More on Dumbledore (ooh, that rhymes!)

[darcydodo]

With all of my replying to other people's Dumbledore posts in comments, I thought I should collect my opinions here. (All of these are culled directly from comments, so some of the context shifts may be a little abrupt, and there may be repetition.) More to potentially be added as I reply to comments further.

...

To be perfectly honest, I don't agree. Not that I think JKR is necessarily a good storyteller, but I don't think that omission of Dumbledore's sexual orientation is proof of this. We don't know anything about any of the teachers' love-lives. Since these books were ostensibly written as kids books, that makes sense. You never know anything about your teachers' personal lives. (I mean, we called our teachers by their first names and knew how many kids they had, but I remember, for example, how in Mathilda it was a great revelation to the students to learn Miss Honey's first name.)

In HP, we don't know if a single one of the teachers is married, has children, etc., so why should we know that one of them's gay? If we did, it would only have been there to say LOOK, I HAVE A GAY CHARACTER, I'M SO AWESOME AND OPEN-MINDED.

If Dumbledore had been alive in the 7th book, that would be a different story, because of all the stuff about Grindelwald. But he wasn't.

...

But Snape's love-life is important because it deals with Harry, not because of how it shapes his character in general. If Lily had been, say, Padma and Parvati's mother, and he'd picked on them to no end rather than Harry, we'd probably never have gotten information on why he was so nasty to them.

And as I said on someone else's post, it's not like people reading the books from now on aren't going to know Dumbledore's gay, since her revelation has obviously spread across the internet like wildfire.

...

If it's a question of JKR's "bravery," as some people are saying, then I think saying it after-the-fact is really just as brave as saying it in the books, because look at how it's spreading across the internet like wildfire — everyone's going to know.

So then on the other hand (as regards students, not teachers), yes, if she really wanted to be actively pro-gay yadda yadda, then she could have made one of Harry's circle gay. But that wasn't what the book was about, and just tossing it out there would have seemed very much like having any other token minority would. You notice the way she deals with her black characters? There's mention of it maybe once, when we first meet them, in the same way that she would say someone's Irish or has red hair, and then we don't encounter it again. Lee's black, Angelina's black, Dean's black, Kingsley's black — and I didn't even remember those last two until they showed up as black in the film, and I had to go back to the book and say "really?" (And I think Angelina wasn't in the film, tsk tsk.) Except when you meet someone gay it's not going to say "She was small, with freckles and crooked teeth, and terribly fancied other girls." So then it becomes an issue of "is it actually relevant to the story?" And very few kids are out in high school; if they know they're gay, they're more likely just not to have any obvious relationships at all. (Never mind the Harry/Draco fanfic, of course.) So yes, if Hermione or Ron or Neville or one of the Weasley sibs had been gay, then sure, it would obviously have been mentioned, and yes, they were all straight, but making one of them gay would definitely have seemed like making a character gay on principle.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

She was small, with freckles and crooked teeth, and terribly fancied other girls.

No, I suppose not, but what a pity.

One of the things I realised when writing Farthing is that in a modern adult text you kind of can write sentences like that, and it's very liberating to be able to.

[darcydodo]

Muahaha. ;)

Actually, relevantly, the friend who liked Farthing whom I mentioned on your post said as follows: "However, Walton does make one character choice that puzzles me: almost everyone in this book is gay, or at least bisexual, to the point where it began to seem a little ridiculous and bad-fanficcy. Because unlike in real life, in a novel that kind of thing is a choice—on the part of the author, and I'm really not sure what Walton was trying to say with it. Except maybe that when they think nobody's looking, even the crustiest Tories are all indiscriminately schtupping each other, the bloody hypocrites. Okay, but I already got that they were hypocrites, and also racists and very bad people. They don't need to be hypocritical, racist, very bad gay people, do they? Though on second thought, that does sound increasingly like the Republican party in this country. Never mind."

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Lots of the nice people are also gay or bi.

My standard reply to that kind of review is "You think lots of them are non-straight? You should see my flist. And sure my flist isn't a randomly selected group of people, they're people that I, as a straight married middle aged woman happen to know, and the people in the book are also not a randomly selected group of people."

Nobody has ever asked why there are so many straight people in most books. I was reading a book yesterday where an imprisoned woman is trying to tempt guards into her cell with sexual wiles, as an escape attempt, and before she succeeds she's told she's being given new guards that are "immune to her charms" and they're all women, and I thought "This universe has no concept of lesbians!" Though actually in three books time there's a lesbian married couple, FWIW, so maybe it was just dumbness on the part of that one person.

