So, Rowling said she thinks Dumbledore is gay. This has actually provided a pretty clear-cut example of why literary theorists are hostile to the idea that authorial intent is the “right” interpretation; to echo what a lot of people all over the internets are saying, “If he is, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Which demonstrates a sort of native understanding that even the author’s interpretations of a work are just another interpretation and you can quarrel with them. If you feel that the books don’t support the contention that Dumbledore is gay, you have just as much right to say so as Rowling has to say that she feels there’s some unspoken gay love going on. In fact, like Mandolin’s post points at, if a character really is gay and meant to be read as so, sometimes you have to spell it out within the book, because heteronormativity dictates that most people are not going to see a character like Dumbledore as gay without a big flashing sign telling them to.
I have to say that I’m mildly amused by all the people on the internets saying, “Why not say so in the first place, then?” I think we all know why, and it has everything to do with Rowling’s well-documented timidity with regards to 1950s-style mating and dating norms; the only couple even close to non-traditional is Lupin and Tonks, and even they pretty much get married and start breeding straightaway in a manner that sort of tests your patience with the realism of romantic relationships in the book. Everyone else marries their high school sweethearts or stays single for life. It’s a fearful approach to romance that is kind of puzzling, because she seems to be afraid to cross norms that almost no one outside of the Focus on Family compound adheres to anymore, if they ever did. It’s actually one of the biggest flaws of the book, since it keeps snapping the reader out of suspension of disbelief. You keep thinking—no divorces? Everyone marries at 19 and lives happily ever after? Middle aged single people have no sex life? No, really?
I don’t think any but the craziest wingnuts would whine if Rowling had more diversity in the family lives in the books, and since she’s British, I can’t imagine she cares. The choice to have this monolithic view of family life dehumanized the characters a bit, and certainly there was no room for gay characters. So, I have to quarrel with Rowling’s interpretation some; you can believe Dumbledore was gay, but only with quite a bit of striving, since it seems that almost any character that didn’t manage to get married before 21 is actually a Barbie or Ken doll, just smooth and genital-less. There are quite a few sex jokes, but they’re one-offs and only seem to draw attention to have paranoid Rowling is about including any detail that could be read as genuine evidence that sex exists. And I mean really paranoid—there’s no reason to think the inclusion of gay characters, divorce, middle aged people dating, or even marriage after 21 means that someone reading the book to a kid will have to stop and describe the mechanics of sex to the child in any detail. It’s bizarre.
Of course, the wingnuts are whining, but they can’t imagine two guys holding hands without imagining a full scale gay orgy are screaming their heads off, but that’s because they assume that everyone, including freshly born babies, shares their vivid imaginations borne from deep repression and dissatisfaction. Don Surber can’t imagine why a roomful of people, upon hearing Rowling say that Dumbledore was gay, would break into applause. That people really aren’t bundles of hate who are only constrained by the chains of political correctness seems impossible to him. I’m sure the applause was 100% genuine and enthusiastic, not just because of the “Yea! Gay!” sentiments, awesome as they are, but also because it’s a hint that Rowling is aware of the bizarre nature of her ultra-buttoned up sexual universe of the Potter books and is cautiously apologizing for the implausible sameness of sexual desire and behavior in her books. The adult lives of the characters suck in the books, so we’re all much happier going back and re-imagining them as actual human beings, with messy feelings and desires that fall out of the unbelievably narrow prescribed formula that’s actually there in the books. The story we tell ourselves about the characters’ personal lives is much more interesting than anything Rowling put to paper and that applause strikes me as more evidence of this. And that Rowling herself is getting swept up into her audience’s imaginings of the characters’ lives.
194 Responses to “Dumbledore’s secret gay life”
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So, we were like supposed to guess at his sexual preferences? I have to admit, I wonder why now. I’d have to also admit, however, to never actually having read, (or seen for that matter) any of the Harry Potter material, (and I have 2 young sons). Anyhow, it did seem strange to me that she should out him now. Another thing I didn’t really understand is why it should matter.
Whatever.
I actually did think this was hinted at pretty heavily in the seventh book, and I think Rowling borrowed heavily from the “Leopold and Loeb” case from the 1920’s in writing the relationship between Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald. I was surprised by the public announcement, but not by the revelation itself. (I’m not into fan fiction, where apparently a lot of other people thought Dumbledore was gay, too.)
Yes.
To the extent I ask that question, I mean it as an indictment. She should have had the courage to reveal it in the text. And she doesn’t get to have her cake and eat it too with this revelation (”Yes, I cleansed my books of realities like gayness, but lookie — in my heart of hearts, I had secretly good intentions!”).
I still like the books, and I’m glad she said something about Dumbledore. I just get a sniff from her that she wants a cookie for it, or thinks it proves she’s a liberal writer, and thinks about diversity — and, no.
I have never commented, but I wanted to comment about this because I really like your analysis here. To me Tonks was a lesbian, and I always saw her as one and was very dissapointed when Rowling married her off to Lupin, with such a quick and unrealistic love affair and converted her into this sort of stereotypical wife, which completely went away from who Tonks was as a character. But I never expected Rowling to actually recognize gay characters, or any other identity that wasn’t straigh-laced heteronormative. But I do like that now she is saying that Dumbledore was gay because it does not seem completely out of the blue to me, and it takes this huge great character loved by most everyone and will hopefully make people face up to some of their homophobia.
Eh. I’m ready to cut her some slack on realistic sex lives b/c these are supposed to be “children’s books”.
I’m reading the first one again, but this time with my son. He’s loving it, and so am I–JK was much more fun with the first one, and while it does read as a ‘young adult’ vocab book, it just such fun, that it appeals to all. Clever, even.
It made me realize that #7 was written for an older audience, but not nearly as successful, and perhaps for that reason.
As for a gay Dumbledore, I like the fact she acts like it’s no big deal. It apparently came up b/c the screenwriters for #6 included some dialog for Dumbledore the referenced a past love, and JK wrote “Dumbledore is gay” on the script.
Why the scriptwriters felt a need to add to her already overlong-for-a-movie book is beyond me. I simply wish she’d pointed out the similarities between Draco and Harry and how both Neville and Harry seem to be fulfilling the prophecy with a bit more panache.
I do kind of wish she’d just made him outright gay in the books, cause that would have actually been kind of cool. Like just throw it in somewhere in book five, and watch the people already protesting the series for promoting Satanism or whatevs go totally apoplectic.
The everyone-marries-their-high-school-sweethearts thing is one of those deals I chalk up to an artifact of the series’ structure; like how every book’s plot coincidentally manages to begin right around fall and then climactically conclude right at the end of the school term. The books just take it as granted that high school is the most important thing in the universe, because it’s written for an audience for whom high school is the most important thing in the universe.
I’m willing to cut JK some slack because the books are almost entirely written from Harry’s point of view. Harry realized only after reading DD’s obituary (which, I think, would have been a plausible place to bring up DD’s past love(s) and therefore his orientation) that he had never considered what DD’s childhood or early adulthood might have been like, that his only conception of him was as old and wise. And given all the things DD and Harry never got to talk about (like all of Harry’s questions about his parents), first because DD thought avoiding Harry was a way to protect him and then because he died shortly after they started their quest for the horcruxes, I can see how this topic may not have come up.
As someone who studies (and wrote a master’s project on) both queer theory and children’s and young adult literature, it’s an exciting revelation. I am also puzzled by the vast amount of people saying, “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US?!!” not only because of what you’ve pointed out here but because Rowling has been clear that she has volumes worth of backstory on these characters, so much backstory we can’t reasonably assume she can fit it in the original narrative and, further, backstory she has also explicitly stated she may someday publish.
But I think this revelation is going to have some real impact, not just in the way it’s making the fundies react but in the great point you made that they seem to be SHOCKED that people applauded. 100+ million have bought that first book, and 11 million bought the seventh within 24 hours. Now Rowling has opened the door for, in my opinion, some serious discussion that seems rudimentary to many people but isn’t: do you like Dumbledore less because he is gay? Why?
It might not seem like a “big deal” to most of us (thank goodness!) But it will turn into, hopefully, a discussion point that many people have glossed over. And, fuck it, I think that’s FREAKING AWESOME.
What Karla said. Teenagers don’t generally think that people over thirty have sex; it’s not surprising that Harry doesn’t devote much mental space to thinking about whether Dumbledore was gay, or whether any of the other professors have sex lives.
It’s almost a mistake to say Dumbledore is gay in the books; he had One True Love and that ended horribly, so he’s pretty much not inclined to romance with anyone, male or female, after that.
And, really, it’s mirroring the Snape/Lily relationship.
To be fair to Rowling, her books are aimed at kids, not grownups, though yes, grownups like them too. Kids don’t want to hear about all that “icky, gross suff” like sex. And they’re pretty egocentric; they’re astounded to hear that teachers have personal lives.
I remember when I was in college and I stopped off by the elementary school where my sister was teaching. She introduced me to her class by saying “Guess who this is?” When no one had a clue, she hinted “Who does she look like?”
When one of them offered “She looks like you.”, my sister said “That’s right. She’s my sister, just like EJ’s your brother.”
They were flabbergasted; they never thought of a teacher as having a sister. As far as they know, their teachers live in the classroom, eat chalk dust and sleep on the desk.
So when Rowling says “It never came up.”, I believe her. Why should it come up?
I like the announcement, as it does flesh out the character a bit, but as I think about it, I can’t see where it makes a bit of difference. In any children’s book set in a school, the sex lives of the teachers (except the creepy one whose alway peeking out the cracked doorway) is pretty immaterial. In a couple years, when/if I reread the series, I will have to see if it colors my perception.
Now if Nabakov had announced, 30 years later, that Humbert Humbert was gay…. Now THAT would have made a difference!
I had a similar”revelation” a couple years ago when Ursula LeGuin announced that she conceived of the characters in her books as being multi-racial. The original interview was in Slate, but I can’r find it. It is referenced and quoted here. As I used to read space opera, I used to conceive of aliens in a rainbow of colors, mentaly, and in some books it was the only way to keep the multitude of races separate. But it would not have made a difference if the autyhor had been thinking of them all as beige. My read, my right to interpret. YMMV
I agree with Karla. Since the books are written from Harry’s POV, for the most part, the sex lives of his teachers just aren’t things he thinks about. Most teens can be pretty self-centered, and Harry isn’t an exception. So I can see why it wouldn’t have come up in the narrative. After all, why would a headmaster tell a student, even a favorite student, that he was gay? It just wasn’t important in the Dumbledore-Harry relationship as teacher and student.
I’m glad she said it, though.
Someone pointed out on another blog how Harry-centric the book is. Even though it is told in third-person, it’s really told through Harry’s eyes, and only in the seventh book does he even consider that Dumbledore had any life outside of being headmaster. The only adults he ever wonders about are his parents, Sirius, and Lupin. He doesn’t care if his other teachers have any kind of outside life. I don’t find that all that implausible. I’ve taught both middle school and high school. There were always a few kids who asked me if I was married (and later figured out that the correct question to ask was if I had a girlfriend) but I’d venture to say that most of my students really didn’t care one little bit about my life outside of school, or if I spent all non-teaching hours sitting at my desk just waiting for them to come back. It’s pretty clear that Snape stayed single as he’s still in love with Lily even sixteen years after her death, and Dumbledore did as he devoted his life to saving the world from Voldemort. But if Professors McGonagall and Sprout are a couple, or the reason the Muggle Studies teacher knows abot the magical world at all is because she’s married to the Arithmancy teacher, how much on the forefront of Harry’s mind is that?
I can’t imagine Rowling doing it, but I’d love to see a prequel. We know plenty about the years of Voldemort’s first reign of terror from the other stories, book 7 in particular, but how interesting would it be to have some more backstory a view into Voldemort’s world, ending with the death of Lily and James? It would obviously be a very dark book. Maybe the story told in Snape’s voice. Then we’d see the Death Eaters, but we’d also see some of the good side because he makes the switch for Lily. Snape probably wouldn’t have a problem outing Dumbledore either.
I’m glad she didn’t include it in the story. There’s something patronizing about trying to cram in representations of every kind of person.
No transgender wizards are in the books? She must be a bigoted asshole!
I have to echo the idea that the books are written specifically from Harry’s point of view - or at least the point of view of a Harry-aged viewer hanging over Harry’s shoulder. There are rare and brief parts of the books that are not actually things seen by Harry, but essentially, even those are seen from a more or less 13-year-old middle class mindset.
Which is fine. The series doesn’t pretend otherwise. I know that when I was 13, I had a theoretical awareness that things like sex happened in the world, but it wasn’t that important to me. Even when puberty hit full force, it did not include any particular interest in what might or might not have been going on in the sex lives (married or divorced) of the adults around me - most particularly not in the lives of my teachers (ick) or my parents and their friends (double ick) and absolutely not in in the life of an old grey-haired and grey bearded man (triple ick).
Telling us now that she feels Dumbledore was gay doesn’t bother me or in any way feel like a cheat. Telling us now that she always thought Ron, or Hermione way gay would be. And I would be incensed if she told us now that she always thought of Neville Longbottom as gay - though I can easily see the character as gay, not telling us that during the story and still having him be a perceived straight hero WOULD be a cheat, and a horribly missed chance at letting a positive gay characterization play out.
But an old man, as seen by an 11- 18 year old? Old people have no sexuality in the eyes of the young, and it really isn’t out of character.
True, maybe a divorce or two in the scheme of things, but really, other than the Weasleys, what parents did we ever get to know? A few fathers with no mothers in evidence, and more than a few parents who died (or were driven insane) young. The Dursleys? For all we know, Neville’s grandparents had a spectacular breakup - just because the only one we met was his grandmother doesn’t mean she’s a widow — just that, bluntly, Harry didn’t care.
Ha - I think I just figured out why sometimes people post the same thing three or four times. It’s not a glitch, it’s the person actually trying again, isn’t it? I just posted a long one, it appeared to post, and now it’s not there. How long do I wait to see if it shows up?
On the other hand, I was saying a lot of what Blue Jean was at the same time she was posting hers, so if it doesn’t post, it might not be worth trying again anyway.
/meta post
Blue Jean’s opening paragraph sums all up nicely; my daughter was amazed to meet her teacher’s son one day. Even though she knew her teacher was Mrs —, the reality of that didn’t connect.
I don’t think this revelation distracts from the series, which my entire family enjoyed immensely. I’m hoping eventually Rowling will release more info on the characters and world she created in a published form; she hinted at it at one point.
That’s great that Harry doesn’t think people over 30 have sex. But it doesn’t explain why they also don’t get married, don’t get divorced, have romances or don’t, or simply don’t have a single other option for organizing family and adult life outside of marriage at 19 or lifelong singleness.
I agree with almost everyone who has commented on this so far - there’s no reason the elderly basically British headmaster of a boarding school would be out and proud to the students. It simply wouldn’t come up.
Hell, there’s a foreign-born administrator at my university who is half Dumbledore’s age and whose wife works in the same building, and most people don’t even know they’re married; when discrete people are in authoritative positions, then the rest of us are on a Need to Know basis, and we quite frankly didn’t Need to Know. As far as I know, Americans are the only ones who feel that what you prefer boinking & if you are or aren’t available to be boinked are in the top 5 list of things You Need to Know about someone and They Need to Know about you.
The great thing about it is that Harry Potter could, like LOTR, have endless spin-offs and prequels; so just because the original for-children storyline didn’t include Dumbledore taking a day off to head over to the gay pride parade, there is now the chance for young Dumbledore to have a series of his own. His tragic backstory is clearly dramatic enough to stand on its own, and Rowling has proven that adults will buy her books.
