mental processes, so looked at that way Bella could stop you from doing so.
And all of this assumes that reality is physical. Some believe it is composed of thought. At that point Bella is unstoppable.
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Two page thread.
But memory is fallible. If Steve Morrison drops by again with the proper passage, that would be good.
OK, here is the passage; obviously, TW for torture.
Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand, and said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, “Crucio!”
The Death Eater was lifted off his feet. He writhed through the air like a drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then, with a crunch and a shattering of glass, he smashed into the front of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.
“I see what Bellatrix meant,” said Harry, the blood thundering through his brain, “you need to really mean it.”
@depizan
I have problems with your examples. In one, you seem to be mixing things done to an area with things done to a specific individual
Counterexample: 'Glissendo' in Harry Potter makes an area of the floor as slippery as wet glass, and everyone in that area falls down.
The issue here is harm requires consent, not mystical targeting.
There's also the fact that you assume that magic is not a physical interaction. I'm not sure how the types of spells discussed can not be physical in some way. Perhaps you can explain how you see them as non-physical.
I _don't_ see them that way. Potterverse spells generally have physical results on a person. There are a few that don't, like memory alterations, that I would suggest people do not reflexively leap to an analogy of 'assault' or 'brain surgery' or 'drugs'.
But most of the hexes and whatnot clearly are assault, and hence would need consent.
I was trying to say that just because 'a spell is done to a person' or 'a spell is cast on a person' does not mean that a person has to give consent, because what that means can vary from fiction to fiction. The question of consent is based on the result of the spell, not how explaining it is phrased in English.
For example, in the Dresden Files, a locator spell are cast 'on' a person...in a way that doesn't involve them at all, or change anything about them, as far as I can tell. (It doesn't even have to require an item of theirs, as long as you can come up with a vivid enough mental image, which good wizards can.)
I'm not sure the Potterverse is aware of ethics.
I cut it some slack, considering part of it is due to the war, and part of it is due to avoiding some hypothetical war with Muggles if the Masquerade is broken. (Yes, that does not make much sense, but it's a premise of the setting.)
Although there's _still_ a lot of problems left over.
Oh good, he was described as being in pain. (There is still something off about the way it's written. The phrasing seems rather...distancing. This might be why you're supposed to use short sentences for action sequences.)
Harry is still fucking creepy here, though. And I'd still like the narrative to go somewhere with the fact that our heroes are slipping badly out of hero status. The fact that they get away with Unforgivables in wartime is believable, but you'd expect at least a few people to see that as a bad thing. (And they might, off page.)
I've clearly remembered things as worse than they were (in some ways), but the over-all slide of the heroes into serious gray territory is definitely there. As is the fact that the narrative treats it with odd neutrality. I don't expect perfect heroes, but there's a limit to how dark they can go before I'm pulling off the hero tag and wondering why the author hasn't as well.
But then, I am a person who prefers fiction that is better than life - escapist and aspirational fiction, I guess one could call it. Which, in retrospect, Harry Potter never was. (The first perhaps, early on.) I think I was distracted by the shiny and read a series I should have known I'd never agree with.
Posting from phone, so this will be a short one: You don't think that a spell which locates a person should (ethically) be cast only with consent or in emergencies? You and I have different privacy standards, it would seem.
I've vaguely disturbed by the framing that Depizan and my comments about consent boil down to "mystical targeting". Everything we've said about consent applies equally whether the spell is Single Target or Area Of Effect - at no point has either of us said that AoE spells should be held to different standards than single target. Either case, if the spell is done without the consent of those it affects, it's unethical in our opinion. (Depizan, correct me if I'm misrepresenting your views.)
I'm beginning to wonder if everyone is using the same concept of "consent" in this conversation. I'm having a Pudding Moment here.
@chris the cynic
Okay, let's see if I can fix the confusion I have caused. I said The only things I know that you shouldn't to do people without their consent is almost entirely physical interactions.
There are plenty of things people should not do that are not physical interactions. Plenty of completely unethical things. It is just that I was not considering them as things done _to_ people.
That confusion is entirely my fault. (Also I swapped two words.)