[judytuna.livejournal.com]

what really? wow i'm glad i have you to spread this to me like wildfire. i hadn't heard haha

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

If it's a question of JKR's "bravery," as some people are saying, then I think saying it after-the-fact is really just as brave as saying it in the books, because look at how it's spreading across the internet like wildfire — everyone's going to know.

Oh, c'mon. You really think it's just as brave to make this revelation *after* millions of copies of the books were sold already, as before?

[darcydodo]

I think that if someone had asked her while she was still writing, "Why don't you have any gay characters?" she probably would have told them about Dumbledore. Sure, maybe she didn't say anything before because of sales, but you can't say that's definitely why she didn't.

Also, someone likened this to guerilla tactics of getting books with Teh Gay into the houses of anti-gay folks, and while I doubt that was actually her intention, I find it a highly amusing comparison.

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

(duplicating my response to your comment on my post which is repeated above... y'know, for discussions sake):

As you know I agree with you that Dumbledore's sexuality, like that of any of the teacher-figures in the story, would probably never have a reason to be overt in the story. I also agree with you that the contentiousness of the issue in the real world would've made it impossible for JKR to "casually slip" in references to a main character's sexuality without it being focused on and made into a controversy. But I think there are ample opportunities for something more subtle. She has an entire school's worth of people at her whim! Even something as easy as Ron laughing about some rumor he heard about a couple characters we never see, and Hermione scolding him for his intolerance like she does with everything else. The only difference is that unlike house-elves, centaurs, squibs, bla bla bla, gay students exist in the real world. Such an inclusion can therefore trigger controversy but is also more meaningful. There were controversies she was willing to trigger (witchcraft, constant disregard for authority, etc.) but this was not one of them. Her intensely mainstream, heteronormative vision was something I was already bothered about before, but the latest news brings it back to the foreground of our thoughts. That plus our only reference from the author, given this revelation, is that there was one gay character who kept his secret until beyond the grave — think about what kind of message that sends, intended or not, and regardless of whether the omission in the text itself was appropriate, narratively speaking (for this particular character). This is what I mean by saying it may have produced a net negative effect. I think we'd be better off without this news.

[darcydodo]

who kept his secret until beyond the grave

We don't know for sure that he kept it secret. Sure, the thing with Grindelwald was secret, but so was the fact that they were friends at all, which is rather different. We don't know that McGonagall didn't know, we don't know that Hagrid didn't know, we don't know that, oh, Arthur Weasley, if you like, didn't know.

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Oh come on, Rita Skeeter totally failed to dig it up. Dumbledore could not have kept this juicy gossip from her if anyone else were in the know. In fact she's such a master of gossip that her failure to discover it is inconsistent with her character and pretty much seems like an arbitrary author decision (assuming JKR had actually decided AD was gay at that point).

[darcydodo]

Given that she actively quashed a female love-interest for him in one of the scripts, I think this wasn't a post-publication publicity decision.

And I think "anyone" isn't consistent with "anyone who wouldn't tell Rita Skeeter." Sure, if Fudge or someone from Dumbledore's youth knew, RS would have been able to dig it up. And yes, it means that most people didn't know. But that doesn't mean his closest friends didn't know. So he wasn't out, fine, we can take issue with that if we really want. But I don't think that having a character who's gay and not out is somehow worse than not having a gay character.

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

It is worse if it's the only gay character. With this as our only exemplar, It implies that any other gay characters are also closeted, and that this is an area of injustice in the wizarding world that JKR was apparently content to ignore.

[peacekeeper.livejournal.com]

I think the 'Dumbledore's Gay' thing was handled /very well./ I went back and read the book and looked for clues, and it's actually pretty obvious the way it's written. In the first book, American version, the fact that Dean was black was actually omitted, and Angelina's colour wasn't even mentioned IIRC. This is a good way to write books. The subject of Dumbledore's sexuality NEVER CAME UP, so there was no reason to include it.

In reply to once_a_banana, Darcy's right, there's nothing that said it was a HUGE SECRET, it's just that it wasn't necessary to the story. It's very likely that the people in the OotP knew, I'm certain Grindelwald knew :D I mean, it wasn't really a secret, but like was mentioned in the OP, you don't describe someone as 'tall, old, and oh yeah! GAY.'

(OT: i love this icon.)

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear, if you look at my comments and my entry, I totally agree that AD's sexuality wasn't necessary to the story. My point has always been that this revelation really brings to light the total lack of any appropriately visible gayness anywhere in any of the stories (i.e., among other folks, bit characters, students in the hall, and so on), even though we get hit over the head with all kinds of traditional normative snogging, dating, flirting, and so on.