FWIW, I agree that it’s no big deal. I can easily imagine that Ms Rowling had it in her mind that DD was gay but that it was not a point central to the story she was telling. And since it was not pertinent to the story being told, why should it have come up? It just tells me that she didn’t perceive the issue of DD’s sexuality as anything that affected HIM as the teacher/mentor/wizard. It was Harry’s story after all.
I also think there’s something here that has to do with a culture clash between Britain and the US. Why wasn’t Dumbledore out? Well, what would be normative for traditional Britsh headmasters? (Since there’s no denying that Hogwarts is a very traditional British boarding school.) Queerness would not be off the map, but I think outness — especially to students — certainly would be. (Hell, the same is true for American high school principals, now that I come to think of it.)
I agree with the earlier comment about Tonks. I also thought she was gay when she was first introduced. Perhaps her ‘illicit’ ‘interspecies’ marriage was the closest symbolism for gay rights that JK could muster within the venue that she was writing, though . . . certainly, her impassioned plea to Lupin about ‘not caring what people think’ has that sort of ring to it.
My first reaqction when I heard the news was, “Oh, I can see that, I guess.” The wizarding world is an intensely fucked-up society–it’s a place where even the “good guys” have slaves, open racism and classism are commonplaces, there’s no sign whatsoever of democracy, psychological torture is an openly-celebratd part of the criminal justice system, murder is a pretty normal means of conflict resolution, lying about your very existence to the general public is the basis of the culture, and questioning any of the above is radical to unthinkable. That unhappy couples can’t get divorced, people are supposed to marry young or not at all, and nobody’s openly gay is only to be expected.
A Londoner writes:
Don’t forget that gay relationships were not legal in Britain until 1967. Dumbledore would have come from that older generation who preferred to be in the closet rather than out. Assuming the Wizarding worlds followed the same skewed parallels with the real world that we saw in other areas of life, it would not have been an issue talked about. And those who knew about it would, in that great British public school tradition of maintaining propriety, have turned a blind eye.
That’s one way of viewing it. The other is: it’s a kid’s fantasy fairy story. Who gives a shit?
And yet another way is: you guys need to read some of the works that the series was based on, like the Greyfriars stories or Jennings. The sort of stories printed in The Magnet right up until the 1940s. They were set in a very heteronormative world. JKR was aping a very old set of conventions in her books. There’s not a lot of room for liberality there.
Found it!
See this for Ursula LeGuin on how her books were reinterpreted for the TV series, against her wishes. I do sympathize, but I have a feeling that what the writer puts into a book and what the reader gets out of it are invariably two different things.
Is it “better” for a writer to allow you to project your interpretations on their characters or is it “better” for them to constrain you to their intent? Where should the balance lie?
Hey, one jewish dyke… I sympathize, sometimes it takes a while for comments to appear at my end, no matter how many refreshes I do. I think my machine just rereads cache until someone else posts a comment. Also, I just discovered that the last character in the CAPTCHA is a letter! I’d been interpreting them as all numeric and that last squiggle as part of the background. As a result, I was constantly rejected as a spambot (which, come to think of it, I may be!)
I’m agreeing with Karla, Peter, and all the rest who note that the “Harry filter” of the books doesn’t really allow for a full treatment of Dumbledore’s, or any other adult’s, sexuality. The reason we see mostly (seemingly) hetero marrieds or (seemingly) singles is due to the fact that the books are not about love and romance. Period. The Weasleys are the only couple Harry really got to know. Being a self-centered adolescent, he’s only going to pay attention to his own romantic troubles and those of his close friends Ron and Hermione - no-one else’s. For all we know, McGonagall and Poppy Pomfrey are a cozy couple, Flitwick has been married three times and has a host of grandkids whose pictures he keeps on his desk, and Sprout has a good-looking Muggle husband half her age. But Harry doesn’t notice or care, and I think the British in general are a lot more reserved about their personal lives, so Harry’s teachers aren’t about to go blabbing their personal lives to their students.
The books are thick enough as it is and are fantasy whodunits - not romance novels or Burke’s Peerage. I notice a lot of fans want more detail about their favorite character(s) than could possibly fit into the books without turning them into doorstops.
Finally, color me naive, but how is Tonks “obviously gay?” Is it the short wildly colored hair? Well, I’m straight and I have had wildly colored hair of varying lengths, so that can’t possibly be it.
Sometimes the lack of diversity can really strain the audience’s suspension of disbelief, though, pablo. I don’t think it’s as big a deal in Harry Potter, but in Battlestar Galactica—which is extremely good at casually having racial diversity and a feminist viewpoint without beating you over the head with it—the utter lack of gay characters tends to make you draw up short. Not like in a PC way, but in a way that you’re like, “But in that world, there WOULD be gay people and the lack of them is conspicuous.”
Apikoros, the situation with LeGuin was a bit different. In the Earthsea novels, she spent a bit of time on physical descriptions of characters—the main wizard character came from a region where everyone had reddish-brown skin, and his best friend was a student from another region and had very dark brown skin, and so on. Hence making it a rather big deal when they adapted it into a movie and made all of the characters white.
That’s great that Harry doesn’t think people over 30 have sex.
Well, I’m flattered to be zeroed in on, but Ailurophile pointed it out pretty well; unless somebody actually announces they’re part of a couple or it’s visible (like the Weasleys), Harry doesn’t think much about the adults’ personal lives in any way until the later books, and not much then except as it becomes relevant to The Plot.
I didn’t get Tonks being “obviously gay” either, except that she doesn’t fit the traditional stereotype and therefore must be a dyke or something, I guess.
It’s definitely a bigger issues in shows that purport to depict The Future. God forbid we start wallowing in Heinleinesque showings of how modern and cool we are, but would it kill them to have a same-sex couple where nobody makes a big deal about it?
As Tsmoss said, the wizarding world *is* fucked up and Rowling never made any apologies about that, there’s absolutely no reason to believe they would be anymore tolerant of gays than they are of “mixed blood” wizards, or tolerant in their attitudes towards giants, goblins, house-elves etc. To me that is the genius of Rowling’s universe, Voldemort isn’t the opposite of the society he’s trying to conquer. Just the worst element of it. And Rowling is also wise enough to show us that this society is not monolithic, it is composed of individuals who disagree about plenty. And there are bright people trying to improve their world eg Hermione.
As for the much remarked upon apparent tradition of marrying your teenage sweetheart at an absurdly young age, well that’s probably an in universe thing, it’s a deeply insular, reactionary kind of world that is not ours, but there’s also the real world explanation that Rowling is writing about these characters during their teen years, and the audience *wants* them to be together forever. It’s a fairy tale and they’re supposed to live happily ever after. And that may be antimodern and patriarchal etc. but it’s the nature of the beast.
Well, that’s Potterverse for you.
Everyone either has one partner or none what so ever. I really just think that has more to do with the fact that it’s about Harry.
Also, as said before it is told through Harry’s interpretation of things….Also being the fact that Harry is a boy, i don’t know if any of the adults would have shared the details of their romantic relationships with him….especially if it didn’t relate to Voldermort.
And to put all of that in there for every adult character would’ve made it a different book.
Am I the only one who thought Neville was gay?
This is sort of unrelated, but I think Micheal Gambon has taken all the charisma out of Dumbledore’s character in the movies.
I really missed Richard Harris as I watched OOTP. I’ve been secretly hoping they’d replace Gambon for The Half Blood Prince, even though I know it’s not to be.
“…Which demonstrates a sort of native understanding that even the author’s interpretations of a work are just another interpretation and you can quarrel with them. If you feel that the books don’t support the contention that Dumbledore is gay, you have just as much right to say so as Rowling has to say that she feels there’s some unspoken gay love going on.”
I think that “interpretation” isn’t really the right term for this specific case. As someone pointed out above, apparently lots of what Rowling has written about characters and events never made it into any books. But she has made a practice of talking about these as established ‘facts’ along the way’, treating them as established as the stuff that does go into the books.
When Snape’s feelings of love, or Ginny’s, are described in the books, I don’t think that one really can interpret the character as feeling other than portrayed. This seems just the same to me - no interpretation: Dumbledore’s passion was for G., and D.’s gay. (Would you change your point about interpretation if she had noted this in her epilogue? What about in a notebook published later? Would it matter whether she had written that notebook before the books?)
“It’s definitely a bigger issues in shows that purport to depict The Future. God forbid we start wallowing in Heinleinesque showings of how modern and cool we are, but would it kill them to have a same-sex couple where nobody makes a big deal about it?”
Depictions of the future in SciFi are not usually about the future at all. The story is set in a completely different time/place/culture to make it easier to examine our culture without allowing our “natural” prejudices to get in the way (at least in theory). And of course most stories/movies/shows are commercial ventures, which make the people producing/releasing them conservative and forces the writers to limit their pushing of the envelope.
IMHO…
While i would appreciate a homo character on BSG(especiaaly if it were Felix!)it doesn’t detract from the show for me that it doesn’t have any.
The only time when the lack of a gay character bothered me was on Star Trek, which went out of it’s way to include everyone, but dealt with gays in a metaphorical and cowardly way.
…see Star Trek TOS for many good examples…
ps: There’s a scene in 5 or 6 where Harry startles McGonnegall and Grubbly-Plank alone in the teachers’ lounge; given that G-P seemed to me to clearly be gay, I figured that that was a Rowling hint about a relationship/encounter between the women, and also about Harry’s cluelessness.
Well, I’m flattered to be zeroed in on, but Ailurophile pointed it out pretty well; unless somebody actually announces they’re part of a couple or it’s visible (like the Weasleys), Harry doesn’t think much about the adults’ personal lives in any way until the later books, and not much then except as it becomes relevant to The Plot.
Interestingly, Dumbledore’s One True Love was in fact relevant—that they were Together is hinted at in a way that, if they were a straight couple, would be stated more directly. It’s definitely vague where it doesn’t have to be, and that’s got more to do with her extremely cautious romantic conservatism than anything else.
Well, I don’t know who said that Tonks was “obviously gay” cause I had said that I thought she was a lesbian. And I can’t really explain it, it wasn’t her hair or some specific characteristic, just her character as a whole made me think she was gay. Now that is just my reading of it, but it was definitely a very strong vibe and I was unhappy with her whole turn of character once she started falling for Lupin, and the subsequent storyline.
I think that even though the story was through Harry’s eyes, the narrative is a little too heteronormative, especially since the potter world is supposed to move away from the world we muggle’s live in. I think it would have made sense for the potter world would have a variety of identities in life experiences, not all straight, not all happily married couples. I can’t find a good reason why this sort of stuff would not be mentioned even in passing.
Gayle: I actually thought that Neville was a)more interested in girls and b)MUCH more socially mature than either Harry or Ron, up until OOtP or HBP. Neville had my undying admiration in GOF when, after asking Hermione to the Yule Ball and being turned down, he didn’t retreat to his room, crushed by rejection; nope, he took a deep breath and asked out another girl (Ginny) who said yes. I can see Neville being catnip to the ladies as an adult, in a sweetly soulful nerdy way. And who can resist a guy who can make plants bloom?
As for casting Dumbledore - someone, I don’t know who, suggested Peter O’Toole for the role. I agree.
Everyone either has one partner or none what so ever. I really just think that has more to do with the fact that it’s about Harry.
I actually have a slightly different read on it. The unreal romantic universe of the books seems to be an attempt—one that I think fails—to make the books more mythical and fairy tale-like. I think it was a misstep; her books are better when she’s dwelling on the very human lives of the characters, and their romantic lives should have followed that tendency.
Amanda, I thinkyou present some great analysis here, but I have to admit that I cheered loudly and did a victory dance when I read the news– partly because I’ve been reading Dumbledore and Grindelwald as gay for a couple of months now, but also partly because I think that ANY disruption to heteronormativity has the potential to be very powerful.
I actually think that Rowling has been rather sneaky here– a perceptive teenage commenter at either Mugglenet or The Leaky Cauldron likened it to Hermione leaving all those hats around for the house-elves. Although an author’s interpretation of her characters may be no more valid than any others, many people do set a lot of store in things being “canon”, and Rowling’s revelation WILL cause people to reconsider their default reading of characters as heterosexual. Sure, it would have been better to introduce an openly gay character earlier on in the series, but unfortunately, if that had happened, there would have been a lot of kids who wouldn’t have been allowed to finish the series, and she probably had sympathy for those kids. Of course, that would have been a GREAT way of turning those kids against their parents’ homophobic views– but that effect will probably still occur, albeit to a lesser extent– there are going to be a lot of kids now who are going to be mighty pissed at having their Harry Potter books taken away, even if the series is finished.
I do, however, think it would have been best if there had been a more overt hint about Dumbledore’s sexuality in the “Kings Cross” chapter of Deathly Hallows– Dumbledore could have said something like “as ever, I allowed love to blind me, and allowed my greatest strength to become my weakness” with reference to Grindelwald. I agree that Dumbledore wouldn’t just go around discussing his sexual orientation with students, but I don’t think there was exactly much point in hiding it from Harry at that time– it was sort of relevant to why Dumbledore had been so “inflamed” by Grindelwald’s ideas after all. And it was at the end of the seventh book, so it’s not like there would be much opportunity for parents to take the books away.
I haven’t read much of Le Guin’s science fiction, but I’ve done a lot of work on her YA fantasy for my thesis, and the difference here is, I think, that Le Guin actually does directly refer to the racial characteristics of her protagonists in her YA fantasy– she just does it in a very offhand sort of way, so that passive readers won’t really register.
I think it would be great if Rowling did something similar to Le Guin, actually– Le Guin wrote the enormously sexist, but still highly engaging Earthsea trilogy in the 60s and 70s, then 25-30 years later came out with another trilogy interrogating all those ideas. While Rowling is not so skilled as Le Guin, and while I don’t think there’s really room for another series in the Harry Potter universe, it’d be great if she eventually came out with a series in which she did some serious critique of heteronormativity and gender roles.
And yeah, like most others, I was disappointed in the Tonks/Lupin pairing; I thought both of them would be gay. Though I did see Lupin’s ongoing discomfort with his relationship with Tonks as a sort of “gay man pushed into the closet” thing.
Fascinating how many people are defending that the information is purged because Harry doesn’t want to think about icky gross sex stuff when that in no way prevented the development and reflection of heterosexual relationships in the text.
People are also making incorrect assumptions about the release of exposition. A black character can be shown as black by noting the texture of their hair, or a jot about their family background, without needing someone to say, “Yo, noticed you’re black lately?” Gay people can likewise be indicated in many, many ways.
As Amp points out on the threat at Alas, the primary method of exposition about Dumbledore’s life in book 7 is a gossip columnist, not Harry.
Now that this is cleared up, we can get on with more pressing issues…is Froto Baggins gay?
Sabotabby, I understand and agree! One of the things I loved about Ms. Leguin’s novels was that she took on stereotypes by the handfull and made them work for her. “Left Hand of Darkness” and its use of sexuallity springs to mind.
I was trying to get to a more general discussion of the importance of precise characterization. There are instances where specification is vital (BEMs are !GREEN! If you are writing about purple BEMs, then fergoshsake, let us KNOW!) In the Earthsea books, since I had the characters placed (mentally) in a different and fantastic universe. While I noted the colors when given, since it did not make any difference to the way the characters acted I used it more for tribal/national identification. If Sparrowhawk had been trying to “pass” for Kargadish in “Tombs of Atuan” it would have been a vital thing to know, but he wasn’t. That he was a wizard and that he was trying to remove The half-ring was vital. That he was red/bronze and Tenar was white was a mere identifier. The Nameless Ones surely did not seem to care!
