f13.net

Its not just wacky allegations from nuts anymore- J.K. Rowling herself has weighed in.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/50787

lulz.

Feel the burn of Internet fan fiction, bitch.

Why even bother going there? She's not going to write other books with the characters, and I'm quite sure this will drive half the parents of the book's fans completely round the bend.

Yeah Dumbledore being gay is beyond retarded. If he was gay in the books that's fine, but you can't just tack it on after the books are finished.

She kinda wussed out by outting him AFTER the books had all been released.

Money/attention whore.

Yeah, even if "He is" i see no need to even bring it up, its adds nothing to the story's, or his character..

She wasn't the one who brought it up.  People were asking her questions about each of the characters' backstories as she envisioned them, and she answered them truthfully.  She didn't mention it explicitly in the books because discussing Dumbledore's sexuality wouldn't add anything to the story.  That doesn't mean that she imagined Dumbledore as a eunuch the whole time, though.

Did any of you who are decrying this as a shameless publicity grab actually read the article?

 :awesome_for_real:

I did, after.....  :roll:

Yes.

Having written something this well known, and revealing something that is as socially shocking as this, makes it a publicity grab.  It may also be an honest answer to the question; the two are not mutually exclusive.

Like she needs to "grab publicity."   :roll:

I didn't say "need" had anything to do with it. 

So if she wanted to avoid "grabbing publicity", she should have lied?

Or are you saying that she originally conceived of Dumbledore as gay for the sole purpose of having an opportunity to be "socially shocking" somewhere down the line?

I'm trying to figure out what exactly you're criticizing her for.  I mean, there are lots of things to criticize her for, but I don't think this is one of them.

Wake me up when Hermione is outed as bi and has a copious gallery of pics on the 'net.

I'm sure 4chan could accommodate you.

I wasn't being critical.  I was answering Haemish's question as to what her likely motivation was.  She was at a media event whose purpose was to promote sales of her book, whereupon she says something I am certain she was aware would be fairly controversial.  The "whorish" bit would be that she's doing this while still trying to drum up sales, and just after the peak of her popularity when she has plenty to gain if it works out well for her. 

I agree that the media event itself was a publicity thing (which is pretty much the whole point of a promotional tour, and Rowling's far from the only author to do one), but to say that outting Dumbledore was an attention grab means you have to believe that she either:

A) Invented Dumbledore's gayness on the spot.
B) Had a plant in the audience who was instructed to ask that question.

 :tinfoil:

Neither.  It means that to throw something like that out means she's going to be attention whoring.  Doesn't matter if it's an honest answer or not because of the effect it'll have.  If she'd wanted to avoid that sort of grab she could've skirted the question, or just dropped it in the books and have offloaded it up front. 

Again, all I did was answer Haemish's question.  Seems to me she was seeking attention by letting it out now.  No big conspiracy; she just saw an attention to grab at the spotlight and took it.  Not sure what else you might think it is.  You're welcome to introduce your own thoughts instead of repeatedly trying to turn this back on me.

But maybe she is European and we don't give that much shit about people being gay. The article sounded like she was somewhat surprised about the intense reaction.

My own thought is that someone asked her the question "Did Dumbledore ever have a lover?" and she answered truthfully: "yes, as I imagined it he and Grindlewald were lovers as well as friends."  It wasn't introduced in the books because Dumbledore kept his private life to himself and therefore none of the protagonists would have known about it (they only found out in the last book that he even had siblings).  

Rowling could not possibly have "skirted" that question without lying or outright refusing to answer.  If she simply said "yes", the obvious followup would be "is it a character we know?", so trying to be coy would have just been dumb and made an even bigger deal out of it.  Refusing to answer would only make sense if she thought it was a horribly shameful secret, which obviously she didn't.  From the quotes in the article, it sounds like she didn't think it was a big deal (which really, it isn't), and she was surprised at the giant reaction she got.

Frankly, the reason I find this "OMG ATTENTION WHORE" thing annoying is that it stems from a mindset that says Dumbledore being gay IS inherently a horribly shameful thing that Rowling had no business even conceiving in the first place, especially in a book that was FOR TEH CHILDREN. Whether you have that mindset yourself or are reacting on behalf of the legions of people who do and will now proceed to go burn some books or whatever (it's a bit late for a boycott), it's distasteful.  Is it that inconceivable that a character in a book could just happen to be gay without it being part of some evil gay/communist/publicity agenda?

(Edit: Also, what Tebonas said.  Americans are just batshit loco about TEH GAYS.)

Considering the ultra-conservative bunch didn't like her books anyway, the "gay is horrible" angle doesn't mean much.  Nobody cares about Ian McKellen being gay-Gandalf because it's no secret.  It's the telling of a secret - the outing - that's the stunt.  Tebonas is right that there's a scandelous element about being gay, but she'd have hit front page if she'd said that Dumbledore had been having a relationship with McGonagall.


You're quite welcome to be done assuming what my mindset is.  For someone who has gone on several posts gearing up against assuming what others think, you are doing more than enough of your own share.

I am not comfortable taking credit for something I never said or even implied. Especially because I abhor the fact that this can be a scandalous element for some people.

