A Gay Potter Character?/I'm so happy

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 178193

> Petra:
> This is an interesting response and I am curious to know how
> you reconcile the subtext for the above (*if* indeed you intend
> the subtext of "How could JKR send the message that gays should 
> be ashamed of themselves?" of course) with the fact that JKR
> has spoken openly about one of her most beloved characters
> being gay?
> 
> The thing is, I believe her when she said, "If I'd known it 
> would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"
> 
> To me, this is a non-issue in the Wizarding World, just as 
> racial prejudice is a non-issue.  By not addressing the 
> subjects of *bigotry* based on the specifics of skin color or 
> sexual preference, JKR is better able to explore the broader 
> nature of bigotry itself.  How else do you reach the bigoted...
> and why bother to preach to the choir?

Magpie:
JKR's approach to skin color and sexuality are completely different, 
though. Skin color she makes a non-issue by just having people of 
different backgrounds at the school, dating etc. She has no gay 
characters in the book explicitly. She didn't just announce, "Oh, X 
character is black--if I'd known it would make you so happy I'd have 
announced it years ago!" She just mentioned it as part of the 
description. Reading the book doesn't tell you Dumbledore's gay at 
all. So she didn't so much make it a non-issue, imo, but raise a 
different issue by making it something she left out of the books in a 
way she didn't leave race out of the books. It's a "what do you 
know!" moment in an interview rather than an integrated part of the 
story.

Having it made part of the actual book that Dumbledore was in love 
with Grindenwald, or that X boy in Harry's class was snogging his 
boyfriend the way random people snog girlfriends, isn't didactic. 
(And I disagree with the recent comment somewhere else about how it 
would be inappropriate for Dumbledore to mention his love to Harry as 
part of explaining his pov--I don't see what's inappropriate about 
telling a 17-year-old you were in love with somebody. I can remember 
a few times teachers in school mentioned girlfriends or people they 
had crushes on to the class.) There's lots of moments in canon where 
romantic attraction is part of what's going on, and JKR in her 
interview even explained Dumbledore's attraction to Grindenwald as 
part of the backstory in terms of his putting off the battle with 
him. It's just as much of a plot as many of the other bits of 
Dumbledore's backstory.

Lee:
What you're trying to
do is the equivalent of disputing my assertion "Cars are vehicles of
transportation," based simply on the fact that *your* car won't start.
The fact that there are individual acts of heterosexual sex that 
don't,for whatever reason, result in children has no bearing on the 
question of whether species propogation requires heterosexual sex.

Magpie:
I'm disagreeing with your claim that sex is designed as a way of 
procretion the way a car is designed as a vehicle of transportation. 
There's no inventor of sex who says "This is what this is supposed to 
be for." Procreation is one thing it's for, there are other things 
that it's for too now.  

LCJ:

I wasn't referring to you, but to the coiners of the word. It strikes 
me as one of those words (like "homophobia") coined for the express 
purpose of denying it. 

Magpie:
I didn't quite get this sentence--denying what? 

Whatever the the bad choices of the people who coined these words, 
they were coined to describe something they were talking about, 
something that seemed relevant to me. What they're describing isn't 
about whether one is having sex to make a baby or not.

LCJ:
I need to ask you to define "normal". In the above statement you seem 
to mean "frequent" or "not uncommon"; but this would be different 
from my definition of "normal". Perhaps our disagreement here is 
merely over definitions.

Magpie:
I meant normal as in usual, sane, a natural occurance.

Magpie:
> Sex has other puposes besides making babies.

No. It has other benefits and effects, certainly. But it has no other
*purpose*.

Magpie:
But I think those benefits are perfectly good purposes. Reproduction 
is a specific thing. If species evolve so that the act surrounding 
reproduction also has other benefits, those benefits are also a 
purpose of the act. Having sex with no hope of producting a child out 
of it does not make the sex purposeless. It just makes the purpose 
something other than producing a baby. If a straight couple and a gay 
couple are having sex for exactly the same reasons, it just seems 
strange to me to say that the gay couple is deviating from a norm. 
Aren't they both deviating from the norm just as much? Just because 
something isn't the original primary purpose for something doesn't 
mean it's not a purpose at all, does it?

LCJ:
Really? I would think the heated discussion the topic has generated in
this list alone in the last 24 hours would be ample enough evidence.
Whatever your personal views on homosexuality, the fact remains that 
it IS a controversial subject in most parts of the world.