To help people understand, as a general rule of thumbs, I would say that things I am unaware of at the time they happen are usually not done 'to me'. Things going on over there, between two other people, are not happening 'to me'. But considering that was the point of dispute in the first place, I really should have explained that clearer.
And to repeat: Just because things are not happening to me doesn't make them nice and/or ethical!
So for your examples:
Checking someone medical records is one of those non-physical things that I would assert consent issues with. (I did say _almost_ everything was physical.) I have autonomy over my body, and that includes records of it. I gave certain people consent to those records, and you have tricked one of them. While this tricking did not directly involve me, it seems like it falls under the fringes of something violating my consent.
Outing me as gay, OTOH, no. Gossip is not a consent issue. That is not something done to me, at least not in my book. Things can be unethical and scummy without being a violation of consent. (And this is one of the cases where someone is going to disagree, on the grounds that people should have some sort of control over their reputation. That is a reasonable idea, but it's not one I hold.)
Blocking someone's memory, yes, that is a consent issue.
And the example you didn't bring up: Causing me to fear for my physical safety would be one, even without actual physical interaction. Including things that would cause me to fear if I knew about, even if I don't.
If I may be permitted to speculate, it seems like for me the problem would be less Harry Going Bad and more the cheery ending epilogue where that stuff gets shoved under the carpet.
If Harry had been shown conflicted or damaged by his complex past and ambiguous actions would that have made it easier to swallow?
HUNGER GAMES SPOILERS
I know that the Hunger Games epilogue made perfect sense to me because it wasn't happy-happy-joy-joy. Gale, one of the protagonists who did morally questionable things, loses his friendships and family connections as a result and runs off to find some kind of rebirth in a new town with new relationships. It feels bittersweet and real.
Katniss, too, deals with her own demons and it takes TIME and lots of effort. It's not all swept away in a saccharine view of "and Snow was gone and life was lovely again and we need never speak of my failings again".
To me, that kind of epilogue tells me that an author GETS IT. YMMV?
The issue here is harm requires consent, not mystical targeting.
But most of the hexes and whatnot clearly are assault, and hence would need consent.
I don't understand these sentences at all. Harm requires consent? Don't you mean lack of consent? Are you saying that all harm is based in whether or not people consent? Perhaps we need to back up a few steps and share our respective definitions of harm and what goes under that umbrella.
Harm: causing mental, physical, or emotional damage/pain to another.
Doing things to people without their consent falls under the umbrella of harm because it causes at least emotional damage/pain to another.
Whacking people with sticks falls under the umbrella of harm because it causes physical damage/pain to another. (Whether it's wrong or not depends on whether you had their consent. If you didn't, I suppose it's doubly harm.)
Glissendo causes harm by making people fall down which causes at least physical damage/pain to them. What it does is harmful. It isn't analogous to turning on a light (which could by harmful but isn't by definition harmful.)
"There's also the fact that you assume that magic is not a physical interaction. I'm not sure how the types of spells discussed can not be physical in some way. Perhaps you can explain how you see them as non-physical."
I _don't_ see them that way. Potterverse spells generally have physical results on a person. There are a few that don't, like memory alterations, that I would suggest people do not reflexively leap to an analogy of 'assault' or 'brain surgery' or 'drugs'.
What? Let me rephrase because there seems to be some type of misunderstanding going on. I'm not sure how memory alteration spells can not be physical in some way. Perhaps you can explain how you see them as non-physical. What do you believe is happening? How do you believe memories are stored that there is no physical effect?
For example, in the Dresden Files, a locator spell are cast 'on' a person...in a way that doesn't involve them at all, or change anything about them, as far as I can tell.
Depending on what a locator spell does, this is indeed harm by lack of consent. If a locator spell is the equivalent of looking someone's address up in a public database, then it's fine. If a locator spell tells you where a person is right now then it is not ethical if you don't have their permission. There's a reason why cell phone companies only tell law enforcement where people (well, their phones) are. We've decided that law enforcement needs to be able to do that unethical thing to prevent greater harm. This is the same.
"I'm not sure the Potterverse is aware of ethics."