"He is gay" shouldn't be all that different from "He has a thing for redheads".

Your words.  The thing that makes being gay "scandalous" is the mindset that it's shameful and perverse.  Again, I am NOT saying that this is your personal view, but that's where the "scandalousness" that you're talking about comes from.  Saying so matter-of-factly that being gay is "scandalous" is giving that mindset a level of credibility that it doesn't deserve.

If you think a fictional character being gay is worth making a big stink about, even if you yourself are not a homophobe, you are part of the problem.

Such a thing is UNPOSSIBLE in America. Everything has a hidden agenda, don't you know? After all, the Happy Feet penguins were closest commie hippies trying to indoctrinate kids with the message of global warming, and SpongeBob Squarepants is advancing the homosexual agenda by appearing in a video teaching children sexual tolerance.

People will, I'm sure, get apopleptic about it. Me, I just want her to STFU and go away.

Being gay isn't the scandal, it's outing.  Telling secrets is scandelous, which is why there is always trash celeb news, or the like.  It all fits in the same category despite almost none of it having anything to do with homosexuality. 


This wasn't some deep, personal issue that she'd been struggling with.  She hasn't had to deal with real issues of homophobia or whatever else and finally went public to try and deal with whatever her personal demons might have been.  She let loose with a big secret about one of her main characters during a publicity event that was sure to attract attention.  Hell, if she'd wanted to make an actual issue of this she had seven books within which to do so.  But no, instead she lets out with it after the majority of sales have rolled in, and as attention on her is in decline.  Bump, back in the spotlight.

I don't care if he was gay.

The thing i don't get, is why you make a fictional character gay, and then it never comes up in any of the books, hell, its not even hinted at. So why, in any regard, is it important for the author to make that character gay?

I don't get, at all, what is the reason this bit of character attribute, its never used.

Its an unused Variable that only gets used in a public conference/book signing?

Here's the thing: it's not a "real issue" or a "big secret" or a "actual issue" or anything.  It's not even an "outing".  It's TRIVIA.  It's something that just didn't happen to get mentioned in the books and that someone asked her about.  It's like if she had "revealed" that Ron is left handed.


Because authors of fiction usually flesh their characters out in LOTS of detail, but unless they're incredibly longwinded wankers, they don't put all of that on the page.  Just because Dumbledore doesn't have any romantic entanglements during the course of the books doesn't mean Rowling imagined him as having been a eunuch his entire life.

I guess i can understand that.Lots of things get cut, after design, and before production.

Meh, I don't know... I have read stories before where one or more of the protagonists were homosexual... but Sex really had no place in ANY of the stories that I read (and last count I think I read all seven).  There was hardly any romantic friction at all outside of some small youth-aimed stuff.  Perhaps it makes me homophobic, but what I really feel is like I spend thousands of pages learning about a world and a main character and you just turned it all upside down and said "No, all of the ways that you read my book were wrong... so you need to think THIS way."  If it was not important enough for her to discuss while Forming the character then she could simply have said, "That was not really a big factor in my mind."

It does not have to be some big conspiracy... but in the end it leaves a bad taste in my mouth just because she screwed with my story (and yes, it is Mine because most of it happens in my mind when I read.)

Yes, that's why that bit of info led the news articles.

You know better than this.  It's the same reason you shit on a troll; it's not because whatever the troll says should cause a stir, it's that it will and the troll damn well knows it. 

Thing is, I'm not all that sure she knew what a big stir it would cause.  She seemed genuinely surprised.  Like Tebonas said, I think it's because Europeans aren't as weird about homosexuality as most Americans are.  I don't think we get to criticize her for our weirdness.

And again, even if she did know it would cause a stir and wanted to avoid it, what was she supposed to do?  Lie about it, or keep it a deep dark secret and make an even bigger deal out of it?

A troll says things for the sole purpose of causing a stink.  I can't see any way to argue that Rowling said what she did for the sole purpose of causing a stink.  I can't even see that she even realized that she WOULD cause a stink, much less that she planned to cause one.

This thread is gay.

Made headlines in BBC, Guardian, etc., so the Brits are fussing over it as well.  They may be less fixated on homosexual issues, but UK tabloids LOVE shit like this, and UK is almost understood to prefix the word tabloid.  Maybe she genuinely didn't think anyone would care, but that would seem incredibly naive, Brit or not. 

Because it at no point ever became relevant in the entire series?  People are gay.  Lee Jordan is black.  Ron is a ginger. 

"Harry, you need to find the horcruxes and destroy them.  It it imperative that you accomplish this.  By the way, I have sex with men."

This is exactly my feeling. It is over. The books are done. What you get in the books; that is Dumbledore. That people even asked if Dumbledore ever had a lover... give me a fucking break. Nobody needs to know this shit. Dumbledore being gay probably has less relevance than Ron being lefthanded because at least that a visualisation aid to know that. He didn't interact with anyone in any way that would make him being gay an interesting twist or an "ah so that's why" revelation, it's just a completely irrelevant fact similar to "did Dumbledore ever own a pet as a child?"