Given that Dumbledore is a pretty obvious combination of the Gandalf (played by Ian McKellen) and Obi-wan (played by Alec Guiness) the fact he was gay was almost screamingly obvious.
Mojho, surely you jest? He’s over 40 and living with Sam and you have to ask? Damn shame about Sam getting “born again” and “prayed straight” in the epilogue, but as for Frodo? No question!
I actually take issue with disregarding authorial intent as the “right” interpretation, especially about their intent being just another opinion that can be quarreled with. I tend to give more weight to someone who actually worked to produce something than any particular reader. Those characters sprung from Rowling’s imagination, and though someone else has to pick up her words for the “writer’s telepathy” to be complete, there wouldn’t be those words without her. Authors work hard to get their characters on pages that would be blank without them.
That said, if there’s something she thought she made clear and it turns out no one else got it, she wasn’t doing her job hard enough. I’m torn on this because just as I believe the author does have a special insight into his or her own creation, authors also do not get the right to be needlessly obscure or coy. They may play games with the reader to keep them reading, but they don’t get to cheat the reader out of a reward with something fabricated or tacked on.
As others have pointed out, Rowling had the opportunities to make this a tad more certain with a line or two.
Honestly, I was surprised in the last book that she had Ron say ‘effing’ as a curse.
The books are fairly tame, and ‘outing’ Dumbledore in the books probably would have lost her some readers.
Of course, Lupin was also gay, at least metaphorically. His comment when he leaves the teaching position about how many parents won’t want him teaching their children when they find out about him, after all, is a pretty big hint.
That’s the thing - these books are metaphors. Magic is always metaphor. Making Dumbledore gay would have been too direct for these books.
The Tonks/Lupin thing does come out of the blue, and seems to exist only for one purpose: To give Harry a parent to vent at. Lupin has the ‘best’ reason to be ambiguous about parenthood, so Rowling chose him.
I love the Harry Potter books. Love them. BUT If I have a problem with the books, it’s that she could be sloppy with the politics, culture, and demographics of the wizarding world. And I think I noticed these problems specifically because I’m gay - I’ll explain:
How many British wizards are there? No consistent number is obvious. How many students attend Hogwarts? No idea - at one point she suggests Slytherin has at least 200 students (First quidditch match in the first book), but then Harry’s year in Gryffindor seems to only have 8 kids for 7 years! I mean, it’s weird that Harry only notices these Gryffindor classmates in 6 years of school - Harry, Dean, Ron, Neville, Seamus, Hermione, Lavender and Parvati. Is that it? Strange. Also, advanced potions had a total of about 12 people - that’s all the kids taking advanced potions in Harry’s year!!! That and the Gryffindor population of 8 suggests that each class at Hogwarts could be only 40 kids per year, for a total Hogwarts population of 280! That’s tiny. But then how are there 200 Slytherins? I don’t understand. How many wizard Britons? We don’t know, but we know they basically all attend Hogwarts. We also know that all the non-reporting muggle borns could be listed in the newspaper. Does that suggest a small number? Maybe.
What is the ministry? How are people selected for minister of magic? Elections? Dictatorship? What the heck?
Now, I’m gay. One annoying thing about being gay - there aren’t that many of us. It’s hard to find a partner, etc. And, many of us didn’t get the option of dating in high school.
Now, in the wizard world, you have this one period when you meet everyone within plus or minus 7 years of your age who is a wizard in England! You’re probably going to meet your life partner then, unless you marry a muggle. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that people marry their high school sweethearts - there are very few other options!
Also, in such a small community of wizards, reputation means a lot. I’m guessing people face more social pressure to maintain traditional sexual mores. I mean, there is no flesh slate in that world. You never really get to leave high school, and you’ve known for that forever.
So, imagine how rough it must be to be a gay wizard?
And, for the record, I always suspected Dumbledore was gay.
The Tonks/Lupin things existed to create another orphan, like Harry, but this time the godfather as Harry was a lot more mature and a better parent than Sirius. J.K. Rowling said as much in an interview I’m too lazy to find. As for why Tonks and Lupin-it’s hard to say there were better characters to make that plot point with, what with Harry being close to Lupin like a father, and his actual godfather being dead.
“Gayle: I actually thought that Neville was a)more interested in girls and b)MUCH more socially mature than either Harry or Ron, up until OOtP or HBP.”
Neville’s my all time favorite H. Potter character and I agree he’s more socially mature than the other two boys, although I’d say that’s true throughout the series. I love how he grows in the books, his progression from awkward, picked on kid to true Gryffindor hero, his steadfast devotion to the DA, the revelation that he is the other “Chosen One.” (TDH: Spoiler coming up) I practically cried when he stands up to Voldemort and pulls the sword from the burning sorting hat.
I just thought he was gay is all.
However, also for the record, I thought Lupin was gay until we discovered his relationship with Tonks. It really surprised me.
Re: LeGuin. I honestly didn’t realize the Earthsea books were (mostly?) non-white characters until I read that LeGuin complaint. Then I reread the first book and every description was of dark skin - sometimes ‘bronze’ sometimes ‘black.’ Interesting how I missed that even though it is right in the text. I’ll chalk it up to my youth when I first read the books.
“…a perceptive teenage commenter at either Mugglenet or The Leaky Cauldron likened it to Hermione leaving all those hats around for the house-elves.”
Oh, well phrased! But that’s also been her pattern throughout, playing coy with her audience.
Oh, I definitely read Lupin as gay (and sirius as bi, heh) when I read the books. (Course, I’m a crazed fangirl-person.) That was one of those parts of the last book which I’m choosing to ignore in my own personal canon…and i think, aside my own biases too, that the Tonks/Lupin thing really came out of left field and was entirely to make a plot point. Which is just more support to the idea that jkr doesn’t do romance well at all.
If the headmasters sexuality were a subject of consequence, i would not have let my 7 year old read the books. Rowling seems to have gone well off the rails by the last book, too infatuated with the world of her own creation. She’s well on her way to crank-hood if she continues to engage in this kind of horseshit embroidery, Let the books stand on their own.
And it was. Didn’t you notice?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my point wasn’t about releasing exposition, but about the fact that Harry was an extremely private person, and supremely uninterested about anyone outside his immediate circle. We actually met or learned anything whatsoever about a handful of his Gryffindor classmates, and nothing whatsoever about the huge majority of the other students, far less the other teachers, and next to nothing whatsoever about anyone else. As Ailurophile pointed out, there could very easily have been a huge diversity of lives and loves in the people around Harry. We just weren’t told.
I don’t argue that Rowling COULD have added clearly gay characters subtly. But there are plenty of major characters, teachers and students alike, whose personal lives we never learned a thing about. We can assume Minerva McGonagle is a virginal spinster; but we never even get a “Miss” or Mrs” about her - just the appropriate “Professor.” It is utterly heterosexist to take for granted that unless we are specifically told that someone is gay, they must automatically be straight.
And it was. Didn’t you notice?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my point wasn’t about releasing exposition, but about the fact that Harry was an extremely private person, and supremely uninterested about anyone outside his immediate circle. We actually met or learned anything whatsoever about a handful of his Gryffindor classmates, and nothing whatsoever about the huge majority of the other students, far less the other teachers, and next to nothing whatsoever about anyone else. As Ailurophile pointed out, there could very easily have been a huge diversity of lives and loves in the people around Harry. We just weren’t told.
I don’t argue that Rowling COULD have added clearly gay characters subtly. But there are plenty of major characters, teachers and students alike, whose personal lives we never learned a thing about. We can assume Minerva McGonagle is a virginal spinster; but we never even get a “Miss” or Mrs” about her - just the appropriate “Professor.” It is utterly heterosexist to take for granted that unless we are specifically told that someone is gay, they must automatically be straight.
The way I like to set up intentionalism, only the author’s intentions that actually go into words on the page get counted into the meaning. So if there’s some way that her thought that Dumbledore was gay went into how she wrote him, he’s gay. But if it didn’t affect the words on the page, he’s not.
We may not be able to determine whether or not this happened, which gives rise to all sorts of fun readers’ debates (do Balrogs have wings?). But the fact of the matter is determined by this.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more. The fact that Rowling has said: “Look, Dumbledore is gay” - regardless of who froths at the mouth about this, how much they denounce her, talk about implausibility, after the fact, etc, IT’S DONE. Dumbledore - the headmaster, character most trusted by all parents in the book to watch over and guide their children, the wisest, most noble, beloved… etc. etc. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t explicit in the books - people will know, parents will inevitably include it, even obliquely, in discussions of the books with their kids. All kids who read and love these books will have THAT as a model of a gay person. Wonderful.
So you would have stopped your 7 year old from reading them if there had been some reference to a woman in Dumbledore’s life? Why didn’t you stop her/him reading them because there are references to Hagrid’s sexuality (Book 4 reveals that he is heterosexual), since that wasn’t really relevant to the plot?
Also, Rowling has been providing these details because fans are asking her for them. She only revealed the Dumbledore was gay because a fan asked her if he ever fell in love– and she has revealed extra information about plenty of other characters– Neville, Luna, etc.
yes. you understood.
her hamfisted handling of the revelation of the “lost chapters” of Dumbledore’s life (especially those early chapters of the last book) just killed my interest in the enterprise. Her now wading into the fan fic crowd taking license to further mucking it up is her right.
The Harry Potter Books are told form Harry’s perspective and so the sex lives of the various adult and older teenagers is not there simply because Harry doesn’t see it. Harry’s not the quickest or most astute observer, after all and has led a rather sheltered life. Still, yeah for Dumbledore!
“As Ailurophile pointed out, there could very easily have been a huge diversity of lives and loves in the people around Harry. We just weren’t told.”
That’s right. And that’s a choice that Rowling made. She exposited heterosexual relationships, but did not show any homosexual ones, even though she envisioned them. I don’t really understand why it’s difficult to see this as heteronormativity in action.
Again, Harry’s privateness has nothing to do with it. The primary expository tool about Dumbledore’s novel is a gossip columnist.
James and Lily died young so no real chance for a divorce there.
I believe one of Harry’s friends dads skipped out on his family.
As for the Weaselly’s they had roughly 37 kids and seemed to still be affectionate. It is still technically a book for young adults and no one expects them to go to Tijuana and view a Donkey show or anything.
Personally, I’m am sick about the pop culture sensation that is the Harry Potter books. I find it amazing people are making a big deal if Dumbledore is gay. He is a fictional character. Wingnuts freaked over the family vales of Murphy Brown and Tinky Winky. That says much about their disconnect from reality.
There is a war in Iraq an a credit lending crisis. That fact that some people want to make a big stink about this shows where their priorities are.
Amanda, I haven’t read the books. My question is how much of a level of realism did Rowling want to achieve in the fantasy world she created? I realize Harry Potter and realism aren’t words that go together. Did Rowling want to make other aspects of the characters relationships realistic?
My first thought on hearing Dumbledore was gay was “Huh.” Then “Is that why his suit was purple?” Then “Well, I guess it’s too bad that Ian McKellen was playing that other wizard.” Also, “High heeled boots!” and “You have to admit he’s got style.” That’s all I could think of in terms of clues.
I never gave any thought to Dumbledore’s sexuality. He always just seemed to be the old, ascetic figure on the mountaintop, who usually have submerged their sexual desires into whatever spiritual journey they have set out upon (I think you can definitely make the case that Voldemort is this type of figure), so I guess I thought it could swing either way. I mean, I never even thought, “he’s gay,” or “He’s straight.” It just never entered my head, though I was confused what the deal was supposed to be with the purple suit and high-heeled boots.
Though I think part of the reason a lot of things were left out of the books is because of Rowling’s desire to avoid certain “controversial” subjects and appeal to a broad an audience as possible, I can also see why should would only want to leave the Dumbledore/Grindenwald relationship ambiguous. If that’s the sole gay relationship in the books (something worthy of critique on it’s own) then she might want to make it too explicit, otherwise it becomes a kind of cautionary tale. “I fell in love with another man and became a crypto-fascist and killed my sister and let numerous people die because I was too chickenshit to confront him.” Not really the message to send.
I never bought the Lupin/Sirius theory. Maybe it’s just because I saw that movie first and associate those characters with David Thewlis and Gary Oldman, actors who I associate more as debauched, lecherous and possessive, sadistic, respectively. I see them more as participating in orgies or shooting heroine or being Dracula than being gay. I always saw Tonks as Spunky Punk Girl, a type I normally just read as straight, pending more data. That said, the Lupin/Tonks romance did seem forced. It felt like she wanted it to be a surprise revelation, like that was some red herring mystery going on, but Tonks wasn’t in HBP enough to care about that detail.
Oh, and regarding Rowling’s onslaught of normative families, I think she is using that to draw out Harry’s sense of longing and sense of alienation within the wizarding world. Too many broken homes and Harry feels less sympathetic, more normal. Also, I think her inspiration for Harry’s sense of longer was inspired in no small part by her own feelings about her divorce and being and single mother on the dole, feelings which were, according to her interview, quite negative. I’m betting she didn’t feel she could honestly portray a divorced family in a carefree light, and didn’t want to portray it in a negative light either, as that would probably just be discouraging for children of divorce reading the books. That’s my theory, anyways.
That said, I think that, besides the lack of divorced families or gay couples, the relationships presented in the books are more balanced than at first glance, it’s just that the Weasleys skewer the analysis. The Granger’s are both dentists. There’s also single child families, kids raised by grandparents, mixed-blood marriages, interracial couples, May-December marriages, interspecies marriages, Widowers, and of course an orphan. Funnily enough, the only actually straight up American 1950s nuclear family with 2.5 kids that I can think of is The Blacks.
That’s actually another one of those things that depends on whether you consider things Rowling says outside of the books as “canon”. Rowling revealed on her website some time ago (pre-Deathly Hallows, maybe even pre-Half Blood Prince) that Dean Thomas’s father had been a wizard who was killed during the first war with Voldemort. However, he’d never told Dean’s mother about the war or the fact that he was a wizard (because he didn’t want them to be in danger from the Death Eaters), so his mother assumed he’d just left them. Rowling originally intended to reveal this over the course of the novels, but she had to cut it out. Of course, the whole “lying about your identity” thing is not the basis for a wonderful relationship, methinks.
Amanda - there is a divorced family in the books. It’s Snape’s - he mentions that his parents are about to break up in book #7.
In addition, I’m not complaining about the seemingly young marriages. Firstly, in the wizardverse, you take your first job at 19, not 23 as is the case in our world. This in turn means that you’ll be ready for marriage at a younger age.
Secondly - it’s been mentioned explicitly in the books that the first Wizard war resulted in many people marrying early, straight out of school. There’s one point where Mrs Weasley, herself a young bride, slams her eldest son for choosing to marry so soon.
To all those who are complaining about how Rowling shouldn’t release the details because they don’t “add anything”, you might want to remember that Rowling was specifically ASKED by a reader if Dumbledore had ever fallen in love.
The little backstories are fun, and it makes the books more real. Actually, I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t some snobbery at work by the people who slam Rowling for “delving into the fanfic crowd”.
Misplaced Patriot @ 48 - I always read Lupin, or rather his lycanthropy, as an allegory for HIV/AIDS. Yours makes sense though too.
I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t some snobbery at work by the people who slam Rowling for “delving into the fanfic crowd”.
Of course there is.
It’s just that in this case snobbery is totally justified, because fanfic is terrible.
Because in general, the British wizarding world is stuck in the 1950’s.
Why? Well, speculating starts getting into psychoanalyzing people I don’t know, but I have to wonder if JKR’s personal history made her want to write about a reality that she felt she should have had.