I cut it some slack, considering part of it is due to the war, and part of it is due to avoiding some hypothetical war with Muggles if the Masquerade is broken.
I was actually being literal. I really don't remember ethics being discussed in the story, even in passing. There is not, so far as I remember, an Ethics of Magic class at Hogwarts. The only time it might come up is with regard to house elf slavery, but I honestly can't remember if it does or if everything's phrased in terms of "right" and "wrong", which is ethics, sort of, but not in a very complicated sense.
If Harry had been shown conflicted or damaged by his complex past and ambiguous actions would that have made it easier to swallow?
Yes. Lots.
I feel like I should have some exclamation points and possibly twenty foot tall type there. While I'd have some issues with the story anyway (because I like escapist, aspirational - or do I mean inspirational? but then you'd probably think I meant Christian fiction - fiction), I wouldn't have the problem of "does the author realize what they wrote?"
If I may be permitted to speculate, it seems like for me the problem would be less Harry Going Bad and more the cheery ending epilogue where that stuff gets shoved under the carpet.
This. Double.
The only consolation is that the epilogue is years later. Perhaps everyone was an emotional wreck for 5 years. Perhaps Hermione and Ron still _are_, and just putting on a show for the kids, but...crap, you still haven't finished the books, have you? Let's just say, there are things they specifically did that could keep both of them awake at night. Along with what Harry does.
Fanfic deals with all this. (And 'Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness' takes this idea and applies it to half of Harry's class at Hogwarts, times ten what the Trio went through.)
Perhaps there were trials, and all this came out, and our heroes were revealed to have feet of clay. No one seems to be asking for Harry's autograph, after all, or pointing at him, or treating him as the messiah. There's also fanfic about this, but not as much.
Er...
Outing me as gay, OTOH, no. Gossip is not a consent issue.
Causing me to fear for my physical safety would be one, even without actual physical interaction.
These two things do not necessarily go together. That is to say that there are places where outing someone as gay would cause that someone to fear for their physical safety and be justified in that fear.
Even right where I sit (in the US), I'm quite sure there are situations where a person being outed as gay would have negative effects on their life. Their life probably wouldn't be in danger, but their job could be or their chances of promotions or any number of other things. You may dismiss it as gossip, but it's not exactly harmless.
Either case, if the spell is done without the consent of those it affects, it's unethical in our opinion. (Depizan, correct me if I'm misrepresenting your views.)
Not really. With a directly physically harmful spell, I would place the fact that it's a directly physically harmful spell higher on the "why this is wrong" scale than the lack of consent, but the lack of consent is still a reason why it's wrong.
Right, double harm in the case of genuinely harmful spells.
But the idea being that "non harmful" spells are still subject to consent issues even if they are Area of Effect and not single target.
IMHO.
Yep. We are in agreement.
Posting from phone, so this will be a short one: You don't think that a spell which locates a person should (ethically) be cast only with consent or in emergencies? You and I have different privacy standards, it would seem.
I'm saying that the issue is the result. The spell is just as ethical, or unethical, if it required casting the spell on the person while in sight, or was cast 'on' a picture of that person or if was a magical artifact that just knew all that without any 'spell' at all. The process is irrelevant, the end result is the ethical question. (Barring the process itself requiring some sort of ethical violation.)
Either case, if the spell is done without the consent of those it affects, it's unethical in our opinion.
Yes. The consent of those it affects. (Results) Not the consent of those it is 'cast on'. (Which is a bit of world-building color in fiction, and completely irrelevant to the ethics of the spell.)
I find myself pointing to my 'Does it matter who a glamour is cast on, if the effect (making the caster look slightly better) is the same?' question again.
See, people _say_ that the result are what matters, and I'm tempted to just think 'Okay, everyone sees what I mean' and just drop the thing right there.
But various people (I don't think you specifically have weighed in) seem to think that somehow having a spell 'on' someone is a 'result' and hence unacceptable without consent, and that there is some meaningful difference between who a spell is 'on', even when it affects exactly the same people in exactly the same way.