I don't have a problem with him being gay, or her saying he's gay in the way she did. I have a problem with this being seen as a relevant fact in any way, shape, or form. There are, as we speak, people discussing this very "fact" in loud voices or caps. People are discussing the fact that a fictional character was revealed to be gay outside of the books he appears in because they somehow feel that the life of a fictional character is relevant beyond the scope of the fiction they appear in. This is wrong and disturbing.

The charge of "attention whore" always had more than a subtle whiff of sexism about it to me.

Yes, I know that in theory, you can call a man or a woman in an attention whore.

In practice, it tends to amount to "aggravation that a woman is talking".

J.K. Rowling went on a publicity tour to promote her book.  Shockingly, so does Steven King, so does Christopher Hitchens, so does anyone else with a potentially popular book that they'd like to make some cash off of.  And yet, the "attention whore" label gets very disproportionately aimed at the women.

Frankly, I'm glad she snuck this in the backdoor with a beloved character after the books were done.  In general, I'm against indoctrinating kids into politics, but when it's a matter of basic humanity -- the fundamental stuff, like "people of other sexual orientations and races and genders are every bit as deserving of human dignity as you are" -- I'm all in favor of getting it into their heads while they're young, and doing an end-run around what their mouth-breather parents want to teach them if necessary.  If she'd explicitly put it in the books, some fundy parents probably wouldn't have bought them for her kids, the books would have been mired in controversy from the get-go, etc.  This way, some fundy kid grows to like Dumbledore through the books, later on down the line he finds out that Dumbledore is gay, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit more tolerance gets injected into the world.

The fundies were already up in arms about the books because of the magic aspect.  Around my hometown, leaflets were being left on doors warning parents about Harry Potter being apparently a Selling Your Soul To Satan For Dummies.  And there was a case down in Georgia IIRC about a mother taking a school district to court in order to ban the books from the school library.  All because of depictions of magic.  Dumbledore being gay is just a little squirt of gasoline on an already raging fire.

Which is ironic, given that you're not a woman, but you are an attention whore.

I wonder if Michael Gambon will mince him up in the rest of the films.

It would have been very hard to say "Yes he did. But he liked to keep that aspect of his life private." Or even "Yes" and then reveal more in response to future questions. But to come out with "Actually he's gay" is all about the attention.

"Oh, and by the way I always considered that Peeves was sexually assaulted as an infant, that a couple of the students grew up and decided to change their gender, and that Teacher X, the old maid, had a large collection of magic 'broomsticks'.

Not trying to get a headline you know. Just giving you the information you all asked for."

Or, as the author that is how she envisioned him and simply responded honestly. Not everything has to have some ulterior motive.  From what I have read it is rather obvious from the subtext of the 7th book that this is the case anyways which is what fueled the speculation/question.

 :awesome_for_real:

Seriously, this does explain a lot in the seventh book.  The whole "Dumbledore supported magical dictatorship with his friend" thing rang odd to me.  If he had a crush/relationship with Grindelwald, it makes more sense.  We've all said stupid things in the expectation of sex.

That's all to say this revelation makes sense in terms of what we already know.  Its not like she said Flitwick ran a midget BDSM dungeon or something.

Honestly?  It probably would have been the best bit of plot about the 7th book.  Dealing with, y'know, emotional issues.  She was already comming down on the weaknesses of his character, and could easily have tied this in.  Could've cast this against Harry's choices in dealing with Ginny.  Could've cast the potential/actual isolation that Dumbledore might've gone through (her wizard world does not sound socially progressive) against what Harry went/was going through in his wizard vs muggle family conflict.  Could've used Dumbledore's bad choices in handling all these issues against how Harry should probably frame or reframe his views. 

In other words, it could've been used for... y'know, actual story, plot, etc instead of a stupid, cheap comment. 

In terms of writing, there's a lot to characters that never make the story. Most writers -- especially writers who spend a lot of time (multiple books or many years) working with the same set of characters, endow them with a wide variety of experiences, backstory, impulses, and drives that don't ever make the story.

It's so they can have consistent reactions to scenes and other characters. It's a rare author who does that all up front, of course, and I sincerly doubt Rowlings was oine of them. Like most, she probably worked backwards -- have a character of such and such a type, and slowly sort of flesh him/her out over time with a backstory and beliefs that fit how he talks and acts.

So yeah, most authors carry around a ton of misc. garbage about their characters. And most rather casually answer questions about it (especially if they're done with the character), without thinking much of it. And I'd said a good percentage would love to go rewrite older books with that character, to make him or her more consistent with how the author eventually came to see the character.

It appeared to be a direct response to a question.

Everything else is speculation about motives, and I have to admit claiming "She did it for the attention" isn't really a good argument since she doesn't NEED attention. She has the best-selling series of the last few decades, 6 blockbuster movies, and basically owns an entire generation.

I tend to lean more towards the "She simply answered the question" coupled with a bit of "And everyone speculating about 'attention whoring' or whatnot is just a fucking idiot."

I think now that she's filthy rich, she should just go whole-hog.  Announce that Ron gives Hermione golden showers every night, that Snape was walking around for all seven books with a buttplug up his ass, and that Harry was born a girl.  It would be lols.

