gay subtext

[madeyemood]

No: HPFGUIDX 71208

Hi again, list! I am learning so much hearing about various details of the 
books. 
The series is so voluptuous with detail that I just take it for granted that I'm 
missing huge amounts while turning the pages as quickly as I can. Torn 
between longing to sustain the fantasy and dying to know what happens, I 
plow forward and do my best. It really helps to read these discussions. They 
provide a means of both revisiting lots of interesting details and prolonging 
my visit to a remarkable and compelling world.


Hello!
I'm new here and I wanted to say: hurray for this topic. Ever since I put down 
Book 5 I've been dying to discuss.
I say:
Hello!  and hurray for your post!  I enjoyed reading it very much ^_^
Why thank you ever so much for your gracious reception, Faith's Girl. 
I know that i'm describing super stereotypical qualities in all sorts of rash and 
unintentionally inappropriate ways. it's difficult to describe the process of 
employing one's gaydar without such offensive shorthand.
Yeah, I was trying to avoid doing that myself, but since you started it! 
My hope is that listmembers can discriminate between well-meaning 
speculation and narrow-minded insistence. Generally this sort of discussion 
occurs most successfully when the participants understand built in ironies, 
double-meanings. The subject thrives in a spirit of relaxed inquiry rather than 
rigid hysteria.
Two characters strike me particularly; Professor Grubbly-Plank 
is the ultimate in public-school-hockey-socks lesbian IMHO, and 
Dumbledore is by far the campest character in the books. 
I definitely had that feeling about Grubbly-Plank. She seems low-key, no-
nonsense: quiet, private, discreet and true. No family that we can see to tie 
her down. No gossiping about the beleaguered far more emotional Hagrid of 
many vicissitudes. Seemless and monk-like, appearing as needed with little 
baggage of an emotional or physical sort.

As for Dumbleedore, he feels more androgynous than gay to me, like he's 
beyond any need to affiliate with much drama to macho or effeminate 
energies. He wields his enormous power with as light a touch as possible, 
which is why he's able to be a bit twee along with all of his other qualities. 
He's hardly Big Gay Al (South Park allusion).

In this last book he discusses the potential difficulties of revealing how much 
he cares for Potter. Perhaps as one gains power one must actively detach to 
support the appearance of invulnerability. Dumbledore seems fraternal with 
McGonnagall; like a lieutenant more than a lover. Both of them appear to me 
as secular priests of learning who take on nurturing the student body rather 
than having their own families.

And there is something intense, tribal, family-like about the houses, especially 
when it comes to Quidditch. While D never seems to be overtly cheering for 
Gryffindor, he seems to tacitly support their extravagant abilities when it 
comes to saving the school (rescuing the Stone from Voldemort results in 
points for Gryff that lead to its defeat of Slyth). Whereas McG gets more 
emotionally invested at the Quidditch pitch and engages in a sort of sibling 
rivalry with Slytherin's Snape.

Of course, this doesn't imply that they are gay -one can be a sporty 
girl or a camp man without it meaning anything in terms of your 
sexuality- but it does address the issue of the standards of 
stereotypical gender behaviour, from which discussion of sexuality 
inevitably raises its ugly head.
I think there's something very human, and very threatening, about the desire 
to identify a characteristic of a group. Like sexual fantasy, i think of fiction as 
one of those regions of the imagination where all this stuff comes up. I would 
imagine that most people who have had some experience with/passion for 
exploring psychological or literary theory would Go There.

It's inevitable that in a group of this (or, let's face it, almost any) size there are 
going to be people who find such destinations "ugly". They participate in the 
taboos, either knowingly or un-, that prohibit or disdain such investigation. 
They need to put down the inquiry, rather than try to understand  or simply 
sidestep it. For me this is rather like having dinner with the parents. You learn 
to expect certain responses, avoid certain topics. Why bother to expend the 
energy to convert or inform those inherently contemptuous prior to 
investigation?

It's just another interesting level to a character, and it demonstrates that JKR 
has created wonderfully believable and complex characters that we can 
imagine them to have a life beyond the printed page.
I don't know if you ever saw PeeWee's playhouse, but that was another 
popular environment of way butch women and femme male characters. 
PeeWee himself seemed rather pre-adolescent homo. It was a big cult hit 
among arty adults in the U.S. 

I watched this British talk show on BBC cable last night. Graham Norton was 
interviewing Dennis Hopper. Hopper made the point that Easy Rider was the 
first art film to make buckets of money because by 1969 there was a huge 
audience craving some identification with their new radical lifestyle; they were 
dying to see drugs and hear rock n roll. up to that point No movie had begun 
to show that sort of lifestyle in an authentic manner.

Part of what fuels fiction is this ability to capture aspects of ourselves that may 
be hidden even to us. The HP series unleashes the inner bad boy that learns 
how to sidestep petty rules and express our deep inner power. It gives us the 
opportunity to identify with a child who subverts the adoptive family that 
previously imprisoned his little tortured malnourished being. We all get to go 
back to middle school and struggle with those politics, that intensity of feeling. 
For me, sexuality is just part of that whole potent maelstrom of self-definition.

to williamhause2000 who stated~
Perhaps it will be revealed in book 6 that Voldomort is gay.  It will
be a key plot point because it was Hagrid's rejection of him that
caused Tom to turn evil.
Could you speak a little more about how "Hagrid's rejection of him ... caused 
Tom to turn evil"? I missed that.