And now I'm wondering why I care about this distinction. I suspect that everyone has a cause, and mine has always been dissecting fiction, especially speculative fiction, so I hate sloppiness in discussing it. People show up to spec fic discussions with ideas about how imaginary things 'really' work (No matter what the text says, or what other people think), and then attempt to arguing things off that. It's fine to argue which model is correct, it's fine to argue ethics within the specifics of a model, but arguing ethics with people with _different_ models is exactly how stuff starts blowing up.
So this time, seeing a pothole ahead with mental magic, I tried to ward that off, asking people not to assume their mental model of all this is the same as other people's...and I've failed horribly at this by causing people to think my plea about not assuming everyone is arguing from the same _imaginary_ place is me making a statement about Harry Potter, or real life magic, or that I don't understand what consent is, which I don't even recall how we ended up talking about.
Frankly, at this point we're basically just discussing discussing it, and I'm not even sure of what the point is. I'm going to bed.
Throwing a punch relies on mental processes, so looked at that way Bella could stop you from doing so.
Hmm. I was figuring you'd have gone along the lines of 'altering someone's brain requires physical interaction, so the shield clearly works by blocking that interaction, which means it can block *other* physical forces...'
What do you believe is happening? How do you believe memories are stored that there is no physical effect?
If you do believe Obliviate works purely by screwing with the target's soul, or whatnot... and this makes it better to you?
(Alternatively, it could be a kind of geas that simply prevents the memory from being accessed...)
I find myself pointing to my 'Does it matter who a glamour is cast on, if the effect (making the caster look slightly better) is the same?' question again.
One works by altering appearance through holograms, transformation, or whatnot. The other works by altering the subject's perception. Slight difference. Even if the spell is theoretically 'cast on' the person to be prettified, but works by making everyone in the vicinity *believe* them to be prettified, then it is unethical. It's a question of the harm that is done, and altering someone's perceptions is harm, even if not severe harm. If I decided I wanted to wear a tie-die shirt, that'd be okay. If I went around forcing everyone who saw me to wear kailedescope glasses, that would not be okay.
People show up to spec fic discussions with ideas about how imaginary things 'really' work (No matter what the text says, or what other people think), and then attempt to arguing things off that.
See also: Star Trek re: Transporter Paradox, after it being explicitly stated it doesn't work that way.
I didn't think there were such things as 'memory charms in general' - the Memory Charm is another name for Obliviate, just like the Summoning Charm is another word for Accio. So it IS known that you can do other things with Obliviate, just as Chris pointed out.
Whether you choose to use Obliviate to rewind the last few minutes or to remove a formative experience from someone's memory is up to the user, then, which makes it potentially VERY dangerous. Besides, Obliviators go around removing memories of (e.g.) dragon sightings, even if the non-magical humans in question saw the dragon around lunchtime and the Obliviators only get to them at night, so even if they just press 'rewind' they'd remove an entire afternoon. Now I don't mind dangerous spells existing (just like I don't mind cars existing or guns) as long as their usage is tightly regulated.
But the use of memory charms ISN'T, or so it seems. And I do think that's a scary idea.
Yes. The consent of those it affects. (Results) Not the consent of those it is 'cast on'. (Which is a bit of world-building color in fiction, and completely irrelevant to the ethics of the spell.)
Which, in the case of memory charms, is the same person: the Cast On and Affected are one and the same. So I don't know why you are parsing this distinction because it is meaningless to the subject that we started on. Indeed, I believe the distinction to be meaningless in general because I can't think of a spell that is Cast On person X without Affecting person X. Even the locator spell we have shown to contain an Effect which can be unethical in Depizan's and my way of thinking.
The concept of glamour as you keep bringing up does not fit because you're conflating two completely different effects -- the ethical "magic makeup" effect and the unethical "adore me!!" effect. Those are two different spells that can only be conflated by the English words "they both make people think the caster is prettier". Words are not being clear in this case.