Neil Gaiman has this to say about this very topic (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2007/10/flowers-of-romance.html).

I swear I'm going to figure out that goddamn forgotten god before I die.

And don't forget that Fred and George had a gay, incestuous relationship.

Is there a video of this somewhere? We could see if it looked like an innocent question and answer session reply vs  calculated attention whoring.

I realize someone will claim the person asking the question is a plant and that Rowlings could have just used her billions on acting classes, but I'd still like to see it.

Who's claiming that?

The hypothetical future conspiracy theorist!

The comments in the blog that Gaiman links to are hilarious...

http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/dumbledore_is_gay.php

...not in a good way.

Dear God.

Seriously, What The Fuck ?

I don't wanna get into it, since it'll head straight to Politics or SWG, but



There's a guy that needs shot.

Welcome to Amerika, 2007.

(http://craphound.com/images/dumbledorepride.jpg)

So the Potter wizard is gay, as is Gandalf. How many more men of magic are gay, and is it a needed lifestyle in order to wield massive magic power?

I think this quote from the Gaiman article sums it up best.


This referring to the other blog where the guy said she revealed it to get attention. He's right. I'm not published but even in my stories I usually know tons of stuff I don't add into the story proper. And she doesn't need attention.

I've always had my suspicions about Siegfried and Roy.  And David Copperfield.


Don't even get me started on David Blaine!

I know this was probably meant to have green text, but short of catching Siegfried and Roy actually having sex I don't think I could be anymore positive about them.

Sarchasm.  You entered it.

If you watch Fairly Oddparents, occasionally when visiting the Fairy World you can notice they are passing the intersection of Sigfried and Roy.

:awesome_for_real:

QFT.

I've recently gotten hooked on reading a LiveJournal group called "little details", wherein run-of-the-mill amateur writers seek help looking for detailed information about obscure topics in order to fully flesh out their characters and give them depth and authenticity.  These are people with books they'll probably never finish, who will probably never have their writing substantially appreciated.  And yet they've fleshed their 'worlds' out to an almost absurd level of detail.  To think a writer as spotlighted as J.K. Rowling wouldn't have her worlds equally filled out in her mind is silly.

Besides, there's a big aftermarket for these sort of tidbits.  Harry Potter fans don't just enjoy the books, they enjoy the world the books portray -- hence all the fan fiction and whatnot.  They love to get any additional drops of information J.K. Rowling is willing to let out.  She's giving the fans what they want.  It's the rough equivalent of all those "official" Starfleet technical pubs that have been released for people to geek out over.  Of course, Star Trek is a series that appeals primarily to men, and those were packed with the sort of tech details that appeal primarily to men, so nobody accused the owners of the license of 'attention whoring' when they did it.

Which Starfleet technical publications did you have in mind? It wouldn't make sense for one to claim Roddenberry that he was attention whoring, since he wasn't the author of any of them to the best of my knowledge. Most of the Star Trek authors have been called attention whores at one point or another. There isn't an online copy of The Authoritative Guide To Insults Applied To Sci-Fi Writers By Fans for me to cite, but you can take it from me that they were.

Someone asked her a question and she answered it. The only reason it could be considered "attention whoring" is that people in this country are overly concerned with teh ghay.

I get the feeling she'd rather have people leave her the hell alone rather than stirring up a frenzy.

If you have information and someone asks you a question you are never, in no way ever, attention whoring if you choose to answer said question. No matter the nature of the question, it is impossible to attention whore in a response to a direct question.

I'm glad we've cleared this up. Thank you all kindly for the time you have generously donated to this issue.

Gandalf isn't gay.

What?  Are you kidding?  He's so gay! (http://www.ealasaid.com/misc/vsd/gandalf.html)

Dude, he's totally fucking gay. But that's okay -- Sam will kill him if he tries anything.

No.  Stop it. 

Come on!  Why do you think Ian McKellen was so perfect for the role?

Because he's Sir Ian McKellen.

Not attention whoring?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YERW9csaJ5U

LoL... When is the J.K. sex tape coming out?

Beyond Attention Whoring there is just common sense.  If I take your approach then the next time my wife asks "How do I look in this dress" then I should point out every possible thing that goes through my mind when I look at it.  To make it more in line with what actually happened though... it would be like her asking me that question for 10 years and my answer being "Man you look like THIS" and then all of a sudden I say, "No, wait a second... what I said these last 10 years is not true... I really have thought all along you look like THAT".

I am not a big fan of the homosexual lifestyle... but that is really not the key issue here.  I enjoy books, I enjoy getting into a story... I don't like it when authors try to go back and screw with the world they created after the fact.  She added nothing to the story (obviously since it was not, you know, IN the story).  We are not talking a 1-time book that needed clarification.  We are talking a 7 book SERIES.  I respect those of you who have actually published works... most of my writing is purely small-scale.  But, I still find it hard to believe that anything of ANY real significance did not make it into a 7-book series that covers thousands of pages.

So if his sexuality wasn't mentioned before, that's tantamount to being straight?  Hetero-normative much?


Grow the fuck up?

Eh?

Also

Eh?