I doubt JKR would make LV gay. The whole evil, imbalanced gay serial killer 
stereotype is a bit of a sore point with lots and lots of people. It all sounds 
too... Silence of the Muggles.... Unless, maybe, she created some really cool 
gay dudes to balance a crazy gay LV? Maybe DD and LV could resolve their 
differences by falling in love and adopting an Hogwarts orphans...now *that* 
would be campy.

to dreambeliever001~
"It seems to me by reading all these posts that a majority of the characters in 
HP are gay."
Dreambeliever, I can't say that I understand how you've come to this 
conclusion.
For a long time gay characters have inhabited in the canon as discreet, 
implied, all very hush, hush but whisper, whisper. Readers were required to 
detect implicitly gay qualities. In fact, there's actually an academic field called 
Queer Studies that actively and thoroughly discusses this phenomenon. (I just 
did a quicky search on the Web and found QueerTheory.com if you'd like to 
know more.) 
There are big names in literary theory, such as Freud and Foucault, who 
pioneer discussions of how these submerged aspects of human identity 
emerge in the literary subconscious. 
So I must confess, to me it seems ordinary to embark on this sort of 
investigation that appears as outrageous and indefensible to you. 

Why does discussion about whether or not someone may be gay register as 
we're discussing therefore we believe that s/he necessarily is gay? Why is it 
so crazy/offensive to discuss this as a possible implication rather than either 
interesting or un-?

Valky said~
"Perhaps its just and instinctive reaction that people hope their
children's exposure to sexuality in literature be made up mostly of
the kind of sexuality that can *ensure the continuued existence of
the human race*."
So, if any of the characters are gay the entirety of muggles and wizards will 
fail to survive? Everybody better get procreating!

"Gay and straight are not divided into good and evil.... In previous books 
prejudice is considered in its most generic light."
I don't see that. Rowling generates a number of instances in which she 
discourages binary thinking, such as all pure-bloods are bigots. I think a core 
part of the genius of Harry Potter is JKR's taking on the stresses of living in a 
multicultural society. 
I enjoy this comment by John Leonard in the NY Times Book Review:
"Before professors and students combine to overthrow this inquisition, we are 
educated into the snobbery and arrogance of an earlier generation of the 
gifted young (poor teenage Snape was cruelly bullied), the racist ideology of 
the Dark Wizards (''mudbloods''! ''half-breeds''!), the hysterical politics of the 
recent past (witches hunting witches, kangaroo courts, torture, camps) and the 
disgraceful behaviors of the distant past (giant wars, goblin rebellions, 
werewolf segregation, elf serfdom and disgusted centaurs). 

*****All of a sudden, like puberty, everything is more complicated and 
ambiguous, besides the usual fraught. ***** (emphasis mine)

''The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters,'' Sirius warns Harry. 
Wizard history isn't a lot prettier than Muggle history, any more than Hogwarts 
is automatically a nicer place than your local junior high detention center just 
because the kids play with wands and brooms. The food may be superior, but 
otherwise there is the same malice, sadism, hierarchy and humiliation, plus, 
of course, unfair teachers and impossible exams." 

Snosageau said~
"Going on some of the reasoning in this thread, Ron is gay too,
because he cares about Harry thinks of his actions (in response to
the thread that Sirius was concerned about James' / Lupin's opinion
of him in the penseive scene, instead of the girls) and that Ron is
often oblivious to girls as well (think The Yule Ball & Luna's
comments about it in OoP + the whole Hermione thing)"

I dunno, Snos. I don't see this. I don't think, to begin with, that I'm using so 
much "reasoning" as intuitive feeling. Like Harry, I feel more than think about 
this sort of thing, although both are happening. 
Ron feels to me like a pretty butch straight boy. 
As with yin and yang, all of us have both. No one, not even Goyle and 
Crabbe, are all masculine. I don't think that the reasoning is that anyone who 
has any female qualities is necessarily gay if male. 
The discussion feels like more of a casual, gossipy, did you get that feeling 
because I kinda did sort of inquiry, rather than Ron + caring = gay which 
sounds rather reductio ad absurdum-ish to me. And I must confess I had 
minute amounts of patience/talent for logic in college humanities.

Evangelina said~
"... I often feel like sexual orientation is forgotten when it comes to prejudice
discussions... "
me, too. it deals with trickier internal exploration. it requires *subtlety*.

Iris said~
"Well, JKR is a woman, and she depicts her male characters with the
eyes and feelings of a woman (and this is how you happen to write
statements of the obvious...). "
You've never read something by a man that you would have sworn was 
written by a woman, or vice versa? 
What is obvious to you seems like a mighty big assumption to me.

Kathryn said~
"Besides if Sirius does turn out to have had a girlfriend before he got sent
to prison it's clearly just cover for his relationship with Remus - totally
obviously darling (tongue firmly in cheek here in case you hadn't noticed)"
Funny!

And that's enough time to squander for today. I must out of the fiction head, to 
some serious caffeine consumption, gym drudgery, bills and, dare I say it, 
cool projex that stimulate focussed heart and head energies.

It's been divine!