The difference between those spells that that the effect is either "I look about the same as if I were wearing expensive under-garments" (ethical) or "Everyone perceives me as hotter than the sun because I'm messing with their perceptions" (unethical). The effect is not the same in each case. In the former case strangers simply aren't affected other than seeing the Magical Push-UP Bra (which is no different than seeing a Regular Push-Up Bra. They see the effect of breasts being pushed up because they ARE being pushed up, not because the spell messes with their eyes or perceptions. If it did, that would be unethical.). If Joe, Jimmy, and Bobby aren't into big breasts, they won't find Ellen any more charming than they did before. In the latter case, there's a completely different effect: Joe, Jimmy, and Bobby are forced into seeing Ellen as pretty, no matter what their personal standards of beauty are.
Tl;Dr: you are arguing against a position that isn't appearing in this thread as far as I can see. When I said that Casting On person X without their consent was wrong, I was presuming SOME kind of Effect on the Cast On since I cannot imagine a spell that uses Person X as a non-consensual focus WITHOUT an Effect on Person X. The example of glamor as something that "affects" multiple non-targets is kind of a red herring because IF is does alter memory and perceptions, then it is still unethical without consent. And if it doesn't -- as in the example of Magical Zit Removal -- then the "effect" of people seeing you as prettier is really not achieved by direct "effect" on them but rather a side-effect of their presumed social values of beauty (which are not universally held; some people may find the zit more endearing).
or that I don't understand what consent is, which I don't even recall how we ended up talking about.
Because that is the entire crux of our initial "is this ethical" assessment. Step on Johnny's foot: Did you have his consent? Not ethical. Take Jimmy car: Did you have his consent? Not ethical. Cast a spell on Jason: Did you have his consent? Not ethical.
Anything else -- the type of effect, whether it's physical or more like winding back time, how many other people were affected, whether actual harm has been committed -- is a secondary test. Whether consent was obtained from the person being Acted Upon is the first and foremost question.
One works by altering appearance through holograms, transformation, or whatnot. The other works by altering the subject's perception. Slight difference. Even if the spell is theoretically 'cast on' the person to be prettified, but works by making everyone in the vicinity *believe* them to be prettified, then it is unethical. It's a question of the harm that is done, and altering someone's perceptions is harm, even if not severe harm. If I decided I wanted to wear a tie-die shirt, that'd be okay. If I went around forcing everyone who saw me to wear kailedescope glasses, that would not be okay.
QFT. This.
Slightly sideways, but that makes me wonder. In Doctor Who, a common device was a 'perception filter.' I am pretty sure that it worked by making people ignore something or someone. Another device was psychic paper. It worked by showing whatever it was the person wanted or expected to see. Very useful in a pinch for the Doctor, but were they ethical to be used? After all, they did mess with a person's perception. The main difference was that there were no technically harmful or persistent effects. Yet, they did mess with how a person viewed the universe. Where would these particular issues fall on this axis?
One of the"fun" things about ethics -- and this ties into our conversations about Cultural Appropriation and Clothing and Hair Styles -- is that ultimately you are always going to be doing SOME harm simply by existing and acting, no matter how much you try otherwise. (This is even mentioned in the Rabinovich book I mentioned up-thread; particularly notable because the Wiccan Rede -- "an ye harm none" -- is technically impossible.)
The goal, I think, in ethics is to minimize harm as much as possible. That's why I can say it's "unethical" to talk to someone who doesn't want to be talked to, but we minimize that by asking for feedback: "may I speak with you?" That's why I also say that the answer to Cultural Appropriation* isn't* for us to all shave our heads and go nude lest we accidentally appropriate some piece of clothing or hair style and harm someone.
Once one accepts that they are going to cause harm merely by existing, it becomes a matter of minimizing it. If a fictional "perception filter" saves people from greater harms, or if it has so little effect on them (including side-effects) as simply Not Being There At All, it may still be unethical, but possibly the lesser of many other evils.
I think this also ties into the Burden Of Effort that we talked about up-thread. Even if Ron memory-charming the driving instructor has zero side-effects, I would still consider it highly unethical because there's no reason why he can't just retake the test. He's valuing his time over another person's consent, and that's hugely problematic.
With the case, on the other hand, of a Somebody Else's Problem Field, usually it's impossible or highly difficult to take the Needs To Be Hidden thing away and remove it entirely (as opposed to using the perception filter), so the overriding of consent is done in response to larger barriers and needs than just "I don't want to waste another afternoon on this driving test."
