The possibility of a gay character (WAS: Snape: The fact that he exists)

[Trevor Peterson]

No: HPFGUIDX 70973

Kirstini
I found these two posts rather depressing (do people really still hold this sort of attitude?), at yet at the same time they confirmed suspicions (yes, I suppose they do) I had when I posted message 65448:"Sirius as close as we're going to get to a gay character?". I particularly loved this little bit of non-reasoning:"besides, we cant even tell if Sirius had a girlfriend at hogwarts cause we have only seen it once.  Perhaps he was the ultimate ladies man.  And for the possibility of Snape being 
perceived as gay, what evidence do you have for that. " The fact is, Laxer, we have as much evidence that Sirius was the ultimate ladies man as we do that Snape is a gay character. 
 
laxer: 
that was actually my point.  taking "I believe that this is because he knows that he has a parallel with Snape is
some way. It is either the vampire/werewolf thing or that they are both gay."  well "pooh" doesnt give many choices with it.  as of yet, there has been no hard evidence that sirius, snape or anyone for that matter is gay, so why say rather dogmaically that it is one of two reasons for lupin not acknowledging the bullying.  personally i dont buy either explanation.  they both require things that as of yet are not canon.  My reason/explanation requires little to no stretch of the imagination.  Being a prefect means that you have a certain responsibility to enforce the rules.  One would hope that bullying/hexing would be against the rules.  now if he was to acknowledge that james and sirius were bullying snape, wouldnt he be obligated by his position of authority to stop it?  I think that ron how difficult it is to stop ones own brothers from doing bad things, so would it be a streach to think that lupin didnt want to stop them because it would be too difficult?  when was the last time
 you said "no, we cant do this its wrong" to your two best friends.  Also "pooh" says that both sirius and snape are gay.  personally, if one of my best friends was gay, i think that i would be even less likely to pick on someone because of their orientation.

Kirstini:
Sirius displays absolutely no interest in women throughout the entire series. Fair enough, it probably *is* very difficult to get a girlfriend in Azkaban, particularly when the only woman we've heard of in there is your insane and evil cousin. But then, Snape shows no sexual interest in anyone throughout the books either. You can't discount one and still have the other, I'm afraid.
 
laxer:
too true.  I am just trying to state what i can back up, the solid Canon.  a possible explanation i guess is the whole potions master bit is kind of sterotypical of the math/physics/chem scientist who is so hardcore into whatever they are studying that they never get married.  I am not saying thats why he isnt married/have a girl, but it is a possible explanation.  just my take on it
 
Kirstini
Now, onto JKR's "wise" avoidance of "unnecessary reference to sexuality". Did both of you miss the whole Harry-Cho thing? That was sexuality.  
 
Laxer:
no i saw it, and it was in defference to this that i put a most in in addition to the unnecessary bit.  in my view it is necessary because we view the entire world (more or less) from harry's perspective.  therefore we do need to know what his love intrests are.  an unnessary sexual refrence would be finding out about draco's love live and his sexuality (ie finding out that he has a major thing for pansy parkings), unless it advances the plot (ie he really does have a crush on hermiony(i dont support the SHIP btw))  IMO harry and cho kissing advances the plot because it deals with the main character, harry, interacting with those around him, cho.  if it doesnt advance the plot it is unnecessary.
 
Kirstini
Oh, but I forgot. Those are *normal*. By " unnecessary reference to sexuality", I take it you both mean "homosexuality", that deviation from the norm, right... "What relevance could it possibly have to the plot?" 
 
laxer:
actually i would be very interested in the theory if there was evidence in canon that one or both of them *was* gay.  and it really is irrelevent to the plot if Sirius is gay or straight, because as far as we know nothing happened because of his orientation.  
 
 
Kirstini
The age of homosexual consent in Britain is sixteen. This "suicide as a writer" bit I found quite funny - do you honestly believe that *JK Rowling's* books are going to stop selling because she puts in a gay character and thus "alienates" the homophobic part of her fan base? She hasn't really shied away from other contentious issues, has she? 
 
Laxer:
I agree with you on this bit, kinda obvious why.
 
Kirstini
Ultimately, as I said in my earlier post, I don't believe that there will be a gay character in any of the books. I think that the series itself is far too conservative in its depictions of social strictures to go this far. However, neither of you addressed this point in a mature or reasoned way. What both of you did was essentially to cover your eyes and go "No no no, we don't want to see that!". It's this sort of passive homophobia that perpetuates further states in which the subject can't be discussed reasonably within an adolescent context.
 
Laxer:
I can only speak for my self, but the reason i jumped on the post was the way it was assumed that snape was gay because of what would be sterotypical things, and the fact that he doesnt appear to have a girlfriend.  In all seriousness, do you support putting people into the "gay box" just because they dont have a girl?  thats what seemed to be happening to me, and thats why i jumped in and said that there is no canon for what "pooh" was suggesting.  
 
I find you saying that the argument was immature and it was a no no i dont want to see it kind of think becasue i think that my aproach saying that it is not canon was much better than some responses i have seen in the forum to the topic of *gasp* the quality of JKRs writing of the OOP.  if you have any other questions about my argument, just send an email directly to me.
 
laxer


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]