Man, a COUPLE of people actually beat me to the 'What The Fuck' post.

Well done all concerned.

Would you say the same if I said "I am not a big fan of baseball players"?  Or, how about, "I am not a big fan of smokers"?  If sexual orientation is not a big deal then why is it a big deal that I am not a fan of certain orientations... how bout a little consistency here.  I suppose we could turn this into a gay/straight thing... but I thought we had moved beyond that into a "How author's should deal with their material" thing.

As to his Sexuality not being mentioned... I did not just assume he was straight, heck I never THOUGHT about it.  You assume that I painted him as this hetero-normative guy (I guess big hyphenated phrases add weight to an argument, so I will use it too), but really I just painted him as a wise older magician who could kick butt until he died.

The point of the whole dress analogy is not that she somehow "created" a straight character and then turned him "gay", but that she spend 10 years NOT saying anything about sex at all and then decided it was an important formative background for a main character of the book.  Fact is she has/had every right to do whatever, this is Her copywrite.  I just don't like people messing with stories after they are finished.  I did not like it when George Lucas re-made episodes 4-6, and I don't like this.  If Sex is an issue, make it an issue (and obviously she was trying to say it was an issue, as it was a motivating factor in WHY Dumbledore almost went to the evil side... as opposed to the reason(s) she alluded to in the book.)

(http://glasgow.invocas.com/ext/ari.jpg)

I'll just let a well known author chime in on this... which was of course posted last page, from his first goddamn paragraph, you should have read it:


And, for my next trick:


aaaaaaand the response just fits just so perfectly:

Your job here is done.

See, right here. If someone's sexual orientation 'turns your world upside down' you're part of the problem. If where Dumbledore sticks his wang or wishes to stick his wang is a preocupation or a concern, I must insist that you explore the possibiity of 'turning your life upside down' for yourself, or, alternately, get a life.

I take it you are saying I should have read the article so as not to repeat exactly what he said.  I have a tendency to skip embedded links, but when I went back to read it I realized he made all of my points more succinctly.

I am trying to think of an example to use here to turn this away from some stupid gay/straight discussion and into the whole "how author's should treat their material" thing (which is where Gaiman went in his post).  How about this... its not Dumbledore and his gayness, but the fact that Harry is really Voldemort's son through a one-time affair his mom had.  It is a much better explanation for how they are so linked magically, but she did not discover that fact until later as she was writing and it would have just messed with the storyline so she left it out.  You will have to be willing to stretch here, but I don't feel like taking the time to build a perfectly appropriate analogy.

It is not the gayness that "turned my world upside down (honestly, that was a horrible phrase, way too dramatic... this is, afterall, a fiction book series that I read once and will never need to read again)".  It was that she was introducing a new, motivation for a character that had some serious insights revealed in book 7.  It was one of her best works as far as dealing with black-white-grey, personal motivations, etc.  So, the whole book you are working through "who IS this guy?" and she leaves out a detail that would have shed a Very different light on the subject.  I just feel it is bad form to disclose it in a one-sentence fassion at a press briefing.  It is not like she would have written, "Oh yes, and Dumbledore also thought about ruling the world so he could sleep with his hot roomate."  She would have taken pages, chapters, even books to develop this... which is how things should be done in the world of books.

And don't forget, we ARE still in serious business.

She probably shouldn't have opened her trap in this case unless she was deliberately attention whoring. That still doesn't excuse your (and a lot of other people's) homophobia about it. This shouldn't be news in the first place.

But it is, :awesome_for_real: , and she should have known better.

Again I say "Eh?"

What the fuck is a "homosexual lifestyle"?  Do all homosexuals live the same, wear the same clothes, go to the same clubs?  Is there some checklist of required accessories and habits that you need to tick off in order to become a bona fide, fully signed up, cheque has cleared homosexual?  What the fuck do you mean?

And yes, I would say the same if you said "I am not a big fan of baseball players".  Do you mean "I don't like people who play baseball" or do you mean "I don't like baseball" or is it that you don't like smoking or people who smoke.  Apart from anything, neither playing baseball or smoking is fucking orientation, it's a choice.  In case you didn't pick up on the fact but homosexuality is NOT a choice.  


This isn't messing with the story!  This is just revealing background information that is entirely irrelevant.  He might have a peanut allergy as well but it's not fucking relevant to the story.  Read the Gaiman link for another authors perspective on this.  Or, perhaps, email Clive Barker or Ian McKellen and see what they think about it.  Or not as, you know, they live the homosexual lifestyles that you're not a fan of.  

For all we know, she may well have included that information about Dumbledore and decided to edit it out because - let's just hypothesise for a moment - a) it interrupted the flow of the story or even b) she was worried that it might be seen that she was saying "if you're gay you will make bad decisions therefore being gay is bad" and decided to avoid that controversy.  It's not like she ever avoided the subject of sex - book 5 through 7 had all sorts of unrequited love, jealousy and sexual frustration going on.  

If you read further about this, she also mentions that she actively harangued the writer of the HP5 film to remove a reference to a female love interest of Dumbledore's owing to the fact that he was gay.  This took place before the final book was released so retroactively going all Lucas over the story?  I don't think so.