My two cents. Ethics is not something many people agree on. :)
I took psychic paper to be the high tech (or magi-tech) version of Rockford's printing press. Useful, but no, not really ethical. Actually, it's worse than the printing press because while Rockford is lying about who he is and what he's doing, he could still get it wrong. Psychic paper is guaranteed to work, which is more problematic.
How problematic depends on exactly how it works, though.
I'm also put in mind of something my mom told me about. When she was young, she worked at the naval yards in Bremerton. To get on base, you had to have ID. However, a lot of soldiers got away with quickly flashing cigarette packs at the guards. The shiny plastic looked just right enought that the guards perceived ID, especially from a soldier in uniform.
If psychic paper were like that - it didn't really have anything on it but a vague pattern that people were likely to play mental fill-in-the-blank with beneficially, it would be more ethical than if it actually reads people's minds and changes accordingly. To me, anyway.
I don't do this often, but"
And the example you didn't bring up: Causing me to fear for my physical safety [...] Including things that would cause me to fear if I knew about, even if I don't.
You lie.
-Tirgger warning for homophobia
I did bring that example up. You quoted and responded to it. I brought up the example of outing someone as gay, something that can make you lose your job (and with it healthcare if you're US based). Something that can make you lose your home, and the safety that comes with it. Something that can make you lose friends and family and the safety that comes from the support network that they comprise. Something that can get you beaten. Something that can get you raped. Something that can get you killed.
You said that providing that information which could place one in real physical danger, which is to say providing the person cause to fear for their physical safety, is not a consent issue.
This is strange, to me, because doing the exact same thing is morally acceptable when you have the affected person's permission to tell people that said person is gay first. So it seems, to me, to be a thing where consent absolutely determines how the action should be judged.
I didn't think there were such things as 'memory charms in general' - the Memory Charm is another name for Obliviate, just like the Summoning Charm is another word for Accio. So it IS known that you can do other things with Obliviate, just as Chris pointed out.
What Kingsley did is called a 'memory modification' by Dumbledore, not 'a Memory Charm', which is indeed another way to say 'Obliviate'.
We know there is a way to alter memories, not just remove them (See: whatever Hermione did to her parents, whatever Slughorn did to himself, whatever Voldemort did to that House Elf...) Saying this way is using Obliviate is assuming things not in evidence. We don't ever see Obliviate or a 'Memory Charm' doing this.
But the use of memory charms ISN'T, or so it seems. And I do think that's a scary idea.
It really barely appears they have a government at all. The only spell we actually see, besides the Unforgivables, that people 'aren't allowed' to cast is, of all things, a Portkey!
The concept of glamour as you keep bringing up does not fit because you're conflating two completely different effects
I tried to make this clear by repeated talking about 'makeup'. I'm not referring to something that reads the viewer's mind and makes the person look 'pretty'. I am referring to something that makes a consistent change in appearance. Like makeup. Or, because I've outed that this original discussion came from BtVS, something like hiding tiny horns or blue skin for half-demons.
I don't quite understand that rest of what you're saying. The entire premise of a spell that makes people see things in a way that is untrue _is_ altering their perceptions. Regardless of whether or not it is cast on the thing that being presented untruly, or the person. (If the magic actually altered the original thing, that's something completely different.) So I don't really understand what you mean by drawing a distinction on 'altering their perceptions', but it's possible now _I'm_ missing a distinction.
I guess it is possible to argue that _all_ illusion spells are violations of consent...but that would put things like 'hiding your valuables using magic' into 'violation of consent of the people who now cannot see them', which does not seem reasonable to me, but perhaps you disagree?
Indeed, I believe the distinction to be meaningless in general because I can't think of a spell that is Cast On person X without Affecting person X. Even the locator spell we have shown to contain an Effect which can be unethical in Depizan's and my way of thinking.
And let us imagine a world where, instead of a spell, we have a magical device that simply will report the location of anyone, at any time, without doing any sort of magic on them. (See 'Person of Interest', which tripped over that ethical issue without having any magic at all.)
How the magic works, including who it is 'cast on', is world-building words. The end result is what matters.
