Sex! Love! Writing!

[Mike]

Del:  If she thought of DD as gay from
back before she even started writing the books, how
come she didn't actually write him AS gay?

Amanda:

I have to ask--what would "writing him as gay" have looked like? I 
mean, if she always thought of him as gay, and she wrote him, then 
she *did* "write him as gay" because that was part of his character 
for her.  She could not have written him as anything else.  Quite 
possibly she doesn't think being gay has standard characteristics; 
quite possibly she thinks it's one of many facets of character and 
personality.

Susan (The McGee):

Yes, this has puzzled me throughout this discussion and many others.
Does "writing him as gay" mean that he would swish or be effeminate,
or have multiple sex partners, or have any kind of sex? This seems to
me to be playing into (usually derogatory) stereotypes of gay men in
particular.

Mike:

I don't know if this was Del's point, nevertheless, here's my answer. 
Dumbledore wasn't written as gay, he wasn't written as straight, as 
Tonks_Op has said many times DD was written as asexual - he had no 
sexual orientation in canon. Whether or not JKR always thought of him 
as gay, she put nothing in writing for the reader to make that  
determination.

Yes, Susan, had JKR attached those stereotypical, effiminate 
qualities you've enumerated to DD, we would have been clued in to his 
orientation, even if (as you've also said) it would have been through 
those usually derogatory clues. But she didn't do that, nor did she 
give us any descent clues to DD's sexual orientation. Did anyone ever 
guess that DD was written as gay before JKR's statement/answer? I 
know of nobody that can claim to have ventured that guess.


Susan:

IF she had in fact included that DD was in love with GG in the books
that still wouldn't have introduced sexuality into the books anymore
than Snape being in love with Lily introduced it.

<snip>

In fact, I see some parallels between the two men. When I think about
DD, here's a 17 year old in the midst of hormonal uproar who falls in
love...with someone brilliant, and (sounds like) beatiful. DD becomes
inflamed with his ideas, and flirts with evil.

As a result of his falling in love, he neglects his family. Aberforth
reproaches him, there's a fight, GG puts the cruciatus curse on
Aberforth...and DD's sister lies dead. Does GG stick around? No, he
flees. This is a tragedy that shapes and mars DD's whole life.
He fell in love with the wrong person, who turned out to be evil, and
who abandoned him. He became complicit in the death of his sister.
We know from what he said when he drank the poison in the cave that
that experience haunted him throughout his entire life.

Mike:

This is a very good explanation of why things happened if Dumbledore 
was gay, it does change the reading a little. But it only changes it 
marginally from the reading that I daresay many of us came away with 
after just reading the book. To wit; Dumbledore was enamoured of GG's 
ideas and with the boy himself for his mind. This does not preclude a 
sexual attraction, but there isn't sufficient evidence in canon to 
make that leap. There is nothing to suggest a romantic attraction, 
IMO, because there doesn't seem to have been enough time for that to 
have developed. 

I disagree with those that say there was no place to insert DD's 
sexual orientation if JKR wanted to. Here's one possibility:
DH, Ch 35, p 716 in US Ed.:

"Grindewald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, 
inflamed me. Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. 
Grindewald and I, the glorious young leaders of the revolution." [I 
fell in love with the man as well as the ideas]

Or however JKR's writing style would have phrased it. One sentence, 
that's all it would have took. I'm not even sure that younger readers 
would have caught the implication. 

But she didn't do it! 

I suppose to one such as Susan, JKR might appear as Lincoln appeared 
to the abolitionists. It was said that "Lincoln came late to the 
fight, but he persevered in the end." (I don't remember who to 
attribute that quote to, but that's OK, it's not an exact quote in 
any case) But for some of us non-believers, JKR's post-publication 
pronouncements have no effect on how we've read the series. 

I didn't read any sexuality in the DD character and I didn't need any 
to understand his motivations. As I've said, long before the Gay!DD 
storyline, I don't include JKR's interviews as canon. Since she has 
contradicted her own canon too many times with her spoken word. So, 
the Gay!DD answer changed nothing for me.

Mike