But back to this "homosexual lifestyle" - seriously, I'm fascinated and waiting to see what pejorative explanation you can furnish us with!

Can you tell us why you think this would have shed such a very different light? You make it sound as if gay people's sexuality is qualitatively different than straight sexuality.

The notion reminds me of one of Bill Maher's rants about straight people trying to hook up gay friends with any other gay people. You'd not go up to a straight friend and say "Hey, I know this straight person, you should hook up" in virtue of them being straight, but aparently, somehow being 'gay' makes you somehow a different beast that will hump any other beast of the same stripe.  The notion is born of ignorance.

Note, I'm not calling you bigotted, but I am questioning your level of actual knowledge about sexuality here.

Wait.  I would.  Is that wrong ?

Didn't you see Birdcage? Men angsting over Draperies! He's not in to that man! Give him some space, will ya?!

If he's not into that type of man, I wonder what type of man he IS into?

What the hell is hetero-normative? Am I wrong or is only 10% of the human population gay? Is it somehow morally wrong in the face of zero knowledge to simply "play the percentages" so to speak? I find that somehow to be a lapse in logic.

Maybe he would like This Musical? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3096854022263299990&q=it+crowd+gay+musical&total=52&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0)

If you play the percentages, Dumbledore pretty much HAD to be gay, since almost every other main character in the HP books was known to be straight.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article379404.ece


(http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00377/SNN2425A_280_377273a.jpg)


Lulz #2.

The Oracle of Ultimate Truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual#Demographics) says...


...they have citiations and everything...

(http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/wdyt_photo5.article.jpg)


"Wow. I hadn't heard that. I've been really busy lately not caring about the sexual preferences of fictional people."

The Onion gets it in one.

The sky's the limit on Onion articles (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33540) that you can tie in here.

that is my all time favorite onion article, ever.

I love the absence of green text. Especially when it shows up unrepentant bigots.

It's a shame that The Onion hasn't been that funny in years. :(

It is at this time that I will attempt to gracefully bow out and admit that either:

a) I am an evil bigot who hates all things gay and the people that espouse them

or

b) I have chosen a poor topic in which to write about why I don't like author's who change their stories after the fact

or

c) My arguments are speciuos and my analogies do not hold up to scrutiny (which seems to be the conensus of my real life friends who have now read them)

I know many of you are praying for my unrepentent heart, and I take comfort in the thought.

Oh now you have to go and bring RELIGION into it?! You're a horrible, horrible person.

No no, Lamaros did that when he asked me to repent... at least I assume that I am the unrepentant bigot.

Can I say that I don't want to hear about an old man's sex life or is that being oldmanaphobic?

Also, I assume everyone is straight, white, male, and 20-30 until I've been told/shown otherwise. I don't see how that is wrong.

Sheesh. Please, don't attempt reasonable argument here. We're a diverse society, to assume one is a member of the majority before demonstrated otherwise... it's just wrong. And homophobic! (Not to mention racist and sexist).

Bigots everywhere!

But just to further confuse this discussion...

If someone read all the Harry Potter books and you asked them what Dumblydore's sexuality is they'd probably say "I dunno, it's never stated." As far as the conception of him in the novels go he is not gay or straight or anything. He's a mystery! The fact J.K. decided to 'out' him to the press (but not for the press, oh no!) doesn't rewrite the novels.

She's an idiot for answering the question.
People are idiots for caring about it.
I'm dumber for having read this thread.
May God have mercy on your souls.

Also, the guy who got the Dumbledore tatoo is a walking billboard of why not to get pop culture tatoos. Idiot.

For the sake of the precious time we used reading their romantic dialogue, I wish Rowling had made either Ron or Hermione (or both) gay. 

Actually, I find that tidbit explains Dumbledore's flirtation with the more noxious elements of magic make more sense. I had wondered why he'd buy into that shit his friend was peddling, but realized that when you're in your early twenties, you'll get interested in a lot of stupid shit if it gets you laid by the current object of your sexual interest.

I think leaving it out was ALSO a good idea -- not to "avoid controversy" but because the whole damn point with Dumbledore in the last book was that no one knew the "full story" of Dumbledore's past and were just piecing it together in different ways, coming up with different views of him as a person in his own right, rather than a nebulous Mentor/Father/Authority figure. It was the final part of Harry's growing up when he saw Dumbledore -- his go-to, save my ass, always knew the answer guy -- as a flawed human being who made mistakes.

It made his relationship and flirtation with darker forces make more sense, in retrospect, but wouldn't have added much to the story -- the point was that Dumbledore, when he was Harry's age, made exactly the same sorts of mistakes as anyone else, and kept making mistakes all the way up to his death. It didn't really matter why he was listening to whats-his-face, and leaving some mystery and unanswered questions (for Harry, not the audience) was important.

It's reductivist to equate sexual orientation and one's "sex life".

And no, I don't think I'm just pouncing on a technicality here -- you see this double standard a lot, where people are fine with showing their kids expressions of heterosexual love, like The Little Mermaid, but if anything gay comes up, it's "whoa, I don't want my kids to learn about sex yet."  The implicit message being that gayness isn't every bit the multifaceted combination of love, sex, and sense of identity that straightness is.