I think the exact opposite. In the first movie, Richard Harris just didn’t seem to twinkle–he didn’t seem to have the spark and the sense of mischief that Dumbledore in the book had. CoS was even worse, because it was obvious watching it that he was very sick. I like Michael Gambon’s Hippie!Dumbledore, and I can totally picture him as one of “Britain’s stately old homos”.
Funny you should mention this…in the British edition of the first book, Dean Thomas’ race is never indicated. However, when it was published in the U.S., in addition to changing the title, Scholastic got Rowling to add a phrase identifying Dean as black, apparently assuming that Americans wouldn’t get it. And given how HP fandom lost its mind when HBP came out and it we learned that Blaise Zabini was a) male and b) black, they may have had a point. Unless Dumbledore was shown making out with Grindlewald, I think people would still be insisting it wasn’t true because she didn’t say so explicitly in the text.
By the way, I think the reason Rowling waited until the series was over to reveal this was because she knew some assholes wouldn’t let their kids read the books anymore if they knew this. Her concern wasn’t about sales, but about the kids. That’s the kind of lady she is, from the impression I’ve gotten.
How/why did HP fandom lose it’s shit when it turned out that Blaise Zabini was a black guy? I missed this.
I realise you’re right. Rowling just isn’t given to strong statements, or putting in background to secondary characters. She tends to prefer subtle mentions - e.g. she never says that the Patil twins are Indian, nor that Cho is East Asian.
Is it a British thing, though? I had the impression that British media and literature in general tends not to take pains to mention race unless it’s germaine to the point that they’re trying to make.
By the way, I remember some of the American potterfans went berzerk when they went to the movies, and realised OMG, Cho isn’t white, and neither was Parvati. The racism was through the roof - you had people complaining that it was “wrong” of the directors to cast a Chinese girl as Cho, because Rowling never wrote that she was Chinese. A couple of bright sparks went on to complain that if they’d known that Parvati was Indian, they could have tried out for the part because “my grandfather is Sioux.”
I’m just saying - for some people, it’s never explicit enough.
Sometimes I think that the problem with the Potter books is that they’re too popular. As a result, everyone wants it to address their particular issue. In particular, you get adults who want to “claim” the book, complaining that there is no mention of teen sex, etc. ignoring that its primary audience is for 10 year olds. While I agree that exposure to certain important issues can be done at a young age, I can completely understand why Rowling chose to address others instead. Her primary goal as an author is to tell a story to her chosen audience.
Seriously - has there been any other book that has so much demanded of it?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure fandom didn’t lose it’s shit over that-the shit started initially when we didn’t know what gender he is, and to fandomers, for some reason that was Very Important-so this caused huge amounts of wank and threads and “but who is s/he really?” and such. So the vast amount of attention started from that.
I always read Lupin as gay. And the Dumbledore thing was pretty blatent in book 7. My 15 year old picked up on it.
(I figured Lupin just had Tonks metamorph into Sirius for him… And she married him because she was really in love with Sirius and he was the closest thing to Sirius.)
I find it amazing people are making a big deal if Dumbledore is gay. He is a fictional character.
Yes, he’s a fictional character, but as an idealist, I can tell you that Dumbledore is more real to more people than you or I. The idea, the character, has consequence. You can say that’s not fair, and maybe so, but Dumbledore’s hardly the only imaginary figure to command the imagination of a multitude of people; from Beowulf on down, fictitious creatures have nevertheless had an outsized real-world influence.
Now, I’m also a deconstructionist; I believe that it is a mistake from a lit-crit standpoint to take Rowling’s statement as the final word on Dumbledore. But I also think that she hinted strongly in book 7 about Dumbledore’s sexuality, and indeed, that her hinting was no less a clue than she gave about Snape’s longing for Lilly before Harry literally saw into Snape’s memories in book 7.
The point can be argued, though, and clearly since some were blindsided by Rowling’s pronouncement, her intention was not made clear to all readers. And so we can go round about all night, wondering about the symbolism of Dumbledore’s killing of his sister, or whether Dumbledore killed her at all. And it’s fun, so by all means, continue.
That said, the statement by Rowling does carry cultural weight. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does; people will take her intent into account when reading the books, even if they oughtn’t. Dumbledore was outed by Rowling, and while I would argue that the text backs her up, I don’t need to. People who haven’t bothered to decide whether they’re intentionalists or deconstructionists will simply decide that if the author says it, it must be true, and nobody will wonder about Dumbledore’s sexuality a generation from now.
And on that front, the outing is a good thing, because Dumbledore has significance. He is a God-Teacher, and as such carries great weight in the books, perhaps more than any character not named Harry Potter. He was wise and heroic, and by the way, happened to be gay. And when confronted with that last little piece of the puzzle, the crowd gave a standing ovation. That will have relevance, and well it should.
First off, there is a divorced couple mentioned in the books, as well. Seamus Finnegan mentions that his (muggle) father left his (witch) mother when he discovered that she was a witch.
Second, I’d always read Justin Finch-Fletchley as being pretty explicitly coded as the kind of boy who’d realise he was gay when he got a bit older, at least (and I am kind of sad that we never really saw him again after the second book, but I fall in love with minor characters). Especially given the fact that it’s him and the female characters who are all head over heels for Gilderoy Lockheart.
And Corvus: ALL OVER. See here for a start, though I can’t find the even more headdesky moments that we had in through there.
Hilarious. Getting all riled up because a fictional series of books about wizards doesn’t devote enough time discussing the intimate relationships of the characters in the story. My kid started reading Harry Potter in 1st grade. No way did he care who was married to whom or how old they were when they got married or whether anyone was gay.
Don’t like the character development, or think the author’s agenda was misguided/incomplete? You’re free to write your own books any time.
I’ve just been amused ever since the announcement at how many people are angry that at no time during a very tense wartime situation did the elderly headmaster reveal the obviously vitally important information to one of his underage students that he liked guys.
I’ve only read the main post and haven’t waded through the comments yet, but thank you so god damn much for writing this. I started the books in my senior year of high school, around the time the fifth one came out, and while I do love them, they’ve always creeped me out for exactly the reasons you describe.
I can understand to some extent that Harry’s feelings for Cho and Ginny (neither of whom is really a real, rounded character, by the way, and it drove me nuts the way Rowling kept telling us how cool, funny, and brilliant Ginny was in the last couple books without ever showing us any of that charm, wit, or intelligence) had to be described in cliche-ridden terms of “odd sensations” and gastric butterflies. It’s not like Rowling could have had Harry thinking realistic adolescent boy thoughts about his crush in a children’s book.
I can also accept, grudgingly, that by the standards of our culture any form of children’s media that acknowledges the existence of homosexuality is assumed to be making a political statement, and so most don’t. Being gay myself, this bothers me, but I can’t really fault Rowling for an erasure that’s pretty much de rigueur for the world of children’s literature.
The rest of it, however, is something I’ve been arguing about with a couple of friends for four years. The conversation usually goes, “Holy shit, these people are straight out of Leave It To Beaver. I know Mr. and Mrs. Weasley sleep in twin beds.” “It’s a children’s book!” “But, they all fall deliriously into undying and vanilla hetero love by the age of seventeen and go on to marry and have an unrealistic number of children!” “But… but… children’s book!”
Seriously, I’m pretty sure most children have heard of divorce (and, hell, sex) by the time they’re able to read, much less deal with all the torture and killing that goes on in Harry Potter. (By torture I’m referring to the cruciatus curse, not the the pages and pages of flaccid exposition that fill books six and seven.)
As for your first point about literary criticism, Amanda, I have to admit that the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this story was, “Gosh, haven’t any Potter fans read Wimsatt and Beardsley’s ‘The Intentional Fallacy’?!” On second thought, though, groups of sci-fi/fantasy fans seem to operate from a different set of assumptions than those of literary critics. The idea seems to be that the “real” universes of Middle-Earth/Hogwarts/Sunnydale exist in the minds of their creators, and the text is an imperfect reflection thereof. Hence the notions of canon, ret-conning, etc etc. It all makes a certain sense when you come to think of it, especially as these kinds of stories aren’t confined to the kind of monolithic text that we normally think of as “literature,” but are disseminated through an array of media that often contradict each other: books, films, comics, novelizations of films, films based on books, films based on comics, etc.
Amanda, considering that Lupin was the same age (roughly anyway) as Harry’s father I don’t see how you can claim that there’s no middle aged dating within the books. Also Hagrid’s brief attempt to woo Madam Maxime is another example of old people attempting to have a romantic entanglement. Admittedly the latter failed, but within the context of the story this seems to be because Madam Maxime has trouble with her Giant blood and pushes Hagrid away because of that. In edition while you’re ranting about the fairytale-like one sweetheart romances just remember that both Harry and Hermione have dated more than one person, Harry’s first crush was Cho and he only later became attracted to Jinny, Hermione and Victor were dating, although admittedly it was never very serious.
Back to Lupin x Tonks, it’s pretty clear that Tonks likes Lupin in book 4 (although admittedly it’s not entirely clear about whether it’s as a friend or something more), so the claim that she’s a lesbian is shaky at best. At the time it is clear that Lupin doesn’t have any intention of marrying anybody, but I guess Tonks managed to reel him in (actually, I know how Tonks hooked him, after Sirius died Lupin really was alone and Tonks is just the level of friendly that can break through even the most hardened lycanthrope/misanthrope (BTW, that’s what I saw Lupin’s lycanthropy as being, something, no matter what it is, that makes someone an outcast enough that they start to fear their own species). But then I saw her as a punk, now I may not be the most politically aware individual, but I know the universe is not made up of Sailor Moon stereotypes where the lesbian is going to be this butch tomboy who is indistinguishable from a man except for the lack of testes. Yes, the courtship period was shorter than the several years that is recommended, but actually, one year is not unheard of as a courtship period and considering the background events it’s not at all surprising. Yes, I was disappointed by Tonks going from independent field agent to housewife, but I’m not surprised in the least. Why? Well think about it, Voldimort had returned and was killing people. What are couples (or non-couples who just happen to not dislike each other and are comfortable with it) most likely to do when faced with mortal peril? They fuck, and unless they use protection pregnancy is a possibility. Now when we first hear of Tonks in book 7 she’s far enough along with the pregnancy that it could have interfered with her performance as a field agent, in that situation it would be stupid to continue fighting in a dangerous situation when your body might betray you with badly timed morning sickness during a fight. Actually although some people dislike that both Tonks and Lupin died in the final battle I like that Tonks didn’t play it safe and stay home with the baby, once she could safely leave the baby behind with her mother she went back to being a fighter.
Other than that though we’re seeing events through Harry, not in the sort of 3rd person environment where we can or could be expected to be able to see the relationships of all the other characters. This is especially true in book 7 where Harry is mostly cut off from everyone except Ron and Hermione. Also notice that although the post-story is set 19 years in the future there is no set date for when the various couples married or how long it took them to start procreating. We do, however, know that if the oldest kid is in 2nd or 3rd year that this leaves 4 or 5 years between the end of the battle and the time the oldest child was born, quick perhaps but far from unreasonable. Now who’s coloring the characters with the “assumed default”?
The Lupin/Sirius theory is there because of the popularity of shonen ai in fanfic. If you look at the fanfiction you’ll see that between all of them everyone’s jumping everyone else. Personally I like the James x Sirius pairing, another reason I don’t think Lupin x Sirius would work out, if Sirius was gay he definitely had a thing for James. Dumbledore being gay is one reason I think he distanced himself from Harry in the 5th book, as he himself said, he cared for him too much.
“You’re free to write your own books any time. ”
I do, thanks. But I love the fact that you’re suggesting that one shouldn’t criticize texts for being heteronormative because otherwise you’re just being mean and unfair. That’s ridiculous, and there’s no way you’d put up with it in another thread if we were criticizing racist hiring practices or the lack of mainstream political blogs that take abortion seriously as an issue. Really, Hattie, next time you complain about anything, I hope you remember that you could just start your own whatever-it-is.
Anyway, I love the meme that “Geez! It’s so not fair that people are complainign that teh gays are hidden!” is being brought out here.
It’s bullshit when people say that gay individuals who acknowledge their relationships are rubbing everyone else’s face in it, when at the same time heterosexual couples who have wedding rings and photos are just being normal. Likewise, it’s bullshit for you to argue that gay sexuality has no place in the book when heterosexuality is all over the pages.
Fiction doesn’t occur through magical wand-waving. It is a result of rational decision-making. In this case, heteronormative rational decision-making.
I realize y’all like Harry Potter, but you’re making some really crappy arguments here.
ms:
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more. The fact that Rowling has said: “Look, Dumbledore is gay” - regardless of who froths at the mouth about this, how much they denounce her, talk about implausibility, after the fact, etc, IT’S DONE. Dumbledore - the headmaster, character most trusted by all parents in the book to watch over and guide their children, the wisest, most noble, beloved… etc. etc. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t explicit in the books - people will know, parents will inevitably include it, even obliquely, in discussions of the books with their kids. All kids who read and love these books will have THAT as a model of a gay person. Wonderful.
this is the best thing said on this thread, i think, and you are right — it is really beautiful.
Of course the whole intentionalist/deconstructionist thing is particularly interesting here because so many people decided to read Dumbledore/Grindelwald as gay before Rowling made it “canon”. Is Rowling undercutting resistant readings with her revelations? Will other slash pairings be less popular now that there is a “canon” gay couple? Or will they be more popular? (Actually, there’s a good chance that this will really feed into the Albus Severus based slash fiction, methinks; Albus Severus could discover his namesake’s history as he discovers his own identity, etc). What is the significance of the fact that fans who choose to continue reading Dumbledore as straight are now the ones “resisting” the text?
All of these questions are making my English Student brain very happy, and they are distracting me from my thesis (oh well, at least I do get to talk about Harry Potter in my thesis, but not from this angle).
I was glad that it was not beat-you-over-the-head obvious that Dumbledore was gay. I’ve always been bothered by the fact that being gay becomes the defining characteristic of that person. Who cares if Todd helped invent a new arthritis medicine? He’s gay and looking for a boyfriend! By not making a huge Dumbledore controversy around his being gay in the books, it allows us to focus on his character. As a teacher, even if his sexuality were a big part of his life, his students would probably not be aware of this.
I definitely agree with this. Many of the filler episodes of Babylon 5 were about current social attitudes. For example, in the episode about the plague that wiped out a lot of the Drasi, they delved into the fact that the Drasi did nothing to help plague victims because the disease was linked to “certain deviant behavior”. I was disgusted that the writers didn’t come right out and list AIDS as Earth’s “historical” analogue to the story’s plot, though I’m not sure if that was marketing at influence or a respect for the intelligence of the audience to draw their own direct inferences. (I cannot find the frigging episode name, check the Lurker’s Guide, it’s in there.)
Sometimes a show does a very good job addressing current social issues, most of the time they’re so oblique as to be inscrutable. Most viewers end up feeling that they got a stern yet vague lecture, while only we who geek out incessantly on every point of minutia end up coming away feeling vaguely satisfied. I blame the writers for not doing a better job as much as I blame the chickenshit nature of the media.
Maybe, but in BSG at least half the storylines are about the military, and is made in a country where “don’t ask, don’t tell” applies. Coincidence? I think not.
Neither did I. But then I notice that in conformist America, anyone who dyes their hair or is a little nonconformist tends to get looked at askance in certain burgs. Here in London we wouldn’t give a Tonks a second glance or have her ping our gaydar.
