BlogHer - J.K. Rowling Reveals Dumbledore is Gay - Comments

First Dumbledore

alyssaroyse — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:46:04 -0600

Oh, I can't resist.... yes, I outed one of my characters. (Though, raised by a gay dad, I've been creating gay characters and families for as long as I can remember.) When my daughter asked me what the tooth-fairy's name was, i, for some reason, said Bruce....

And that was the beginning of my TinkerTank project.

Curious? Here is Tooth Fairy Bruce's official bio . And here's the press release about his sexuality, yes, First Dumbledore Now The Tooth Fairy.

It's all fun - and if beloved characters can't be used to teach society what we need to learn, then what's the point of telling stories?

Now, back to your year end reading round up....

___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE
make some good news!
www.JustCauseIt.com

Authors are Scrambling Now...

FeliciaDonovan — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:32:35 -0500

Damn that Rowling! Authors all over the world are now scrambling to out their characters. Mr. Darcy? Nah, we already know about him. Jemimah Puddleduck? Yeah, why not. Nancy Drew? Don't even go there!

Fortunately, I've already outed MY characters in THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY. Marcus, who along with his partner Antoine, co-owns the design firm, Sachet & Sashay is not only out, but outrageous. This minor character provides much comical relief to the four Black Widow female investigators.

Felicia Donovan
Author, THE BLACK WIDOW AGENCY Series
www.feliciadonovan.com
www.blackwidowagency.com

I thought the pedophilia implications were a positive thing...

KristySF — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:15:42 -0500

I totally understand your point, Denise, but here's my take:

I agree that gay adults have to battle the pedophilia stereotype all the time, for no good reason.

As readers, we know that Rita Skeeter lies all the time, and that nothing she writes can ever be considered accurate. She is a reprehensible character, and we hate her.

What I hope many will take away from the book, therefore, is a greater sense of skepticism about scandalous "news" stories. If something in real life sounds like it could have been written by Rita, we probably can't put stock in it.

I believe that by having Rita make the pedophile insinuation, JKR is giving us (readers, parents, children) a powerful tool for rejecting similar "news" items when we hear them in real life. JKR's saying that only someone as willfully ignorant and self-serving as Rita would ever make that kind of unjustified connection.

Ultimately, I think that JKR used the stereotype specifically to debunk it, along with all the other gay male stereotypes that Dumbledore transcends.

---
Kristy Sammis
BlogHer's Marketing & Events Manager
e. kristy@blogher.com

Hrm

zchamu — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:53:23 -0500

I don't think there was any significance to her choice of "when" she outed him. She was asked a question about his love life and she answered it. I don't think there was any strategy or forethought to it.

She also revealed who Neville ends up marrying and a bunch of other things she conjured out of her head. It was a wide ranging interview.

Visit my blogs at ThreeSeven (all that's irrelevant and amusing) and
ecochick (all that's green, cool and Canadian).

If he had been straight

Denise — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:06:18 -0500

I don't believe Skeeter would have written her tell all and the Daily Prophet snark pieces wouldn't have focused on pedophilia - that's a tactic used against gays and Rowling went right along with it. Wrong.

Good point about Coming Out Day, we can be thankful for that at least. lol

~Denise
Fast Times @ Homeschool High & Flamingo House Happenings

I do think

Denise — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:02:57 -0500

I do think Rowling's presentation of Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald was important and had any other major character needed that type of relationship information in order to explain the story, she would have provided it.

My issue with Dumbledore's orientation is the way she chose to write it. Too many inferences and the horrid pedophile plot line that queers have to fight every day in real life - that was the step I did not like and did not feel was necessary.

~Denise
Fast Times @ Homeschool High & Flamingo House Happenings

He's only one of many characters coming out of the closet

debontherocks — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:01:02 -0500

More fictional characters are proudly speaking of their orientations. Lucy from Peanuts? Proud lesbian. Bob the Builder? He says he's so gay. Julie from the Love Boat? Straight M-to-F. Ernie and Bert run a kind of support/advocacy group. It's funded by the NEA.

www.debontherocks.com

Excellent point about the Skeeter's attacks

sassymonkey — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:56:24 -0500

They certainly take on a different implication when you have this fact. I'll admit I was too busy racing through the book to really reflect on them too long. But you can believe I'll have that in mind when I get around to re-reading them.

She would have outed him sooner or later if she really is planning to write her encyclopedia. At least she didn't out him on Coming Out Day.

Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

But are they really children's books?

sassymonkey — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:53:23 -0500

I believe it can be argued they are not purely children's books. As it can be argued that a certain age level's comprehension would not understand many of themes in the last 4 books and certainly not in the last two books. The books were written in a way that the kids who read the first book when it came out were certainly not kids when the last one came out, nor were the characters. There are many rumors that Rowling will write an encyclopedia of the Harry Potter world and this could have come out then, as I expect McGonagall's life outside Hogwart's will. I've always wondered about McGonagall' life outside Hogwarth's actually...

Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

I don't think it needed to be in the books.

zchamu — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:40:03 -0500

As T.R. Knight said in an interview, being gay isn't really the most interesting thing about him. If Dumbledore's sexuality wasn't relevant to the story, then there was no need for it to be mentioned. In my recollection, JKR didn't mention anything about McGonagall's sexual orientation: whether she'd been married, had children, had any relationships; it wasn't needed to make her a complete character. Same as Dumbledore.