I don't recall anyone complaining about the ending epilogue of Harry Potter 7, which implicitly involves heterosexual sex (The kids got there somehow, and it wasn't via a magical stork arriving 9 months after Ron and Hermione politely shook hands).  Nobody thinks twice about it - the end result being that heterosexuality is often treated by default as 'legitimate', tied into the natural cycle of life, whereas homosexuality is viewed through the lens of being tawdry and all about the naughty bits.

There was no outcry from parents that J.K. Rowling made two of her heterosexual pairings have sex offscreen between the last chapter and the epilogue.  The differing reaction to the two revalations speaks to the unconscious assumptions about what's 'normal' and what's 'deviant' in our society, and hopefully explains why I bust out the five-dollar smarmy words like 'hetero-normative' to describe the situation.

Your response would be true if Calantus was talking about Dumbledore's sex life as a young man. But if Calantus was talking about Dumbledore's sex life as an old man then the comparison could also be with an old heterosexual couple. For Dumbledore is primarily an old character in the novels, and in this regard he exceeds the 'legitimate' in age as well as orientation. Thus I think it's unfair to just apply unconscious homophobia, (though it might be there - only Calantus knows).

It would be oldmanaphobic though. Yes. Society is generally 'oldpeoplesexphobic', just as it is homophobic.

I suspect J.K. kept this tidbit out of the novel because it would be entirely counter to the character she had constructed to all of a sudden bring him down from his godly tree. He is the smart, aloof, etc character and to give all of a sudden him a sexual life would really undercut that. His fallibilities are entertained towards the end of the series, it's true, but to bring him immediately back to the same level of everyone else (and I refer here to him having a complicated sexual aspect to himself, not the fact it's a homosexual one) would undercut this too sharply. Dumbledore is an asexual construction in the novel. Perhaps not an asexual person, but there's a difference between the two.

This very viewpoint probably buys in to religious ideas of chastity and purity as being better than sexual expression. Which is another kind of limited thinking if you ask me. But it's this thinking that JK kept in her book. If she was challenging anything she would have included it in the novel. But she didn't.

Thus she's either a coward or looking for more attention with the release of this information via the press.

Anyway. This is a stupid discussion and I feel sad I've contributed to it with anything other than green text.

WTF? Did you even read the last book?

The whole goddamn last book could have been entitled "JK Rowlings Kicks Fucking Dumbledore Off His Goddamn Pedestal And Lays Bare a Lifetime of Fucking Mistakes".

Rowling kept the tidbit out of the novel because it wasn't important to plot -- the fact that he listend to FuckNuts in his youth and did stupid shit WAS important to the plot (and was thus in the book), but the fact that one big reason he swallowed Fucknut's nitwitted shit was because he was also gobbling the dude's crank wasn't -- Harry wasn't supposed to get the full story, because a huge point of the plot was that NO ONE gets the whole story -- just bits and pieces to try to make sense of.

Construction of Dumbledore as adult character != story of his youth
Dumbledore as Harry's idol as an old man (see 'Kings Cross Station' farce) != Kicked off his pedestal
Dumbledore's gifts from the grave != everything you said.

As I said there were two options. You're favoring coward (though you colour it with the excuse of being a bad writer). Fair enough.

Hearing about the sex life of an old man would be something like this:

Sweat flew off of Dumbledore's brow in rythm with Hagrid thrusting into him from behind. "That's right" Dumbledore said, looking back over his shoulder and grinning, "I've been a bad boy at school."

Or something like that. I think Hagrid is male.

I wasn't comparing his sex life to his sexual orientation. When you talk about an old man's past lovers it immediately makes one think of said old man having sex. This is not a pleasant thought for anybody except maybe old women, old gay men, and people with a mature fetish. I am none of these and thus went "ewww, old man sex, DO NOT WANT" inside my brain.

It also made me think of lemonparty. Thanks, internet.


Was it the beard? It was the beard wasn't it?

No, I'm not. I'm not surprised you're reading it that way, as you've decided there are only two options and seem hell bent on forcing me into one or the other even when I disagree. Kind of a pointless way to think, but if it works for you....

Dumbledore's sex life wasn't important for the simple fact that it is really rare for students to think about the sex lives of their teachers. Hell, until they're in their early teens it's generally a shock to most kids that their teachers have lives outside of school. The only time you catch students -- even 18 year old ones -- even putting "Sex" and "teacher" in the same vicinity is when their teacher is close in age (say, a 24 year old High School teacher).

She didn't leave it out because of cowardice, bad writing, or some attempt to keep him "asexual and godly". She didn't do it out of some attempt to keep from shocking the kiddies too much with his change from Mentor to Person (she didn't quite enough there, by pointing out he'd been rather invested in pure-blood thinking as a youn adult).

She did it because it wasn't something that would occur to her characters -- and what we read, we read through her character's eyes and understandings. Even 18 year old's as experienced as Harry simple won't think of teachers -- especially elderly teachers -- as ever having been sexual beings. Real 18 year olds don't think that way, unless the teacher happens to be 25 and smokin' hot.