I think an interesting point is that she defines Dumbledore like the rest of the characters- as completely shaped by his narrow window of formative years. I think this is fine for her young adult focused fiction- I think this is where most kids and teens have their most vivid fantasy life around. It is just par for the course. Certainly she wants to have her cake and eat it to on the issue, but I am fine with the decision. The inner lives of almost all the adult characters are hidden from view, and Dumbledore was the most secret of all, so I am not troubled by the fact that nobody knew. She did not explore whether wizarding society was homophobic. She certainly explored its racist aspects, and I think she somewhat tried to present it as less sexist, beyond her actual characterization of most of the teenage women. In her inner feelings about the book, she might have decided homosexuality was no big deal in her magical society, but she didn’t dare present it as such, so she elided it OR she felt the society was deeply homophobic and therefore chose not to explore its hidden nature.
By the way, Gambon is very definitely an improvement on Harris in the movies. Dumbledore’s sly intelligence has never been more apparent. Given that Gambon is very hetero, I wonder what he made of playing a gay bloke?
Godless Heathen: The race in question was the Markab, not the Drazi, and the episode in question was Confessions and Lamentations.
Now having proven my geekish overknowledge of BOTH B5 and HP, I’m going to geek off to my geekhole to geek some more.
Gawd what a geeky thread. I love it!
A lot of you are lamenting that the adult characters in Rowlings books are chaste, boring creatures, but what about Tonks and Lupin?
It’s pretty clear that Tonks gets pregnant before she and Lupin get married, that or she can magically shorten gestation or something. Moreover, the fact that Tonks and Lupin have a child at all is proof that they do indeed have sex lives.
And wait, wasn’t there something going on between Hagrid and the headmistress of the magical French girls’ school in book 4?
Actually, Tonks announced the pregnancy at the end of July, on Harry’s birthday. Teddy was born sometime after Easter the next year, which probably means April. That sounds like about nine months to me…
Woops, you’re right. I thought Teddy was born in the winter.
I read Dumbledore and Grindelwald the same as Alan Turing and Rudy von Hacklheber in Cryptonomicon. That is, they were isolated geniuses who could only find company and stimulation with one another, since nobody else was on their level. Eventually this evolved into a relationship of some sort…sex is never really dealt with beyond the “ZOMG SNOGGING” stage anyway, so while the intensity of Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald is obvious, and the sexual part pretty strongly implied, I’m not sure how relevant it is.
Miss Sarajevo: Moreover, the fact that Tonks and Lupin have a child at all is proof that they do indeed have sex lives.
No, it’s proof that they’re both fertile and want a child. There’s always AI.
Bananaphone: I was glad that it was not beat-you-over-the-head obvious that Dumbledore was gay. I’ve always been bothered by the fact that being gay becomes the defining characteristic of that person.
I’ve always been bothered by the fact that it’s okay to be beat-you-over-the-head obvious that a character is heterosexual, and it’s okay to talk about their sexual orientation at length (Molly Weasley. Ginny Weasley. All Harry’s inner thinking about Cho and Ginny. Yes, yes, he’s straight, can we get back to the plot now?) but that non-het sexual orientation has to be delicately hinted at and any discussion of it at all suddenly becomes ragged at as “oh it becomes the defining characteristic of that person”.
I’ll think less of J.K.Rowling forevermore that she didn’t have the guts to tell us that Dumbledore was gay in the last book.
Oh, and to those who say that Harry would never have been interested in or noticed any adult’s sexual orientation: we find out that Molly and Arthur Weasley are heterosexual early, early, early - (I can’t remember just when it became clear that this certainly wasn’t a marriage of convenience between a dyke and a gay man, but it certainly was clear well before Book 4) - and in Book 4, Harry finds out Hagrid’s heterosexual. (Or at least bisexual.) Furthermore, in Book 7, the gossip columnist who wrote the obituary could have outed Dumbledore (and, remembering what she was like, would have) and later Harry and Dumbledore have that long conversation in which Dumbledore could easily have admitted “Yes, I was in love with him - ” and didn’t.
And if anyone thinks that her publishers would have refused to print it?
They’ve already forgotten the build-up to Potterdammerung. There is no way her publisher in the UK would have turned the book down because she’d outed Dumbledore at last. Just no way. (Maybe her publisher in the US would’ve been that stupid, but I bet would have backtracked when they realised how much they were going to lose…)
Not much to add… but another separated couple in the HP series were Voldemort’s parents. Although since Tom Riddle Sr was under a spell and left immediately when it was lifted, I’m not sure it actually counts as a relationship.
A thought- had the dynamics been reversed with Tom SR putting a spell on Merope Gaunt, wouldn’t it have been a form of rape? If so, why wasn’t it called that when she did it to him? either way, it was a violation. There were a couple of different scenes discussing love potions, but never the potential criminal aspects of it.
I always thought one of the faults of Wizard culture was that Love Potions were legal, although they rob of free will (like the Imperius Curse) and allow rape. The Wizard world is virtually lawless in many ways, allowing Dueling, for example.
It’s Sirius I always saw as gay or bi. “Joined at the hip” with James. He must have been heartbroken when James finally got Lily to date him. He never talked about Lily to Harry. Only about James. And *why* would Molly get so upset at Sirius for not differentiating between James and Harry? For the same reason Sirius gets all depressed if he has to go a few months without seeing Harry. There’s a danger of the affections being transferred too completely because of Sirius’s emotional damage from Azkaban.
If Sirius and Lupin were lovers, what a mess. Lupin couldn’t do much about Sirius’ depression, and Sirius didn’t care enough about him to include him in his will. Once Sirius died, Lupin was homeless again, and everything went to Harry.
Lupin had sweet things to say about Lily. He couldn’t be with anyone because of a disease he’d gotten in his youth– to me that was very much AIDS as it presented itself in the 80s. Some got it from sex, others, from a blood transfusion. And no matter why you had it, people would shun you as a carrier of death.
Also, the tradition of lycanthropy has always centered on men. The earliest werewolf stories were about a murderer running wild among monks who had allowed him sanctuary and bringing a curse on himself. Lycanthropy traditionally was inherited on the male line at age 18. Many gentle men relate to the werewolf idea, because of the combination of anger and testosterone that can hit them without warning (especially as teens), making them *feel* violent in a way that frightens them.
So to me, he not only represented an AIDs victim, but a certain type of straight male who is, the vast majority of the time, sweet, quiet, firm rather than aggressive in argument– but who fears his dark side.
Dumbledore? I didn’t see it before it was announced, but now that she has, yes. And I *don’t* think that he never moved on. “After all these years?” “Always” Dumbledore seemed surprised Severus hasn’t let his feelings for Lily fade; Severus underscores that he will never change. Well, I can’t blame Dumbledore for hoping. Severus is pretty charismatic in his own way.
Quite to the contrary…I always took that as part of what made Tom Riddle Jr. snap: not only was his mother a witch who fell in love with a Muggle, but she was a witch who basically raped a Muggle, which is sort of unthinkable from the Pureblood standpoint, and became something he was incapable of mentally handling. Coupled with all the accessible powers to strike back lying around, and the lack of an equivalent to psychology in Wizarddom, he lost sanity, and became incapable of having functional relationships with women, instead viewing Muggle women as objects to torture, and functionally ignoring, for the most part, gender as a construct among his Death Eaters. (If you notice, he only keeps a total of 3 women around him, two of whom are married and one of whom he shows a complete lack of interest in.) This is not to say that all children born of rape are going to grow up to be The Most Evil Person In the UniverseTM, just that, by comparison to Rowling’s sanitized world where people get married at 19 and start making babies, it makes his background seem that much more conducive to EEEE-VIL.
One thing I wonder is how much external information fell victim to the red pen of editing. The books are long already, and I am fairly certain the original hand written versions, were longer still. So, if I had to bet much of the back story is gone due to length. Additionally, I think I remember that there were problems with the editing in the later books because JKR would put things in that the editors did not feel were appropriate to younger readers, so I wonder how much was excised for that reason.
Okay, I guess I can finally tell this. The old boy wanted it kept a secret, but now that the cat’s out of the bag…
Dumbledore and I had a…well, not really an affair. More of an incident. I was in college, and you know how one experiments when one is in college. There was alcohol involved, naturally, and a wide stance, and I guess I was dazzled a bit by this charming, powerful older man who could make stuff appear and disappear (the trick he does with handcuffs ought to be in Lance Burton’s show). Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge and neither of us took it very seriously then or now. In fact, we remained friends for many years afterwards, though we hadn’t been in touch for a while until the Potter books came out.
So, yes, Dumbledore is, if not gay, then at least bi, and I hope none of the more extreme religious groups around try to tarnish his image because of it. There’s no point to it, for one thing.
Not too sure I agree with the premise of most people’s excuse–that kids don’t notice that their teachers have lives outside the classroom. Certainly that’s true of elementary school, but not high school. It has been a few years now, but I recall having known quite a bit about my teachers–marriages, children, famous relatives, political sympathies (who subscribed to TNR and who to MJ), where they grew up, first names, etc.
Maybe my friends and I were atypically close with our teachers, but I don’t think so. And certainly no more so than Hermione would have been.
We all know that Rowling left out any explicit mention of Dumbledore’s sexuality because of the political repercussions. Not because it didn’t fit the story or whatever.
I do, however, think that this is a good thing and will change how people read the book. It’s like if we suddenly found out that Aslan had been intended as gay.
There seems to be some misunderstanding here, that the people who don’t see it as an issue that Rowling didn’t get specific about Dumbledore’s orientation are automatically saying that they agree with the choice or are somehow defending the decision as the right and proper (or only appropriate) one.
I don’t mind that she didn’t get explicit about the issue, nor that she chose other areas (international politics, for example) to deeply simplify and gloss over. I wouldn’t have minded some more clearly defined same-sex attractions, if they weren’t distracting from the rest of the book.
But it seems that a lot of people are criticizing the books for not being an entirely different set of books. There are other series, written from an adult viewpoint, for adult readers, that do go into depth on such issues - and that’s the books those were meant to be.
Heteronormative? Sure. But at the same time, if the percentages of gay wizards and witches match those in our population here in the real world, it seems perfectly reasonable that Harry, who has about 15 people in his close circle, including adults, didn’t end up with one of them being gay. (And I’m still not sure about Neville). It works for me that with all the bullying and prejudice at Hogwarts, orientation was never an issue. Nobody was ever called out for being a sissy, or too butch.
Most prejudice regarding sexual orientation is clearly linked with rigid sex-role normativity and percieved gender appropriateness. In a subculture where the women and girls are just as likely as the men and boys to be warriors, Quidditch players, government ministers, highly placed school officials, etc, a lot of the basis for hostility just goes away. It may be that Harry didn’t focus on any of the tertiary characters’ sexualities because it never occured to him to care.
A lot of people seem to think a funky, outgoing, tough female literary character = teh gay!
I never thought that Tonks was gay. I mean, not ever. Her relationship with Lupin could have been awesome if handled differently, but Rowling botched it up by trying to confine it to traditional roles.
Gandalf and Aslan are gay too. You heard it here first. T-shirts to follow.
Well, I don’t have a horse in this race because I couldn’t make it past the fourth book, or I didn’t until this came out. My partner’s comment on this was that Dumbledore’s relationship with G-whosit was pretty clearly telegraphed as a gay romance in her opinion. So certainly the author’s interpretation matches that of other readers.
But the question of “If he is, why didn’t you say so in the first place? Isn’t just about interpretation, and at any rate “the author is dead” is only one of several theoretical lenses that one can deploy(*). In this case another reasonable theoretical lens is to examine texts as political actions. I don’t care that much about correct or proper interpretations, and at least one of the primary faults I’ve had with Potter is that in the Umberto Eco sense of open narratives that offer opportunities for multiple interpretation, and closed narratives that try to seal all the doors, I find Potter to be almost claustrophobic, even for juvenile literature. When I raise the question of, “why didn’t she say so in the first place?” it’s to point out that she has openly admitted to closeting characters in her primary texts. Given how openly she flirts with making Potter into a polemic against narrow-minded conservativism, her punting on the issue strikes many in the LGB communities as yet another example of how LGB characters have been treated in history.
And all this chatter about how closeting Dumbledore is justified because she was writing to the audience, or because her characters are sexless, or because Harry is a self-centered teen who doesn’t notice the personal lives of those around him strikes me as just rationalizing a decision to perpetuate the literary closeting of LGB characters. Her readers applauded her interpretation, considerable text is spent detailing Hagrid’s background and romantic failure, and Dumbledore’s relationships are exposed by Skeeter. Her closeting of Dumbledore stands in stark contrast to the well-aged Witch Baby by Francesca Block (from the point of view of a girl younger and no less absorbed in her own angst compared to Potter), Hero by Perry Moore (another genre fiction work), and Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan and Joss Wheedon.
(*) And it should be noted that even those who subscribe to the notion that “the author is dead” and put the importance of interpretation on the work are open to the possibility that the “work” may include secondary documents such as notes (such as the one Rowling submitted to screenwriters on this very issue), letters, adapted screenplays, and alternate versions (as exist with Frankenstein).
bananaphone: I’ve always been bothered by the fact that being gay becomes the defining characteristic of that person.
It’s always the people who are entrenched in their own heterosexism who never see beyond the gayness of a character. How would the explicit revelation of a romantic interest between Dumbledore and G-whosit change six volumes of character development in which we learn that Dumbledore often plays the fool, loves new socks, is protective of his charges and has bad luck with all-flavored beans?
Peter: It may be that Harry didn’t focus on any of the tertiary characters’ sexualities because it never occured to him to care.
Dumbledore a tertiary character?
Jeez. Why didn’t Harry address global warming? FGM? AIDS? Animal abuse? “Domestic” violence? Darfur?
“Heteronormative”? What a laugh. Where in the Harry Potter books is sex described in detail? What makes you think the few relationships in the series are “heteronormative” in practice anyway? Yeesh. Talk about going overboard.
Is every kids’ novel not worth reading unless it includes heterosexual, bisexual, polyamorous, transgendered, BSDM, homesexual relationships and scenarios? Should all those combinations not have been included in the books by Beverly Cleary? After all, children DO KNOW about sex, so it should be in their books!!!
Do you ever have fun? You know, plain-old, spontaneous, non-hand-wringing, non-agenda-driven fun?
On the topic of making unconscious (white, hetero) assumptions about fictional characters: I’m reminded right away of a book by Neil Gaiman called “Anansi Boys”. What was cool about it is that the first half of the book is written in fairly racially-neutral terms. The main character, “Fat Charlie”, lives in England, and is described as being a socially awkward, somewhat nerdy accountant. I confess to picturing the character as white, because that’s what my internal stereotype of a nerd is.
About half way through the book, you realize that most, if not all, of the characters are black. (Actually, Fat Charlie’s love interest is half black, half Asian- and you only know that because Gaiman off-handedly comments on the color of her skin, mixed in with a flashback to her parent’s courtship). This revelation is not overt, and some of the characters could still be plausibly pictured as white, but overall the racial picture is undeniable.
This mistake I made in picturing the characters as white, and then realizing I was wrong to do so, was my favorite aspect of my experience of the book. It was fun to reread it with my updated mental pictures.
I’m actually looking forward to rereading some of the Harry Potter books with the gay Dumbledore in mind.
Also, advanced potions had a total of about 12 people - that’s all the kids taking advanced potions in Harry’s year!!!
My high school had 2,000 students, but the AP classes only had about 12-15 students in each. So this doesn’t seem at all off-base to me.
And I’m sorry that this is going to piss some people off, but if you really think that JK Rowling could have put this revelation into the very first book and gotten it published as a children’s book, you’re living in a dream world. Fair or not fair, no children’s publisher is going to take that heat.