Having said that, I certainly think this revelation of the pieces JKR built in to Dumbledore adds a level of understanding and significance to the Grindelwald plotline. Having your best friend turn traitor is certainly painful, but nothing like when a lover turns traitor. However, these being children's books, I think that level of subtlety would have been beyond a certain age level's comprehension.

Visit my blogs at ThreeSeven (all that's irrelevant and amusing) and
ecochick (all that's green, cool and Canadian).

Of course he's gay but...

Denise — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:25:04 -0500

what I did not say in my blog post, because I really didn't want to get into it at the time, is that I disliked Rowlings treatment of his orientation in the last book.

It was 100% obvious to me that Dumbledore was gay. Why? Because of the way Rowling wrote the Daily Prophet attacks on Dumbledore's character - and the way she wrote Rita Skeeter's attacks on his character in her "tell all book.

In our society, anyone who is gay and not out is immediately rumored to be a pedophile. Rowling just jumped right into that stereotype and it simply was not necessary for the readers of the HP series, for her characters or for gay people who are constantly lumped in with pedophiles. I was disappointed while reading the book - and I'm not thrilled that she outed Dumbledore at Carnegie Hall either.

~Denise
Fast Times @ Homeschool High & Flamingo House Happenings

J.K. Rowling Reveals Dumbledore is Gay

sassymonkey — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:32:52 -0500

At an event earlier late last week at Carnegie Hall, author J.K. Rowling announced that Albus Dumbledore, Hogwart's famed headmaster in the Harry Potter series, is gay. The announcement was greeted with cheers by fans. And it quickly hit the news sites even though the last book was released this past summer. It was picked up by Newsweek and The Washington Post. The Globe and Mail called it "the biggest outing in the entertainment industry since Ellen DeGeneres". The New York Times' The Lede posted on the "Blogospheric Reaction of the Outed Wizard".

J.K. Rowling's public appearances are fairly rare. So of course the wonderful staff at The Leaky Cauldron has posted a transcript of the event which I'll use for sharing Dumbledore's outing.

Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

What are BlogHers saying? Plenty.

Contributing Editor Denise says of course he's gay!

Dorothy Surrenders tries to put it the reveal in perspective for us.

But what I really want to do is take a moment to put this historic outing in perspective. The Harry Potter series is the best-selling children’s series of all time. To date it has sold more than 350 million copies and been translated into 64 languages. The five film adaptations so-far rank among the top 20 highest-grossing films of all-time worldwide. And now, the whole world knows that one of the most important and beloved characters in the series is gay. Wow. I think that makes it a pretty good day to be gay, don’t you?

Dana from Mother Talkers weighs in on the reveal coming after the end of the series:

With millions of readers holding Dumbledore in their hearts even before they knew his sexual orientation, perhaps they are now more willing to accept this new piece of information. And perhaps, just perhaps, this acceptance will flow over into their view of the real LGBT people in their lives. How very Dumbledorian of Rowling to present it this way.

From Finding Wonderland:

I'm not sure story ever IS "done" - especially since every reader brings something new to the story, and writers only imagine they've revealed its entire scope. We live in the world of Fan Fiction; Dumbledore's probably been gay a long time ...

Jessica at New Terrain hasn't read the books (but has seen the movies) and sees it as positive news:

As an educator, I personally think it's not a big deal, but a step in the right direction: to expose children to sexuality in a realistic and tolerant way. By realistic, I mean that Dumbledore's sexuality was merely fact and not the plot in a book that was focused on the children. In our own lives, our sexualities are fact, rather than the plot. By tolerant, I mean our children are learning, in subtle ways, that we should respect everyone, regardless of their sexuality.

Of course, not all reactions are positive. But most on lit-blogs seems to be civil such as the discussion in the comments in the post about Dumbledore at Dear Author wondered if it should have a place in children's literature.

As for me, I think it makes sense. I always assumed there were gay characters in the books. HP fan fiction had lots of gay characters (not to mention the slash fics). Should Dumbledore's sexual orientation have been in the books? I don't know...I kind of like that it will just be accepted fact. If it had been written into the books, it would have been made a major focus of the books. Not in the books themselves but in coverage of them. But instead it's just an aside. Another fact about a friend we've known for years. It doesn't change his role in the books or the person that he was. We merely have some more insight to his life. Dumbledore taught that love was the greatest power there was and this new knowledge really shows that he learned that through his own experiences with love. He fought evil with love and he taught Harry to do the same. And through Harry he taught an entire generation of kids that love conquers. Dumbledore's value as a character and a role model doesn't center on his sexuality, but in what he taught us about love and friendship.

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.

BlogHer - J.K. Rowling Reveals Dumbledore is Gay - Comments

First Dumbledore

Authors are Scrambling Now...

I thought the pedophilia implications were a positive thing...

Hrm

If he had been straight

I do think

He's only one of many characters coming out of the closet

Excellent point about the Skeeter's attacks

But are they *really* children's books?

I don't think it needed to be in the books.

Of course he's gay but...

J.K. Rowling Reveals Dumbledore is Gay

But are they really children's books?