Magpie:
We're having a discussion, but JKR isn't part of it defending 
anything. She just said Dumbledore was gay and went on her merry way. 
There are tons of gay characters in books, tv and movies, including 
children's books. "Am I ready to defend this?" just doesn't seem like 
the question the author asks him/herself when they're in there. I 
guess if you're just saying that anything she writes she has to 
defend by default that's true, but it does still kind of surprise me 
that she'd be put off including a gay character because she feared 
defending it. Not that that means you couldn't be right. Seems a bit 
ironic, though, given some of the things she's stated about her 
themes. She seems to be claiming she didn't think it was a big deal--
though that does seem a bit ingenuous to me since she herself treated 
Dumbledore's love of Grindenwald differently than she treated any 
number of straight romances in the books. I'm just saying that 
including a gay character in a book is a pretty common thing 
nowadays, so it's not like she'd be going out on a limb that way.

LCJ:

> I would say Dumbledore being in love
> with Grindenwald is just as relevant to the storyline as many
> other love affairs shown or mentioned in the story.

LCJ:
If it were, then why didn't JKR make it so explicitly? Why hide it
behind ambiguous passages and veiled references? I, for one, don't see
it as relevant either to the narrative or to my understanding of the
character (and I think the mere fact that her statement was such a
"bombshell" indicates that most people did not). If JKR intended it to
be, then she has failed in her authorial duties to make it so.

Magpie:
Yes, that's the big question, isn't it? Because I would say that 
because she didn't put it in the book it *isn't* part of the plot. 
Dumbledore put off his duel with Grindenwald due to his friendship 
with him, his shame over his own past behavior. The book doesn't 
leave this a blank, it gives us a slightly different story by not 
including that piece of information. It changes the story and 
Dumbledore's motivations in this instance. Just as understanding that 
Hermione is attracted to Ron changes how one understands her behavior 
towards him in HBP. Of course it makes a difference if you're talking 
about someone you're in love with.

The fact that Dumbledore is gay in general doesn't change the 
character at all, that I can see, in terms of his motivations or what 
he's doing/thinking most of the time in canon outside of that one 
thing where he's being motivated by being love with a man. However, 
it is part of who the character is as much as anything else so I see 
no reason to leave it out unless, as you say, she doesn't want to 
have a gay character in her books for some reason. I can see how for 
most of canon there just might not have been an easy way to bring it 
up, but it's not impossible to do it in a casual way by a longshot in 
the entire series. 

But doing it the way she did meant she wrote a romantic relationship 
that comes up in her story as a platonic one (for which a particular 
reader may or may not see gay subtext). I don't see why it should be 
any more distracting than any of the other romantic entanglements we 
see in the story unless one is especially distracted or put off by 
same-sex attraction. Which many people are, I know, but it's up to 
the author whether they want to write to that audience or not. I do 
think it's a bit disingenuous for JKR to say, "If I'd known it would 
make you happy, I'd have said it years ago!" when she knows perfectly 
well that she's presented other backstories that center on being in 
love and said so, but didn't tell this one. Yet did make sure to 
select a question in an interview so she could answer it and get all 
over the news.

Petra:
Ain't that the truth? But to deliver "a prolonged argument
for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry" to
the intolerant and the bigoted, one has to toe the line
carefully and keep from alienating those who most need to
hear the argument and the plea.

Not an easy task.

Magpie:
I have to admit, I'm just not seeing the prolonged argument for 
tolerance or a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry in this series at 
all. It's one of the reasons I finished DH and thought: What the hell 
was that?

Nadine replies:

I wonder if it is the other way around? What if it is completly
normal and therefore not worth mentioning it in a special way?

Magpie:
That's how race is, and this isn't handled like race. We know there 
are people of different races (in Muggle terms) in canon, but this is 
not remarked upon by the characters who have different distinctions. 
In order to do that with gay people they'd have to be there 
explicitly and not remarked upon. As it is in the books there are 3 
mentions that I can remember that refer to same sex pairings. There's 
Dudley (not a wizard) snarkily asking Harry "Who's Cedric, you're 
boyfriend?" That's supposed to make Harry feel embarassed. There's 
also Ron's comment that Percy and Crouch are going to "announce their 
engagement any day now," which implies the same sort of attitude in 
the WW as is often found in the Muggle world. Ron is mocking Percy's 
attachment to Crouch by saying they should get married when they're 
two men. And then there's Rita's nasty implication that Dumbledore 
has a bad interest in Harry (does she actually say unnatural)? This 
is more a charge of an adult preying on a child, but in this case 
it's a same-sex predatory relationship.

-m