A Gay Potter Character?/I'm so happy

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 178204

> > Magpie:. 
> > (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.) 
> 
> Pippin:
> Maybe times have changed? There was a time when gentlemen
> did not kiss and tell, and it was considered indiscrete to discuss 
your
> love affairs of whatever persuasion with anybody. 

Magpie:
Telling someone that you were in love with someone else isn't 
actually kissing and telling. There may have been no kissing involved 
at all. Whether or not Dumbledore chooses to admit that he was 
motivated by being in love with someone among other things 
aside, "indiscreet" and "kissing and telling" usually applies to what 
you got up to sexually with someone, which is a different thing. 
Dumbledore has brought up sexual attraction to Harry when they were 
relevant without being coy--they both watched Hephzibah Smith flirt 
with Tom Riddle and talked about Merope being in love with Tom's 
father. It's not immediately more indiscreet because it's a same sex 
attraction. 

> Pippin:
> I thought he was mocking them by saying that Percy's attachment to
> Crouch was so intense that it might as well be romantic, not that
> there was anything wrong with a romantic attachment between men
> per se. So for me there was a marked contrast between the homophobic
> remarks in the Muggle world (you left out Vernon's reference to 
nancy
> boys) and the absence of such remarks in the WW.

Magpie:
I think the humor of the remark comes from the same place Dudley's 
does, myself, which is a different place than the Twins' jokes about 
Bill and his "Engleesh lessons" vith Fleur. Dudley didn't indicate 
there was anything wrong with same sex relationships when he asked if 
Cedric was Harry's boyfriend either. Neither is as blatantly hostile 
as the "nancy boy" remark but I think the distinction between Dudley 
and Ron, if any, is a little too subtle to be sure of.

Pippin:
> 
> The taboos in the WW that we know of are dating more than one
> person at a time, predatory sex, and getting married when very 
> young (though that is relaxed in time of war.) It would have been
> easy to work in a taboo against same sex relationships -- it's
> not so easy, I think, to work in the absence of it. 
> The trouble is, while it's easy to show racial differences that have
> no effect on lifestyle in the WW,  it's hard to see how you could 
depict
> gayness in the same way, especially if you're sensitive to the 
issues 
> of tokenism.

Magpie:
I don't see how it much is at all difficult to show, since she did it 
with race. Just mention a same sex couple along with the random 
references to straight couples if one is making that point that 
sexual orientation is a non-issue for Wizards the way Muggle race is. 
It's the only way you can do it, really, since making it invisible 
just recreates the way it's been treated in societies where it's not 
a non-issue. If one's sensitive to tokenism I'd think this 
announcement about Dumbledore would ping you more than having Harry 
mention some of the background couples are same sex, or throwing in a 
same sex couple. 

>  
> Magpie:
>  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.
> 
> Pippin:
> "Again, your readers will have to buy my book for the whole story,
> but there is no question that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest 
in 
> Potter from the word go. Whether that was really in the boy's
> best interest --well, we'll see. It's certainly an open secret that
> Potter has had a most troubled adolescence." -US DH  p27 
> 
> It stands out to me that with all her hinting about scandal, Rita
> doesn't hint that there's anything scandalous about a same
> sex relationship -- it's Dumbledore as predator that she's 
> concerned with. She doesn't, for example hint that Darling
> Dodgy had a romantic interest in Dumbledore, despite
> their plans to travel the world together, though it seems rather
> obvious now.  

Magpie:
My point was that there are three times (the nancy comment means 
four) where I remembered an explicit reference to the possibility of 
same sex relationships  at all and I think this counts as one of 
them. The fact that Rita isn't coming out and saying "I think same 
sex relationships are what's icky here" is besides the point. I'm 
just saying it's not a reference that says it's a non-issue or is 
particularly positive. That she isn't as anti-gay as she could be is 
a different thing as well, imo. Rather than having openly gay 
characters or couples in canon, I'm having to do some deducting--
surely if gay and lesbian relationships were not completely accepted 
Rita would have looked at two male school friends planning to tour 
the world together, thought that meant they must be gay, and put that 
down. 

Or maybe if her outlook is to assume that everyone is straight she 
would look at two male schoolfriends traveling the world and not 
imagine they were lovers because they're two men and only brings up 
the suggestion of a sexual relationship between two men when she sees 
the relationship as bad. I don't know.  

Pippin:

Though there are lots of moments in canon where romantic attraction
is going on, overall the work is an epic and in epics romantic
attraction is at most a waystation or an obstacle on the way to the
creation or reunion of a family.

Magpie:
Not sure what that's explaining. Is it just saying that gay couples 
just don't have a place in epics? Because this doesn't see like a 
reason to not include any or not mention Dumbledore was in love with 
Grindenwald one way or the other.


-m