JK Rowling on CBC Newsworld tonight

[sistermagpie]

> > Magpie:
> > That's a lot to assume about another person, isn't it? Is it 
> really JKR doing the projecting? I'm not claiming to know what's 
> going on in your head, but I remember after JKR's words about DD 
> that *you* said that *you* equated DD being gay with his 
witholding 
> love from you or rejecting you--iow, with being someone *you* 
could 
> not be in love 
> > with, and this was a loss for you. But I don't think we can 
assume 
> > this is such a universal thing that JKR, too, must necessarily 
be 
> > using homosexuality as a symbol of DD being off-limits as a love 
> > object for her. 
> 
> Tonks:
> I am a Psychotherapist.  I am not making this up and it is 
universal 
> for a woman who is not a lesbian. Since you are tying to make this 
> personal, I will say for the record that I had a very good 
> relationship with my own father. 

Magpie:
I'm not trying to make it personal--your relationship to your own 
father never entered my head. I just remembered what you said, which 
is why I referenced it. You said that since DD was gay you felt 
you'd lost something that way, which was a perfectly valid way to 
feel for yourself, and this seemed to naturally connect to that. 

I'm not even questioning whatever the current ideas of psychotherapy 
are about women and their fathers, I'm just pointing out that all we 
know is that she always thought of DD as gay and that she's 
estranged from her father, and that it's not necessarily a 
straightforward line between the second and the first. 

If JKR had written about Dumbledore in a way that seemed to be 
playing out what you're saying I'd be more likely to see it, but as 
it is I can just see other reasons to make a character gay even if 
you're estranged from your father than this one. Speaking from what 
I see professionally as an author and an editor, I just don't come 
up with the same formula. It could be true, of course, for all I 
know. It's hard for me not to connect "I have a bad relationship to 
my father" with the litany of bad fathers in canon, so I understand 
making the connection. But since I don't make this connection 
myself, I naturally need more convincing.

-m