One reporter reacts to JKR's revelations

[delwynmarch]

Sorry for the delay, guys, I've been badly sick 
(the area is swarming with viruses of all kinds, 
so badly that parents have even been warned
on TV not to take their kids to public places o_O )

And sorry for the number of posts I'm going to post 
at once. I thought about making a combined post, 
but it hurts my still-not-so-well head to think of 
it, and I think it would end up creating a monster 
of a post in the end :-P


Celoneth wrote:
> I'm sure people who are freaked out about gay DD 
> don't see themselves as prejudiced - but people's 
> perceptions of themselves are often as inaccurate 
> as outsiders perceptions.

Del replies:
And vice versa ;-) So again: who gets to make the 
final judgement?

> What I was asking was for a legitimate reason 
> that it's such a big deal that DD is gay and I've 
> heard none.

Are you asking for a general reason, or a personal 
reason? When it comes to personal reason, shouldn't 
it be enough that, for example, some people simply 
don't *want* to read (or to have their children 
read) books with gay characters in it?

> So what, books should come with warning labels. 
> "Warning: Author sees nothing wrong with gay 
> characters, interracial dating, etc."

JKR made it clear that she saw nothing wrong with 
interracial relationships right from the first book, 
when kids of all colours are mixed together at 
Hogwarts without any character complaining, and
without the author using tainted language of any 
kind to describe the non-white kids. And later on, 
JKR very simply and effectively made the point that 
she sees nothing wrong with interracial relationships by
having Harry date Cho and go to the Yule Ball with 
Parvati, and by having Fred ask Angelina in a very 
matter-of-factly way to the Yule Ball, for example. 
Clean, simple, to the point. Right from the 
beginning, and throughout the books, people are 
"warned": non-white people are equal to white people 
in those books, take it or leave it.

However, there is simply NOTHING of the sort where 
gay characters are concerned. First, AT NO POINT in 
the books is any sexuality other than heterosexuality 
even MENTIONED. No same-sex-couples kissing in the
corridors or even holding hands, no pictures of 
same-sex-couples, not even a mention in passing that 
two girls or two boys are dating, no NOTHING. From 
the beginning of the first book to the end of the 
last book, only ONE sexuality is EVER mentioned, 
and that's heterosexuality. Blatant heterosexuality. 
Obvious heterosexuality. Period.

So I don't see it as a stretch to argue that people 
who don't like homosexuality were perfectly 
justified in thinking that they would NEVER be 
confronted to homosexuality in the HP world. I mean, 
heck, the last book was finally out and STILL there 
was NO mention of homosexuality!! 

And then JKR comes and says that not only she's 
always seen DD as gay, but that one relationship 
that happened on-page was actually a gay one at 
least on one side, and to top it off she insists 
that DD is her character and so she gets to decide 
how and what he is.

Well, that's incredibly disrespectful IMO. 

> She couldn't reveal the DD-GG relationship before 
> DH or it could have spoiled the end of the series.

True, but she could have written DD as gay. Or even 
just ANYONE as gay, so people would have actually 
known that homosexuality exists in the WW and that 
they might discover one day that a character they 
love is actually gay. You know, like in Real Life? 
What she did instead is pretend for 7 books that all 
her characters, that the entire WW in fact, is 
straight, only to drop, AFTER the last book was over, 
the gay bomb. That's devious and cowardly, IMO.

> if someone is so petty that they wouldn't read
> books because an author wrote a gay character 
> then frankly its their loss and not the author's 
> obligation to pander to them.

I agree. However, this doesn't apply in this case, 
since JKR did NOT write DD as gay: she *revealed* 
him as gay *after* people were done reading the 
books. IOW: she let people buy her books even while 
withholding a piece of information that she knew 
would cause some of them to not buy the books in 
the first place. Again, I find this devious, even
despicable: making money on the back of people who 
you know would not buy your books if you actually 
wrote the truth about your characters in those books.

> No, because a bigot is a definition, the other 
> word is a slur and its only purpose is to act as 
> a slur.

The word bigot is often used as a slur, and very 
often in circumstances where it doesn't even apply.

> But she did apparently write a gay DD

Then you should be able to give me undisputable 
canon proving it.

> - with the nature of the story it would have been 
> inappropriate for her to mention DD's sexuality
> throughout the books - 

Why go to the extremes immediately? I'm not talking 
of "throughout the books", I'm only talking of a 
couple of references in passing. Exactly as was 
done with racial interrelationships: there was 
never any big mention of it, just little hints here 
and there.

> normally headmasters and similar figures do not 
> share their personal lives with students 

Excuses excuses! JKR has done more complicated 
things before. If she wanted to tell us, the readers, 
something, even with Harry being around but without 
him noticing, she could have done it.

> not to mention that it had very little to do 
> with the plot.

I flatly disagree. 

> Not going to get into the entire Bible thing 
> except to mention that religion has been used for 
> millenia to justify all sorts of horrid things 
> (slavery, oppression, persecution, war, etc.) as 
> well as opposition to those things.

Aren't you the one who started quoting the Bible ;-) ?

Del