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that it's like having (for example) significant female characters in a story. If there isn't a clear reason why there aren't any (all the women died in the war with the martians) then frankly there has to be some reason for leaving them out! If you are basing a book on *people* as you meet them in any ordinary society, then the gay people are there, the geeks are there, the snobs are there, they are part of society and as soon as you start deliberately leaving them out, you are distorting the view of society.

I'll grant that in AD's case it may not have been relevant. It's just that in any real society I would expect to say "ok these are the ones that are probably gay, even it it's not been a plot arc". My guess fwiw is that Neville might be.

[darcydodo]

EXCEPT for that, as I said, it's obvious whether someone is a woman when you meet them. It's obvious whether someone is a snob (or a geek) once you start interacting with them. It's not necessarily obvious whether someone is gay unless you ask them outright or they make a point of bringing it up.

My guess fwiw is that Neville might be.

Apparently he's not, though, unless he's totally closeted; he apparently married Hannah Abbott. (Source: same article)

[redbird]

Or if they're clumsy about hiding crushes, as high school students often are, regardless of gender. We don't see so much as a student being teased about a crush on a teacher of the same sex, or Hermione telling someone "you can moon over so-and-so, I have work to do." I suspect it's harder to hide that sort of thing in a boarding school than for students who leave school at 3 every afternoon.

At the very least, Rowling decided (or assumed without deciding) that the wizarding world would not be open to two boys or two girls dating at school, and that it would be open to a boy and a girl dating in that way.

[coyotesdaughter.livejournal.com]

hmmmm. yes.

though i admit, as much as i dislike tokenizing... i do think that -maybe- "gay on principle" would not be such a terrible thing. hmmm.

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

I wonder if one could just say that in the Magical community, homosexuality is just such a non-issue, that there was no point in bringing it up...

I've thought of this argument too, and unfortunately it doesn't work at all. It's statistically implausible that we would have intimate knowledge of all those straight flirtations, snoggings, dates, marriages, unrequited loves, and so on, while never running into any gay versions of the same. We're talking probably 30 or 40 items total not even counting pairings at the Yule Ball. The only way it would make sense is if we presume that (a) JKR's world is tolerant but she herself is so squicked as to not be able to mention any of this in writing or (b) she tried to mention such things but her publishers forced her to remove all references (I think after a few books she had a lot more clout than that!), or, most troublingly, (c) wizards are super OK with gay folks, but among wizards it's a trait that virtually never occurs (please lets not open that tremendous can of worms).

[darcydodo]

I can't imagine it was that many. Or, if it was, they were mostly main characters (or at least involved one main character), and then you would get "token!" again. So that, even if it were totally acceptable in the wizarding world and therefore 1 in 13 of those should technically (perhaps) have been gay pairings and nobody in the book would have uttered a peep, we're reading the books from this world's perspective, and therefore any such pairing would have shouted "token" despite the different mores of the community in which it was taking place.

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Yes I totally agree that there are all kinds of real-world publishing reasons for why she chose not include controversial non-normative real world behaviors. But I think it's pretty silly, and probably harmful, for us to sort of pull the wool over our eyes and say "well, numerically, maybe we just didn't run into any or maybe nobody happened to ever talk about it", just because we want to feel good about the books and about JKR and about our own complacency. That kind of generosity does nothing but perpetuate the heterocentrist status quo — it's virtually like closing one's eyes, sticking fingers in ears, and going "la la la la la la". The fact that a lot of us were doing that throughout our youths doesn't really add weight to the argument....

[threadwalker.livejournal.com]

Angelina's in the first film in the Quid game. :)

[darcydodo]

Oh, I know, I meant I didn't think she was black in the film. :)

[threadwalker.livejournal.com]

She was, just on the light side.

[cityofgates.livejournal.com]

If Rowling had introduced a token gay character, she would have been forced by the laws of narrative convention to kill that character by the end of the book. This doesn't quite apply to Dumbledore. As the Wise Old Mentor figure, he was doomed from the get-go. That he was gay is an interesting detail. That he -- as a gay teen in interwar England -- had a tragic lovelife, is just realism.