Besides, aren’t British boarding schools notorious for being hotbeds of gayness (no pun intended)? I suspect that Dumbledore being gay was much more obvious much earlier to British readers than it was to us. Though, yes, i did get it by book seven, finally.
Hmmm, Badpoetry, that makes me wonder how many are familiar with Anansi?
I knew the characters were black b/c Anansi is an African god….I also recommends you read “American Gods” as it kinda ties into “Anansi’s Boys”
tinfoil hattie: Jeez. Why didn’t Harry address global warming? FGM? AIDS? Animal abuse? “Domestic” violence? Darfur?
Ahh but we are not talking about gay wizards that live in London, Brighton, or San Francisco. We are talking about relationship that Rowling feels is important enough to describe as a way to explain current events in the series. In fact, one of the key themes of the series is that Potter and Co. are paying for the relationship problems of the previous generation.
For example, the relationship between Hagrid’s parents is described in detail in order to set up his relationship fumble in Goblet and Snape’s motivation is described in terms of his unreturned romantic relationship with Lilly Potter. So when we are given a story within a story explaining Dumbledore, why is it that his sexuality is referenced only obliquely? It’s that double-standard that points to the heterosexism of the text.
mnemosyne: And I’m sorry that this is going to piss some people off, but if you really think that JK Rowling could have put this revelation into the very first book and gotten it published as a children’s book, you’re living in a dream world. Fair or not fair, no children’s publisher is going to take that heat.
Well, of course we are not talking about the first book, we are talking about the last book, in a series that Rowling also said that she wanted to grow with her readers. Arguably we are in the realm of young adult fiction, and not children’s fiction.
But even so, publishers of juvenile fiction have taken the heat on this for years now, starting with Judy Blume and then later with Francesca Block. Even Marvel fucking Comics takes a risk on two teen-rated titles with queer characters.
I’d much rather hear an honest confession that this was due to self-censoship than a bunch of BS rationalizing it as essential to the plot.
tinfoil Hattie: “Heteronormative”? What a laugh. Where in the Harry Potter books is sex described in detail? What makes you think the few relationships in the series are “heteronormative” in practice anyway? Yeesh. Talk about going overboard.
“HETERONORMATIVITY (heteronormative): Those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic, heterosexual standards for identity. The term is a short version of ‘normative heterosexuality’.”
Every single romantic relationship described as such in the books is heterosexual. The subtextual hints of the relationship between Sirius and Remus, or Sirius and James, or Dumbledore and Grindelwald, are nowhere explicitly made text: and two out of three were explicitly denied by Rowling. So, yeah: the Harry Potter books are very heteronormative.
mnemosyne: And I’m sorry that this is going to piss some people off, but if you really think that JK Rowling could have put this revelation into the very first book and gotten it published as a children’s book, you’re living in a dream world. Fair or not fair, no children’s publisher is going to take that heat.
Straw man and “sorry if” apology! you win the prize.
J. K. Rowling couldn’t even keep Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from being hacked about for an American edition with a title change, but no one has ever claimed that Rowling could have inserted an openly gay character into a children’s novel intended tor 10-year-olds and not had her American publishers at least throw a hissy and insist it be censored out.
By Book Six, though, it was clear to anyone of the meanest intelligence that J. K. Rowling could pretty much do as she liked: and by Book Seven, if Rowling had chosen to have Dumbledore come out to Harry in the deserted King’s Cross station, or had the Rita out him in the obituary, or do it virtually any way she liked short of a pornographically-remembered sex scene in the Pensieve - are you seriously saying you think that any publisher would have said “We’re not taking that book, you have to take that scene out or we won’t publish it!”
Yeah, right. If Rowling had wanted to out Dumbledore in Book 7, she could have done it, and nobody could have stopped her. She didn’t, because she didn’t want Dumbledore to be gay in canon - only in subtext.
Roxie,
I confess not being at all familiar with Anansi when I started reading the book, but yes, even a quick search on Anansi makes it obvious. And I understand fully that not everyone is as clueless as I was.
I read and enjoyed American Gods (as well as Stardust, and Good Omens, and Neverwhere, and Fragile Things- I recommend all of them). I know that Anansi boys is a sort-of sequel to American Gods, also. (In American Gods, I definitely pictured most of the characters as white, because Odin and Loki are Norse mythological figures.)
In particular, if you get a chance, read Good Omens (written with Terry Pratchett). It’s like “Monty Python does the Apocalypse”.
Sheesh, I agree re:Tonks- I saw her as more of an ecclectic character than gay (my female FF/EMT cousin has had pretty much a rainbow of hair colors for 20 years, including Easter colored spikes). I would have seen MISS Hooch, the Quidditch and flying instructor, as a more likely gay character, what with her butch hair and that she taught the closest Hogwarts had to sports.
BTW, did anyone else ever wonder why there was only ONE sport in this great school? For crying out loud, there WAS a lake (albeit it filled with interesting merfolk and critters) and space in the Great Hall for it to be converted to a gym, let alone the grounds.
To be brief, because it seems that long posts meet the bit-bucket.
Dumbledore’s sexuality is relevant because a central theme of the Potter novels is that the current protagonists are paying for the relationship problems of the previous generation. Rowling goes out of her way to describe the prior relationships of Harry’s parents, Snape, Voldemort, and even Hagrid’s parents, all to set up the current conflicts. The contrast between the explicit heterosexuality of Snape’s background, and the covert homosexuality of Dumbledore’s background is a double-standard.
And yes, several other authors have broken the sexual orientation barrier in juvenile and young-adult lit. When you have novels like Hero, Witch Baby and Baby Be-Bop out there, when Marvel fucking comics publishes two titles with queer characters marketed to teen readers, it’s clear that Rowling isn’t doing us any favors with the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, but of course that’s an unrequited dysfunctional gay relationship.
It boogles my mind that people are applauding and defending her for coping to the kinds of self-censorship that LGB people have been wrestling for years. That’s what really irritates me about this. “The author is dead(*)” is just one theoretical lens we can use here, the other is to view published works as political acts. And Rowling just admitted to making yet another contribution to a long tradition of literary bias.
(*) Note that people who mke their bread and buter on ignoring authorial intent are still open to the possibility that secondary materials may be relevant to the “work” in question.
ok, pounce on me if you must, but I’ve always had the impression that the characters I read about are “like me” unless I’m told in some specific way that they aren’t “like me”. Which in my case leads me to read characters as white unless told otherwise (or hinted at… I mean someone actually thought “Cho Chang” was not Asian??! wtf?!), and in the case of Tonks led me to think “awesome, a smart punkass chick who likes that she doesn’t have to be ‘the grown up’ all the time.” I assumed she was straight ‘cause I am. The only hints given about sexuality (eventually) reinforced that “straight” belief.
On the other hand, I’m on-board with the Justin Finch-fletchy (?? I can’t be bothered to look it up, sorry), and think that Neville is straight (for many of the reasons others mentioned above)
my 0.02
Louise: BTW, did anyone else ever wonder why there was only ONE sport in this great school?
No. Compulsory organized school sport is the public school thing, and has been since Arnold gave arbitrary power to the prefects.
Actually, I imagined that there were other sports and clubs going on, but they were eclipsed by the behemoth that was Quidditch (much like how men’s Football eclipses the awesome women’s Rugby team in real life…sigh). With the Harry-POV-filter that the books had, anything that didn’t interest him directly could be hard to work in.
Quick responses:
1: A central theme of the novel is that the current generation is paying for the relationship conflicts of the past. So we get lots of explicitly heterosexual backstories, but when we look into Dumbledore’s past, we are given oblique and ambiguous hints.
2: If marvel fucking comics can produce two teen titles with queer characters, I don’t buy the claim that Rowling has much to fear from publisher or audience backlash.
3: Rowling just copped to a long-standing tradition of closeting gay characters in literature. It is funny to look back at Wodehouse’s hints regarding the employer/butler relationship. In this day and age it’s not something to applaud.
There are other clubs - there’s mention of Charms Club (which I gather is the Potter equivalent of the science club), and the Gobstone players.
This is the key to what we are talking about here. Rowling spares no excuse to beat the “love is dead” horse in talking about the relationship dredged from the past. Except in Dumbledore’s case because it is “gasp” a homosexual love affair.
CBrachyrhynchos, you missed my point entirely. No, Dumbledore is hardly a tertiary character. But the focus of a lot of people’s points is that every relationship that got spelled out is a straight one, and generally follows traditional forms.
MY point, as others have said is that the number of such spelled out relationships, compared to the population of the novels, is essentially vanishingly small. People are trying to say that Rowling’s world is purely heterosexual, where I am merely pointing out that it is HARRY’S that is. It isn’t that everyone he meets is married and settled. Most of the characters he interacts with are never given any private or personal life at all.
We don’t get any detail on the tertiary characters because Harry doesn’t care. Hell, he never once even asked about his own grandparents on either side. His parents were dead, end of inquiry. This is not a particularly socially adept young man - but then, he literally lived in a closet under the stairs until he was eleven.
Rowling did not explicitly include non-straight people in her books, but she did nothing whatsoever to exclude them or the possibility, either.
Louise: I agree re: Miss/Madam Hooch. If any woman in the series is “coded gay” it is her.
Also, noting that there seems to be less of the “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” type of glurge in the wizarding world. Neither Neville nor Draco (to name two obvious targets) are called out as “sissies.” Nor is Hermione castigated for being too smart or brainy for a girl; in fact, she seems to be much admired for that.
Do you ever have fun? You know, plain-old, spontaneous, non-hand-wringing, non-agenda-driven fun?
I don’t think so, Hattie. Life is Srs Bisness and a series of fun mystery/fantasy juveniles must needs carry the weight of the world on its shoulders. Poor Rowling is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.
Peter: Rowling did not explicitly include non-straight people in her books, but she did nothing whatsoever to exclude them or the possibility, either.
If it was the case that everyone in her cast of characters just happened to be heterosexual, that’s another issue and another criticism. And certainly the default assumption that everyone is heterosexual until explicitly stated otherwise is a key aspect of heterosexism.
But, we know that in Rowling’s intepretation of Harry’s world, not only is Dumbledore homosexual, but an important plot development used to set the stage for current events involved a dysfunctional homosexual relationship. Her intentional choice to make other relationships explicitly heterosexual, and the D/G relationship ambiguous is an example of a very common heterosexist literary bias.
I think the parallelism between Dumbledore’s unrequited love for Grindelwald and Snape’s unrequited love for Lily was intentional. I also thought that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald just on the tone of the Godric’s Hollow stuff–Godric’s Hollow and the Dd/Gw intense bonding-wizarding was depicted as a Bizarro Brideshead Revisited.
Also, Dd’s lack of judgment about Gw is better explained by “he wanted to think the best of someone he loved” than “the world’s greatest wizard just dropped the ball for a moment”.
It never occurred to me that Dd wasn’t romantically in love with Gw. I hadn’t wondered further as to whether he was gay or bi, because it wasn’t relevant to the story.
I’ve changed my mind. Let’s send Rowling to heteronormative jail. Her books have hereby lost all previous perceived worth.
Coming in late and not having read all the responses, one thing struck me in Amanda’s commentary here:
As a parent of a 9 and 11 year old, I have to point out that most of these books are from the perspective of kids. My son even stopped reading them for a while until he caught up to a certain level of neoadolescence - he could read the words, but the activity made no sense to him any more.
Kids who are 11, 12, 13 or so are often oblivious to the sexuality of their parents - except to gross out at the very thought of grownups gettin’ their grownup thing on. Teachers fucking — ewwwwwww!
Therefore, I think this “omission” that Amanda describes has more to do with the developmental state of the children whose perspective she is attempting to write from than it does with concerns about her readership. It isn’t there because a twelve year old isn’t there.
Oh, and I might add that I have seen several articles about how very much the “wizard” thing - with it’s secret society trappings, train platforms that don’t exist to muggles, etc. - is very much like the way gay people lived amongst straights at a time when being out of the closet wasn’t an option.
Sorry tog, but you’re confusing probabilistic with randomness.
Also, with your “computer” analogy, what makes you think that you can ever recreate the “exact same initial state?”
Ah, tinfoilHattie. no need to get mad just because you didn’t know what heteronormative means, and didn’t bother to look it up.
Incidentally, I just read one of the homophobic right-wing bloggers on Dumbledore’s sexual orientation, and she’s so entertainingly whiny about it (”But Dumbledore CAN’T be gay”) that I’m almost reconciled to Rowling’s cowardice.
Then I think of how whiny/screamy she’d have been if Dumbledore had outed himself in Book 6 or been outed in Book 7, and dammit, Rowling, why didn’t you have the courage of your convictions… My goodness! I’ve just thought: if Dumbledore had come out in Book 6, Sharon would have been pestered to death by her kids wanting to read Book 7.
I’m relieved that this thread contains an admonition that we’re spending too much time talking about Harry Potter and don’t care enough about the war in Iraq. I would have been worried if it didn’t.
Finally, color me naive, but how is Tonks “obviously gay?”
Tonks isn’t obviously anything. She’s a shell of a character, seemingly brought into existence for the benefit of fanfic writers who have the shame not to create their own Mary Sues. Or she was until she married Lupin out of the fucking blue.
I think a lot of people are so mesmerized by Rowling’s legitimate talent that they keep being thrown by her glaring shortcomings as a writer. She has too many ideas, not enough writing experience, and editors who were too in awe of her or didn’t have the balls to take the hatchet job to the last four books that they desperately needed. I appreciate that the story is told from Harry’s point of view, and that he’s about as perceptive as a Buick, but he of all people should know that his penis is not located inside his chest.
That said, I have no qualms with the interpretation that Dumbledore was gay, and it’s one of the few things I believe she really did have in mind while she was writing him. I think it adds a shade of significance to his love for Harry; not that I think he was perving on the kid, but that Harry totally made him wish he was a teenager again.
When you have novels like Hero, Witch Baby and Baby Be-Bop out there, when Marvel fucking comics publishes two titles with queer characters marketed to teen readers…
Teen being the operative word. HP may be shelved in the YA section of many libraries, but they are in the kid’s section of most bookstores I know of. And sadly, there are very, very few gay characters in children’s books, because for some reason a whole lot of people have the impression that a character being gay means that you have to talk about sex. Which would be why And Tango Makes Three topped the ALA’s banned book list this year.
It’s stupid, and I’m torn on the issue myself, but I did think that needed to be clarified.
When you have novels like Hero, Witch Baby and Baby Be-Bop out there, when Marvel fucking comics publishes two titles with queer characters marketed to teen readers…
Teen being the operative word. HP may be shelved in the YA section of many libraries, but they are in the kid’s section of most bookstores I know of. And sadly, there are very, very few gay characters in children’s books, because for some reason a whole lot of people have the impression that a character being gay means that you have to talk about sex. Which would be why And Tango Makes Three topped the ALA’s banned book list this year.
It’s stupid, and I’m torn on the issue myself, but I did think that needed to be clarified.
(apologies if this is a double post)
Gandalf and Aslan are gay too.
Well, in the books, Gandalf did disappear off with the first person he met from back home and reappear having changed his clothes. Sure, he said they were fighting…
This controversy is wonderful… it’s the perfect opportunity for people all over the political spectrum to have a simultaneous hissy fit, for ostensibly different reasons.
Hey, hissy fits are FUN once in awhile! So there! Nyah!
Hattie, I agree with your point as I perceive it. Stephen King once wrote along a similar vein that sometimes, a story is JUST A STORY. Nothing deeper than that; no great truths or social commentaries to dig out of it.