I don't quite understand that rest of what you're saying. The entire premise of a spell that makes people see things in a way that is untrue _is_ altering their perceptions. [...] (If the magic actually altered the original thing, that's something completely different.)
YES! YES! We have communication. There are two types of Beauty Spells:
1. Change Caster into New Form: example, the zit on the nose is gone, just as surely as though they'd applied zit removal cream, but faster and without the smelly pharmaceutical smell.
2. Make Others See Caster As New Form: example, hide the zit on the nose, by altering the perception of the people who gaze at the caster.
We, or at least *I*, am saying that #1 is ethical and #2 is not. And that trying to lump all Beauty Spells into #2 is really frustratingly ignorant of magical mechanics.*
(* If I sound frustrated, it's because I've already stated all this multiple times and I really, genuinely, truly feel like you're not listening. I've said that Magical Push-Up Bra and Magical Zit Removal can take the same form as Non-Magical push-up bras and zit removal, and I don't understand why you keep insisting that the only possible Beauty Spells are ones that alter the PERCEPTION OF THE ENTIRE WORLD instead of the Caster's boobs or nose. Ethics aside, which spell seems easier to you?? This is really really basic Wiccan 101. Or world-building 101 for that matter.)
And let us imagine a world where, instead of a spell, we have a magical device that simply will report the location of anyone, at any time, without doing any sort of magic on them.
ARGH. And now we're back to the not listening. I don't know how to put this any simpler.
A. Doing X to someone without their consent is Unethical.
B. Casting magic ON someone qualifies as "doing X" as in Point A.
C. Casting magic that AFFECTS someone ALSO qualifies as "doing X" as in Point A.
D. Determining the location of someone ALSO qualifies as "doing X" as in Point A.
E. Doing X to some without their consent is Unethical regardless of the manner in which you Do X. Magic, physical, mundane, whatever: if you're Doing X to someone and you don't have their consent, you're behaving unethically.
Reading '[A person] causing me to fear for my physical safety' to mean '[A person] doing things that might cause other people to threaten me, causing me to fear for my physical safety' is somewhat dubious.
If you're going to read 'causing' that way, you can get anywhere: The lack of streetlights may also cause me to fear for my physical safety while walking down a street, ergo, the city planner who decided not to install them violated my consent. And would I be fearing for my physical safety at all if I hadn't been born?
If you believe that stating factual information about someone is a violation of their consent, you are forced into one of two conclusions:
Either the law should prohibit people stating factual information about people, or the law should allow others to violate people's consent.
I, OTOH, think people threatening others violates their consent. (And thus is illegal.) And something like stalking or breaking into their house and leaving without a trace, which would cause people to be afraid if they knew about it, violations their consent. (And that is also illegal...mostly. There are a few places the law probably should be extended, because I'm heard too many 'The police can't anything' stories.)
And, incidentally, you'll notice that I do consider medical records under consent issues, and the law even agrees with me there that repeating that information should be illegal without consent. But that's where the law, and violations of consent, end.
I sympathize with gay people who are involuntarily outed. I've known openly gay people, gay people who were closeted outside my theatre group, and people I'm fairly sure were closeted gay but not out to me. People who go around outing other people would be in my 'Do not be friends with' category.
But trying to make everything about 'consent'...I don't understand that. Consent is needed for stuff that interferes with bodily autonomy. (And being threatened does interfere with that.) But it's not 'I don't like the guy over there saying things about me that I don't want him to say.'.
Alright. Stop. End of thread.
You are conflating the dangers of being outed -- which Chris described in perfect clarity -- with something else that is not like being outed at all. There are people on this board who live in daily fear of being outed and who could be detained, locked up, or killed in their country if they were outed, and you are dismissing all that with your debate-team conflationary tactics.
This thread is now closed, or will be once my power comes back on at the house. I don't have the spoons to clean up all the straight male privilege that is being spewed all over the thread.
David, this is a warning. Your ignorance about the importance of consent in feminism is not my job to correct. Go read up on consent theory and educate yourself because if you continue to ask the same feminism 101 questions over and over like you are here, I will give you a spoon because you're taking all of mine.
This thread is now closed.
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