[tigupine.livejournal.com]

Without adding anything productive to this discussion, I'm going to point out that I immediately took this line out of context:

But Snape's love-life is important because it deals with Harry

[tigupine.livejournal.com]

As for my actual opinions, I entirely agree with Darcy - I don't see a single point that I would dispute - and anyone who has spent time around both of us knows that that means something. :)

Really, when I heard the news, I thought, "oh, that's awesome, good for her", and left it at that. With all due respect to my queer colleagues who seem to be taking this much more seriously, I think it's unreasonable to expect every author of children's books set in junior high / high school to fight the heteronormative power. In high school, I had no idea that I was gay, nobody really talked about homosexuality, and I didn't know of any homosexual relationships. Would my high school experience have been better if there had been boys kissing in the halls and being gay had seemed normal? Possibly. But if JKR had written that way, her world would have seemed less authentic to me, and it would have been painfully obvious that she was trying to advance an agenda, and children's books are just about the worst possible places for agendas. I think it's better to present young readers with the world as the author knows it, not the ideal world the author (or other people) might envision. I agree that it wouldn't have hurt for JKR to slip in something about some girl fancying another girl or something, because of course that would happen in Hogwarts or any other school, but then we could argue that nobody was explicitly said to be Latino and nobody was in a wheelchair and nobody had a painful struggle with chemotherapy, and if we're going to go down that route, who's going to want to write a children's book at all, apart from James Finn Garner?

[tigupine.livejournal.com]

Also, in anticipation of certain rebuttals - all children's books push the dominant ideological agenda to some degree already, queer youth desperately need positive role models, etc. - I can't resist adding: so write your own damn bestseller. Or inspire someone else to.

actually...

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Here is a post dealing with precisely this issue. Turns out we've had queer characters in young adult fantasy since at least the early 80's, but obviously these books never received real fame in the manner of HP. The person who wrote this post concludes with the same remark you do, that, goshdarnit, we need more people to go out and actually write these things.

Re: actually...

[darcydodo]

Okay, and now, there's a very good demonstration of something. I read those books back when I was in late high school, so before I knew I was gay, and it never crossed my mind that Tom and Carl were gay. Or if it did then, I must have forgotten immediately afterwards. But also maybe it's only there if you're looking. Or maybe it didn't seem relevant. It certainly didn't serve as a positive role model for me.

(But I have The Door into Fire sitting on my desk, clearly I need to read it!)

[once-a-banana.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course Rowling was quite sensible, particularly considering she barely managed to get published at first, in all her choices of what to include and not include in her actual text. In fact she seems to universally use non-real world issues as her means of exploring all forms of intolerance (e.g. werewolves rather than gays having a hard time with marriage and acceptance by society). This is an incredibly safe and mainstream way to go about doing it, and it's certainly the way to get your stories out there to a wide audience without sparking too much controversy. We can even praise it, since it's a good strategy for reaching people who might otherwise reject her completely if the message were too out in the open.

So what irks me is that her announcement is so jarring, and inconsistent, with this "safe" policy, and that she's said "oh gosh! if I knew you cared I would've said something sooner!", and "oh well, now I bet my critics will be mad about this too (sucks for them! I stand for tolerance!)" - I find this totally disingenuous at best. I like having a gay Dumbledore plenty, but if she were more thoughtful she would've revealed this with an apology, an acknowledgment that she purposefully avoided having any overt gayness (not to mention any sort of other real-world non-normative behavior) anywhere in her books, i.e. an admission of her choice to go mainstream and reach the largest audience, even if she then also avoided truly hotbutton material in the text itself.

It of course also bugs me that she seems unaware that it's unbalanced to have just one post-hoc gay character, with his tragic love life and subsequent secrets (even though obviously yes this is realistic for gay wizard love affairs occurring around the year 1900! jesus those guys are old...), since when this is the only exemplar it's a pretty bad role model for queer youth. I know what you mean about high school - things were pretty damn invisible as far as I could tell. But I think things have changed tremendously in the last 10 years. Not just in high schools, but across the nation. People are sensitized to gay issues (think of all the homoerotic statuary on campus that no-one noticed before), and people are increasingly out (with gay-straight alliances and everything) in high schools rather than waiting until college. There isn't a more appropriate time to reach some of that youth with better messages....

Basically I just wish that JKR would acknowledge her (typical and unsurprising) avoidance of non-normative real world things in her text, and the issues raised by her unitary gay AD announcement, and at least give us some kind statement that shows she understands why some people find it troubling — or rather, kind of awesome yet troubling at the same time.

[elemy.livejournal.com]

I can totally see Dumbledore as gay but hiding it, if that's the way JK Rowling wants it; if the wizarding world is anything like this one it seems all too plausible. But I'm a bit perturbed by the love interest she's chosen for him - does it strike anyone else as wierd that although the major love of his life has turned out to be evil incarnate and he's killed him with his own hands (/wand), he still retains an attitude of "love is the ultimate force for good" and preaches it to anyone who will listen (i.e. Harry) at every opportunity?