But CBrach, with this statement (and I’ve yet to get the hang of the blockquote thing), I do have a wee problem:
…”It is funny to look back at Wodehouse’s hints regarding the employer/butler relationship.”
Wodehouse was pretty clear as to who was dating or engaged to whom; for my 20 years of reading and collecting Wodehouse, I cannnot think of what example of what you’re talking about here. Bertie and Jeeves were very clearly hetero, as was Bingo, Pongo, and everyone else at the Drones. So either Pelham Granville decided to just write funny, silly and thoroughly enjoyable tales poking fun at the upper British class, or I’ve missed something here.
Although Lord Emsworth was abnormally obsessed with his pig, eh?
By the way, those of you who have access to Academic databases like Project Muse might want to check out this article:
Tison Pugh and David L. Wallace. “Heteronormative Heroism and Queering the School Story in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 31.3 (2006) 260-281
This was written pre-Deathly Hallows and the authors are both gay men.
Also, about all this arguing… what’s wrong with the position that:
(a) Yes, it really sucks that she didn’t make a more overt reference to Dumbledore’s sexuality in Book 7, where it was actually relevant, and where it would be too late for close-minded parents to stop their kids reading the book. Rowling has clearly fallen into the trappings of heteronormativity, like that wasn’t already obvious.
BUT
(b) Given the popularity of Harry Potter, and the way that most readers do, in fact, consider the author’s pronouncements to be “canon”, Rowling’s post-Deathly Hallows announcement about Dumbledore’s sexuality still has the potential to do an enormous amount of good, in terms of challenging heteronormative assumptions.
Maybe she’ll include an openly gay character in her next book.
I don’t know (or care) about Dumbledore, but Ian McKellan is gay for sure!
In terms of Dumbledore not being overtly gay or outed, I would think his huge, glaring, existent since book 5 flaw of keeping too many secrets - even when he shouldn’t and even when it hurts people - would be relevent. ;/
Louse: *cough* Gynamede club? *cough*
But Ganymede was Zeus’ cupbearer. Yes, also his lover, but seriously, if you wanted a classical allusion to a butler, could you do any better?
I’d love it if Jeeves were gay (Bertie is definitely straight, judging by his initial reactions to Madeleine and Honoria’s looks before he got to know them as people), but I don’t think there’s really that much evidence for it.
Oh BE that way!!!
But then again, I tend to be naive. Years ago, Charlie had to explain the facts to me regarding our really nice neighbors- I had no clue they were gay, even with the matching wedding rings and rainbow flag flown from their upper townhouse window.
20 years later, even my grief therapist this past spring had to TELL me she was a lesbian- again, had no clue. She was astonished that I didn’t pick up on it. In both cases, someone else’s sexual orientation is 100% okay with me. Maybe that’s why the flap about JK Rowling’s revelation doesn’t upset or change my appreciation of a great body of work.
I don’t really care if Dumbledore is “gay.” I do think it was an important part of his role and his and Harry development as characters that, at least in the initial books, Dumbledore comes across as sort of sexless: He’s married to the school, so to speak, and in some ways presented as being deliberately “above” emotional entanglements. This would have been no less true had Grindelwald been a woman. To put it another way: You definitely can’t imagine Dumbledore with either a wife or a husband. That aloofness starts to fall apart, intentionally, as part of the development of the story in the later books. But it’s a key part of how the character is presented, so trying to somehow convey that Dumbledore is gay anywhere in those first several books really wouldn’t have worked.
That said, I do think there is a significant difference between the idea that Dumbledore fell under the sway of/to some extent shared Grindelwalds IDEAs as opposed to the idea that Dumbledore was blinded to Grindelwald’s ideas because he was in love with him. Obviously, those things aren’t mutually exclusive. But I think in some ways stating that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald gives him a kind of out on the seriousness of the ideas he was toying with, that does change the moral issues at play in the last book somewhat, in a way that I think actually cheapens the story. Again, this would be no different had Grindelwald been a woman (or, it would have been, but in different ways about power that aren’t relevant to the particular point I’m trying to make). It’s unfortunate that the “he’s GAY!” hoopla obscures that point.
In general, some of this conversation reminds me of the “were they gay?” speculation about long-deceased historical figures. I understand why people feel it’s important to reclaim gay historical figures, and certainly plenty of people were. But I also think there’s something juvenile about interpreting any evidence of a close or significant relationship between two people as implying sex. Meaningful relationships can be about ideas rather than body parts. The idea that a close relationship of any kind between Dumbledore and Grindelwald automatically led people to assume a sexual or romantic element to their relationship–as if people can’t be intellectually and even emotionally close without sex–does wierd me out a little. And, once again, I don’t think that’s necessarily different had Grindelwald been a woman.
You definitely can’t imagine Dumbledore with either a wife or a husband.
I thought it was unforgivably ridiculous that none of Dumbledore’s obituaries or biographies had any mention of romantic partners or children. I don’t know why I didn’t automatically think “gay and closeted out of necessity,” but at least that makes sense and cuts down on my exasperation with Rowling. Although she could have just come up with the gay thing now to cover her poorly-characterizing ass.
It’s been mentioned that she put the kibbosh on a few early scripts of the Potter movies, because they wanted to insert a reference to Dumbledore’s early (hetero) loves. She told the director, “Dumbledore’s gay”. It’s not been mentioned before because the people involved in the script are privy to a number of spoilers that no one else gets - Alan Rickman, who played Severus Snape, was told long ago that Severus was on the side of good.
She’s also hinted at Dumbledore’s early love affair prior to Half Blood Prince, saying that Dumbledore’s greatest weakness is that he wants to believe the best in people. In addition, Grindelwald has been part of the Potterverse since book 1.
I think she does have sketchy plot planning, but in this respect, she probably did think of him as gay all the way through.
Amanda wrote:
As others have pointed out (and I haven’t gone through all of the comments yet), the series at least started as a series of children’s books, published by Scholastic, a children’s books publisher. Miss Rowling was writing for both her audience and her publisher.
Had the series simply stayed children’s books, with no significant appeal to adults, Professor Dumbledore would still be sexless, because the subject wouldn’t have arisen, even though he might have been gay in Miss Rowling’s imagination.
Because it became a series that adults enjoyed just as much (if not more than) children, we’re seeing some unmet expectations that the books should have been written with a more adult audience in mind, and that seems to me to be a bit of a waste; why must books that adults enjoyed be written differently?
In a way, it reminds me of the “controversy” which held that Frodo and Sam must be gay, because they were such close friends, in a work that had very little reference to sex in it at all; JRR Tolkien having gone to his reward, he cannot be asked.
Of course, my main complaint about Amanda’s article is the picture used; Richard Harris made a much better Albus Dumbledore than Michael Gambon; he simply looked and sounded more like I pictured Professor Dumbledore from the books.
Dana: The assumption that heterosexual relationship are fit subjects for children but not homosexual relationships is a pretty obvious statement of bigotry.
But the reason why people tend to read queer relationships into subtext is because that’s often the only way they’ve been presented. Taking the defense of Rowling out of the picture here for a moment. What we have here is yet another media, one out of thousands that makes LGBT people invisible in its text.
And ok, if you want to defend Potter by saying that it wasn’t necessary to the story, or it was written to the market. That’s fine. Certainly this revelation puts Potter in a grand old tradition of heterosexist bias in English lit.. But authors who write their gay characters in the closet shouldn’t get a queer cookie and a pat on the head for contributing to that tradition.
When I first read the books, they struck me as very much a wry comment on the sort of British fiction like Swallows & Amazons and the stories in British boys magazines (also the kind of thing that Lord of the Flies parodied): straight-laced boarding school boys in cute uniforms having adventures and playing sports. Anybody who grew up with this sort of literature, like Rowling did, would understand that instinctively, but the closest thing we have in NA is Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.
Sex simply wasn’t ever discussed, and parents and teachers were an ultra portrait of 1950s values. For me, it added to the charm of the Potter books to know that background - precisely because that British boy’s fiction was no more believable than Harry’s world (even though as published those boy’s stories were supposed to be an accurate portrait of How Things Were For Upright British Boys.) Approaching it from that way, the lack of modern adult relationship characterizations isn’t surprising in the least, although I agree with Amanda that it is still disappointing and jarring.
(PS: There’s something wrong with the Captcha software. It keeps rejecting posts).
Delurking (a bit late) to say — speaking as a bi person, I was pretty thrilled both with JKR’s revelation, and with how she did it. I mean, I can understand where other people are coming from, but for me it boils down to two things:
1. If she had put it blatantly in the text, then the “Dumbledore is gay” hype would probably have convinced many people squicked out by gay things to not read the book entirely, or (at best) to read it, and all the bits involving Dumbledore, through a hyper-critical lens. As it is, the effect is somewhat analogous to what happens when a close friend or relative comes out to these folks: very often, they end up reevaluating their opinion of Teh Gay because they realize that someone they respected and liked is, after all, Teh Gay. I don’t think this positive effect would have happened had D’s sexuality been in the text blatantly. Yes, we would have had the joy of making some fundies freak out even more, but I’d prefer to win over a few hearts and minds.
And it’s awesome that the news was met with a standing ovation.
2. Revelations like these make it even more fun to search for subtext.
I enjoy fanfiction, and when reading DH the possibility that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had something going on leapt out at me. I figured it was just me wearing my slasher hat, but it’s pretty cool to — for the first time I can ever remember — have my slashy subtexty intuitions validated by an author’s comments. (Which doesn’t make invalidated subtext any less fun, but still…)
Or another question, since Rowling uses her dystopian hero’s journey to get on the soapbox about practically every other political issue under the sun, the argument that a Gay Dumbledore would have overly politicized the series doesn’t make sense to me.
Dana: As others have pointed out (and I haven’t gone through all of the comments yet), the series at least started as a series of children’s books, published by Scholastic, a children’s books publisher. [Ms] Rowling was writing for both her audience and her publisher.
J. K. Rowling’s plan was to write a series of 7 books, in which not only Harry but the readers would grow older: her aim was to target Philosopher’s Stone at 8-11s, Chamber of Secrets at 9-12s, and so on. Hence the style changes as the series continues: each new book was meant for a slightly older audience. The Half-Blood Prince is meant for the “young adult” age range (13-17), as is, of course, The Deathly Hallows (14-18).
While it’s entirely appropriate to include LGBT characters in books intended for any age, of course, there is the POV difficulty that it would be unlikely for it to occur to Harry that Dumbledore was gay when Harry was much younger (or any of his teachers, unless they were married/civil partnered, which none of the wizards at Hogwarts are). But Dumbledore could appropriately have told Harry in The Half-Blood Prince, or in The Deathly Hallows, or it might well have been mentioned in Dumbledore’s obituary.
It’s also a bit annoying (and unrealistic) that not one of Harry’s friends at school came out to him at any point….
On the one hand, I’m thrilled by Rowling’s announcement. On the other, well, I’m a bear when it comes to sticking to the published text. Not published in the books? Not a fact of that universe. And don’t mention subtext - subtext depends on the interpretation of the reader.
If Rowling publishes more Harry Potter stuff and this tidbit makes it in then, obviously, my complaint is withdrawn.
I hold this view largely from being an observer in several fandoms, watching huge flamewars erupt over how much non-book detail must be taken into account in fanworks and fan interpretation, and trying to answer the question what should someone just coming into this be reasonably expected to know?
The text.
Not the interviews. Not the private letters. Not the random short stories published on a blog somewhere. If someone wants to take all those things into account while reading/interpreting, that’s wonderful. But someone who draws conclusions only from the published text isn’t wrong, either. And Dumbledore in the books does not necessarily read as gay.
And that’s the problem with Rowling doing the announcement like this. Again, it’s a problem that may go away if she publishes anything else, but for now, it’s still a problem.
Mat- perhaps someone corrected you already, but I had to skip ahead and mention that Seamus’ parents didn’t get divorced. Seamus says that his “Ma” told his dad after they got married and he got “quite a shock” but didn’t up and leave. We only see Seamus’ Ma at the world cup and after Dumbledore’s funeral. I would imagine that his muggle dad might stay out of wizard affairs for the most part.
Someone else mentioned Dean’s parents and his dad dying in the first war. I never read that, do you have a link? What is for certain is that Dean’s dad left and no one knows what happened to him. Dean and his muggle mom aren’t even sure if he was a wizard. Hence Dean is marked down as Muggle-born and refuses to return to Hogwarts in book 7 since he can’t prove his lineage either way.
And I’ll throw my 2 cents into the discussion now… yay gay Dumbledore! Can’t wait to reread and pick up hints about it, though I won’t venture into fanfic land.
As far as fandom and more academic pursuits, JKR’s word is usually taken as canon unless she changed it in the books (i.e. she showed a notebook that contained names of students that weren’t included later on- those students aren’t canon). However ppl want to deal with the gay revelation, when people write about the books or discuss them at conferences this is will have to be included in the discourse. That doesn’t mean that we’ll all swear up and down that DD’d gay, but we’ll be able to talk about queer theory and portrayals of gays & lesbians in the text (this is something that, sadly, mostly slashers only deal with now).
Now I’m just waiting for the lesbian relationship between McGonagal & Sprout to be revealed!
p.s. anyone know where the transcripts from the book tour q&a’s can be found?
“Professor Dumbledore would still be sexless, because the subject wouldn’t have arisen, even though he might have been gay in Miss Rowling’s imagination.”
(sigh)
gay character =/= mention of sex
but attitudes like this (which more sane people than Dana unfortunately have as well) is why I both understand why Rowling did what she did, but also second
“Certainly this revelation puts Potter in a grand old tradition of heterosexist bias in English lit.. But authors who write their gay characters in the closet shouldn’t get a queer cookie and a pat on the head for contributing to that tradition.”
I think by revealing that Dumbledore was gay she is bringing attention to the bias, possibly deliberately, - and that is something - but she’s not really challenging it. And she certainly didn’t do so within the books.
Regarding all the comments about people making the “mistake” that one assumes a character is white/herterosexual until explicitly told otherwise: I think Marvin Minsky’s work on frames is quite applicable.
Basically, it’s not a “mistake” so much as the brain needs to fill in gaps where no information is given. So whether it’s “hereronormative” or “homonormative”, or “white-normative” or “black-normative”, it’s going to be normative in one way or another.*
This doesn’t mean that those assumptions shouldn’t be recognized as exactly that, and corrected for when looking at the world, but it’s a little silly to beat yourselves up over it.
*Please note that this is describing the perceptions of characters before information is given to us about their sexuality, so the complaint about only heterosexual relationships being revealed isn’t in conflict with what I’m describing.
PS: Amanda, your site used to flash up a note to the user when their comment was in moderation. What happened with that? It was quite useful, and would probably stop a lot of multiple postings.
J wrote:
Why?
Think about the series; despite it’s length, Harry has few close friends. In Chamber of Secrets, he’s virtually ostracized, since he’s suspected for most of the term of being the one who attacked the victims who were petrified. In Prisoner of Azkaban, the school’s under tight security, virtual lockdown by the dementors. He’s fairly popular in Goblet of Fire among the Gryffindors, as the “fourth champion,” but the Slytherins all loathe him and the Hufflepuffs (or was it the Ravenclaws?) don’t like him because he is taking away glory from their own house champion, Cedric Diggory. In Order of the Phoenix, he returns to school with half of the students thinking that he’s barking mad, and being told by their parents not to associate with him.
The whole series is one about Harry’s isolation save from a few friends. To have anyone come out to him would have pretty much required that it be Ron, Hermione or Neville, and none of them were written to be gay.
J wrote:
Professor Dumbledore is portrayed as an elderly man; Harry is written to be between 11 and 17 in the series. I suppose that it would be reasonable for Professor Dumbledore to confide something like that to Professor McGonagal, but, other than close family members (and remember, Professor Dumbledore kept his distance from Harry on many occasions), just how common is it for someone who is gay to come out to a particular individual over that great an age spen?
Regarding all the comments about people making the “mistake” that one assumes a character is white/herterosexual until explicitly told otherwise: I think Marvin Minsky’s work on frames is quite applicable.
“Nova”, Samuel Delaney.
Heh heh heh.
Argh! I think Gambon makes a fine, if not better Dumblerdore, specifically because he has that mischievous trait that is so often referred to in the books!
Plus he just seems much more powerful than Richards could’ve been, however, I think Richards was a great choice as well!
I just had to say that b/c I hear so many ppl complaining about Gambon and I think “Well, what the hell do you want? Richards effing died and McKellan turned it down!”
I thought the book had TOO MUCH sexuality actually, subtext is awesome, but Book 4 had way too much boring sexuality stuff. The stupid triangle between Ron-Hermione-Krum, Harry-Cho-Cedric, (het)teenagers making out in the bushes. Blah.
…and Book 4 annoyed with the Cho character, the trendy Asian Girl who is defined by who she dates. …and it was trendy. What did she like about Cedric, what did she like about Harry, why did they like her? The senseless Ron-Hermione-Krum thing makes sense, because both Ron and Hermione have very low EQ, but I would have expected more from yee old wise Ravenclaw and sensible Hufflepuff. If they were going to include relationship with that, I would have liked more complexity than “s/he makes me feel hot, teehee!”. Cho could have been impressed with how hard Cedric tries in spite of Hufflepuff’s reputation as losers, and how Harry isn’t crazy and suicidal from all that was put upon him. There could have been ONE scene that shows her as being calm ‘unlike the other girls’ that is in Harry’s age group (Cho being older than Harry).
Dana; Think about the series; despite it’s length, Harry has few close friends.
He has two: Ron and Hermione. Aside from Ron’s crush on Viktor Krum, both of them come across as pretty much het. But he’s clearly on friendly terms with many more kids - the Quiddich team, other Gryffindors, everyone in Dumbledore’s Army. Any of whom clearly were on good enough terms with Harry to mention that they were LGB.
just how common is it for someone who is gay to come out to a particular individual over that great an age spen?
Ah, now you’re getting confused (obviously, not that familiar with the books). Dumbledore’s explaination to Harry of why he trusted/was enthused about Grindalwald would obviously have included “I fell in love with him”.
Dr. Hermione Granger, the information about Dean’s father is on J. K. Rowling’s website, www.jkrowling.com– but it’s an easter egg hidden within the website, so I can’t link to it.
It is, however, considered “canon” amongst those into HP fandom.
But he’s clearly on friendly terms with many more kids - the Quiddich team, other Gryffindors, everyone in Dumbledore’s Army. Any of whom clearly were on good enough terms with Harry to mention that they were LGB.
Not really. Harry doesn’t confide in anyone except Ron and Hermione, and he’s deeply incurious about other people. If I were on friendly terms with him but not his best friend, he would be the last person I would confide in about my sexuality if I hoped for any reaction other than awkward stammering.
I pretty much agree with… everybody here. Makes it hard to compose a cohesive comment. Random thoughts, perhaps, instead.
1. Just for me, I can’t see myself coming out to Harry Potter. As the books progressed, he seemed to get (for various reasons) more withdrawn, more self-centered, more focused on his (noble) goals at the expense of the world around him. Not really someone I’d want to confide in. Hermione maybe; she comes across as rather clinical and pedantic much of the time, but she also seems to come through when it really counts. If anyone at Hogwarts, I’d probably want to talk to Professor McGonagall. Or maybe even Ginny, although I couldn’t tell you why.
2. I’m not sure exactly how the mechanics of Dumbledore’s outing would have worked. Had he been “outed” via his obituary from Rita Skeeter (who was definitely more tabloid journalist than serious reporter), it would have been in a tone of “OMG Dumbledore liked teh butt secks!!1!!1!!!” which would make it a scandal and not a simple fact of the man’s life. For him to casually and without comment bring home a boyfriend or partner would be out of place, because the only faculty/staff member (to my memory) who ever attempted romance on campus was Hagrid, and that was only to advance a subplot. For him to actually come out to Harry as such would probably be out of character, but I can see him dropping it in casually, for instance, mentioning that his love for Grindelwald blinded him to blah-blah-blah without actually saying, “I had gay, gay love with Grindelwald, because I am a gay, gay wizard.” That casual mention seems like the most reasonable approach (to me), and my only thought there is that, while J.K. Rowling is certainly a great writer, she’s not a great-great writer, and she might just not be capable of pulling that one off.
Anything beyond those approaches, though, seems a lot like signalling, which wouldn’t really do anything to attack heteronormativity. If we could say, “Dumbledore’s gay because he’s an older man who’s never been married, he’s well-dressed and well-groomed, he’s sensitive, he’s charming around his female coworkers, he wears purple robes and high-heeled boots, and he’s remarkably close with his male students,” we’d basically be saying that Dumbledore was gay because he fit the stereotype. And that doesn’t help anyone.
3. As a writer, I love the process of creating backstory for and getting to know my characters, even the stuff — particularly the stuff — that’ll never make it to the printed page. While it doesn’t really excuse anything, I could believe J.K. Rowling if she said, “I never mentioned Dumbledore’s sexual orientation because I truly didn’t think it germane to the plot, and when it did come up, in book 7, I thought I addressed it sufficiently. I now see I was wrong on that. Dumbledore being gay is just something I always knew about him.”
It’s also entirely possible that in the traditions of the British press, some things are just “known” and not considered worth mentioning. Also, I have yet to see an En Memoriam that says the deceased was gay gay gay.
Just to add to list of alternative families, Snape’s parents didn’t have a good relationship, and it’s hinted they had a divorce.
What on earth is a trendy Asian Girl? Cho’s motivations didn’t get fleshed out, partly because there was no great need to. I don’t need a monologue by every character to make the book real - sometimes, it’s fine to fill in the blanks.
J wrote:
While I’ve read Hallows only once, I’ve read the others to death; the whole family has.
And why would Professor Dumbledore’s explanation “obviously” have included that — given that the author chose not to include it?
This is why I said what I did at first: the books were written as children’s books, but had tremendous crossover appeal to adults, and now some of the adults are complaining that they weren’t really written for adults.
They are what they are: great storytelling. That they don’t address every issue that is of concern to adults does not make them not good.
Does Dumbledore’s Army operate a “Don;t Ask, Don’t Spell” policy?…
mez9: Then don’t have Cho date Harry in the first place! Harry who is one of the main character, and if Cho is suppose to be one of his first major crushes, explain! It can be woven into the story, no need for monologue.
Okay, here’s one example of not!monologue, set this at the end of the book4, have Cho appear, level-headed, and say:
“Harry, I want you to know, I believe you.”
Mercurial Georgia:
It is explained. In book 4, Harry noticed Cho because she was cute to him. He also asked her out, she turned him down. She’s already aware of him because that.
In book 5 - her motivation becomes very clear - the connection to Harry is partially derived because of his connection wtih Cedric. She’s mourning Cedric, and in part, Harry is the only one who might help her get closure. Hermione says as much, and she confirms it during their Valentine date. Cho never says anything - but her actions do. She supported Harry in book 5, even before they were dating, and in book 4, it becomes clear that she didn’t join in the whole anti-Harry sentiment that was going on.
The Cho/Harry thing reads fine to me. Besides, the reason why it fizzled out was partly because there wasn’t that much to drive it to begin with. It’s a teenage crush - you don’t need huge motivation, just hormones.
Mercurial Georgia:
It is explained. In book 4, Harry noticed Cho because she was cute to him. He also asked her out, she turned him down. She’s already aware of him because that.
In book 5 - her motivation becomes very clear - the connection to Harry is partially derived because of his connection wtih Cedric. She’s mourning Cedric, and in part, Harry is the only one who might help her get closure. Hermione says as much, and she confirms it during their Valentine date. Cho never says anything - but her actions do. She supported Harry in book 5, even before they were dating, and in book 4, it becomes clear that she didn’t join in the whole anti-Harry sentiment that was going on.
The Cho/Harry thing reads fine to me. Besides, the reason why it fizzled out was partly because there wasn’t that much to drive it to begin with. It’s a teenage crush - you don’t need huge motivation, just hormones.
Mercurial Georgia:
It is explained. In book 4, Harry noticed Cho because she was cute to him. He also asked her out, she turned him down. She’s already aware of him because that.
In book 5 - her motivation becomes very clear - the connection to Harry is partially derived because of his connection wtih Cedric. She’s mourning Cedric, and in part, Harry is the only one who might help her get closure. Hermione says as much, and she confirms it during their Valentine date. Cho never says anything - but her actions do. She supported Harry in book 5, even before they were dating, and in book 4, it becomes clear that she didn’t join in the whole anti-Harry sentiment that was going on.
The Cho/Harry thing reads fine to me. Besides, the reason why it fizzled out was partly because there wasn’t that much to drive it to begin with. It’s a teenage crush - you don’t need huge motivation, just hormones.
What on earth is a trendy Asian Girl?
If I’m not mistaken, it has something to do with being an Asian girl who dates white guys and is seen by them as a fetish object.
And why would Professor Dumbledore’s explanation “obviously” have included that
…would obviously have included that were Rowling a better/more honest/more courageous writer, since Dumbledore’s love for Grindalwand is why he initially accepted Grindy’s ideas. Obviously this wouldn’t have come out in the same way as Neville might have told Harry about his being gay. but it would have come out then.
J wrote:
J, it’s pretty difficult to claim that Miss Rowling could have been a better writer!
As for being either more honest or more courageous, no one criticized the way that she wrote that chapter until she revealed, half a year after publication, that in her imagination, Albus Dumbledore was gay. Then it suddenly became a huge criticism: why didn’t she say so in the book?
And the obvious answer is: it wasn’t necessary, and the story flowed just fine without it.
Dana: J, it’s pretty difficult to claim that Miss Rowling could have been a better writer!
Well, this can be read two different ways. One way is to say that Rowling is constitutionally incapable of rising above the shortcomings she’s demonstrated in Potter. The other way is as a rather bold and naive ignorance of the fact that may readers, including some ardent fans, find fault with her cliched plots, ham-fisted approaches to political issues, the dragging narrative of Hallows and other problems.
And it’s not as if the heterosexism of Potter is a product of just last week either. Certainly criticism has intensified because the media and a large cast of the blogosphere seem to want to hang a gold medal around her neck for her admission of a literary bias that is practically a standard. And a part of that bias is that you can’t have a character who “just happens” to be gay in the same way that you can have a character who “just happens” to be straight.
“The story would have just flowed without it,” does not change the basic fact that this is one example out of thousands of a long-standing heterosexist bias. Had she wished to, the story would have flowed with it just as well, and it would have been no less appropriate for the target age group.
And jumping back a bit, I fully agree that Bertie and Jeeves are about 90% heterosexual as presented. But, I think Wodehouse is more than clear that the relationship between them trumps any other romantic relationships they have. And to my eye at least, he plays with this ambiguity for humor value.
CBrach wrote:
You know, that’s the part I really don’t get. I’ve had two friends at work (not currently) who I knew were gay, and it really didn’t matter. One was a pharmacy tech, and he and I were the only men who worked on this particular floor at the hospital. He never “came out,” officially, but he’d talk about his “roommate” the way everyone else would talk about husbands or wives or boyfriends or girlfriends; it was obvious, though subtly, that he was gay without him having to make some big deal about it. As far as I could see, his being gay made absolutely no difference in the way he interacted with other people at work or in how well he did his job.
In other words, as far as I and everyone else on the floor were concerned, he really did “just happen” to be gay.
Dana: An anecdote that acts directly against the argument that it would have been impossible for Rowling to just casually reveal romantic aspects of the relationship in question.
CBrach: No, it’s an anecdote which says that it isn’t necessaty to always say everything.
Phoenician in a time of Romans:
Checked out the entry on Wikipedia, and I’m still lost. Are you referring to the changing narrator from page to page, or the fact that the main protagonist is black, which caused issues with its publication, or something else entirely?
Serious question: Did J K Rowling somehow discriminate against homosexuals by not having an explicitly gay character in the series?
@Dana
Is that supposed to be a serious question?
I mean your saying so doesn’t make it one.
And who has said anything suggesting this. Pointing out the real heteronormativity of the Potter universe is not the same as saying the work discriminates or that the author does.
Checked out the entry on Wikipedia, and I’m still lost. Are you referring to the changing narrator from page to page, or the fact that the main protagonist is black, which caused issues with its publication, or something else entirely?
I die. After I die, my book collection is scattered into the market, cut up and sold throughout the globe. Years from now, a teen with the potential for psychosis comes across my annotated copy of “The Man In The High Tower” and is inspired to form his own authoritarian movement advocating killing all the lawyers, all the people with law degrees, and (in a pinch) anyone who took a law course at university. The world divides between those who think this is a good idea and, well, lawyers, and nuclear holocaust ensures.
All die. O the embarrassment!
I meant this.
CB: One way is to say that Rowling is constitutionally incapable of rising above the shortcomings she’s demonstrated in Potter. The other way is as a rather bold and naive ignorance of the fact that may readers, including some ardent fans, find fault with her cliched plots, ham-fisted approaches to political issues, the dragging narrative of Hallows and other problems.
It is ambiguous, isn’t it? I have no idea which Dana meant, either.
Dana: it was obvious, though subtly, that he was gay without him having to make some big deal about it
Given that he undoubtedly knew you are homophobic, it sounds like he picked a good, tactful way to come out to you so that you could get to know him as a person first and would be less likely to attack him for his sexual orientation.
Dana, it seems to me that your perception of your gay coworker is similar to the way that white people often go on about how being black/Asian/Hispanic etc, doesn’t make a difference– it’s very easy to say that it doesn’t make a difference when you’re not the one subjected to all the implicit homophobia of heteronormative society.
It might not have made a difference to YOU that your co-worker was gay, but even the fact that your co-worker had to call his partner a “roommate” rather than his husband or partner, speaks volumes about the way that gay people have to moderate their own lives every day, just so that the broader heteronormative community sees them as “normal”. It might not have been a big deal to YOU, but you can’t speak for whether or not it was a big deal to HIM.
(Just as a disclaimer, I am both white and straight– I’m not trying to speak on behalf of non-white or GBLT communities, but this is stuff that I’ve taken on board as a result of listening to people who are in those communities).
Phoenician,
So how do these novels relate to Minsky’s theory of frames?
I only have a few minutes to write this, but that does seem to be the impression that some people have in this thread.
Does a person’s assumption that, lacking any explicit information, someone is heterosexual imply that that person is uncomfortable with non-heterosexuality? I don’t think that’s true, since people fill in the gaps with information they don’t know all the time, and defaults will be used to do it. I don’t see how those defaults can immediately be construed as deriving from discomfort.
So how do these novels relate to Minsky’s theory of frames?
The original comment was: “Regarding all the comments about people making the “mistake” that one assumes a character is white/herterosexual until explicitly told otherwise: I think Marvin Minsky’s work on frames is quite applicable.”
I’m not familiar with this theory, and I apologise if my comment led you to think it was in relation to this.
I spent two thirds of “Stars” in a state of confused WTFuckness before I found out about his use of language. It taught me something about my basic assumptions about gender and attractions - the point of the throwaway line was to encourage other people to go through the same experience.