It didn't come up in the book because it would NEVER have fucking crossed any of her characters minds unless someone else made it crystal clear -- and who the hell would? When would that have come up, all told?

I don't know what kind of crazy school you went to, but a cannot agree with that at all.

Regardless. There is a distinction constantly enforced between Dumbledore and all other people (read this as adults if you have to). This is what I'm talking about.

Oh, and sex and teacher is often discussed. See Hagrid, Lupin, Snape, etc, just from the top of my head.

My Crazy School, I think, because I mostly agree with him.

Possibly schools have changed in 20 years.

A fucking normal one. The sex lives of teachers didn't cross anyone's mind unless they were young and single (under 30, basically). And that was for students in the 17-18 range.

Even then, it was pretty much solely restricted to either 18 year old guys drooling over the VERY rare 24 year old hottie first-year teacher, and occasionally speculation about whether a certain teacher was dating another. Actual sex wasn't really an issue, since the average 16 to 18 year old was very preoccupied with who he/she was hoping to have sex with, and tracking whom his/her peers were doing.

Teenagers don't think about their teachers having sex because they're too busy obsessing about their own sex life and the sex lives of their social circle. There's enough fucking sexual drama there to keep them busy.

Bullshit. McConnegal's sex life wasn't dsicussed. Neither was Trelaney's, nor really any other teacher whose sexual interests weren't directly needed for the plot.

Neither Hagrid nor Lupin were really unapproachable teachers -- Hagrid was a friend to the main characters (and his courting was used to establish some backstory on giants). Lupin's relationship with Tonks was well after his teaching, and part of Order of the Phoenix stuff. Snape's love for Lilly Potter was a fucking critical plot element, as it explained his entire motivations as a character. Why he turned away from Voldemort, why Dumbledore trusted him, why he was willing to do what he did.

Hagrid was the only actual teacher with a relationship AT Hogwarts when Harry was there. Snape's was in the past, and part of Harry's history. Lupin's was after he left, and tied up with Harry's future (the Order of the Phoenix). Even Hagrid's was tied up with Harry, because Hagrid was Harry's friend (and it got Harry a peak at dragons, IIRC)-- not really a teacher. The sex lives of teachers were ONLY ever brought up in how they impacted the main characters.

Dumbledore's boning guys, McConnegal's all-night lesbian affairs with Trelawney, and the fact that Snape was into hard-core S&M never came up because Harry wasn't paying attention, because he fucking didn't give a shit, because it had nothing to do with him.

Teenagers are self-centered, narcisstic little bastards. They don't lift their eyes from themselves or their immediate social circles unless they have to. They don't care about, nor think about, who a teacher is boning unless someone they know walks in on it, or the teacher is boning them.

What insulated schools most of you seem to have gone to.  I recall kids telling "johnny deeper" jokes going back to elementary school, or comments about hot teachers in middle.  Jokes about gay teachers was middle/high.  The joke factory went into overdrive if a teacher got pregnant.  And this is from... I think seven different schools, across three states (moved around a lot when I was younger). 

Not that any of that represented actual knowledge by anyone involved, but kids were certainly aware of the concept of teachers having lives. 

Seriously, I still definitely remember my 8th grade science teacher who probably had at least half the class (well at least the male half) at least a little tight in the pants. The same year my French teacher got fired for public masturbation. Then my freshman year of HS we had a teacher fired for boning one of the seniors. My junior year we knew all about how one of our teachers was getting divorced and knew exactly what comments to make to set him off completely, he later got suspended for punching one of my friends (the comment absolutely deserved the punch.)

Can you guess which pundit may have overreacted a tiny bit? (http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/66047/)

You can't spell "Oh, not this shit again" without "O'Rielly".

As to his first point about her being a provacatour, we all questioned that. It's not that outrageous.

The second part about worrying whether the secular media is trying to suck your children into a gay agenda is beyond insane. They are your kids, you can raise them to hate whatever you hate or love whatever you love if you want. Stop sticking them in front of the TV and you might have a modicum of control over that.

No we didn't.

It was easy to tell that O'Reilly was saying something douchey- his lips were moving. Pity his detractors aren't as batshit as those of Alan Berg.

Fine not all, but the idea that she did this to create a stir was out there, and in this thread.

And that's exactly why I said she was a media whore. Because anyone who has paid any attention to the media landscape in America in the last six years would know that saying a character in Potter was gay would draw this kind of reaction and this kind of media attention.

A provacteur? What kind of stupid word is that to use. Makes O'Reilly sound like he's calling out the KGB on her. Someone trying to get attention? Sure. Agent provacteur for the "gay agenda?" For fuck's sake, people, some things aren't conspiracies.

I don't think anyone is arguing she's ignorant of the reaction she was going to get.  But the backlash you know is coming shouldn't be a reason *not* to say something if it's accurate and true.  How is this any different than the argument that the Mohammad cartoons shouldn't have been printed due to the backlash they'd cause?

Frankly, I don't mind O'Reilly using the term 'the gay agenda' -- I think it's worth embracing, rather than shying away from it.  The gay agenda is the respect for the equal human rights and moral standing of gays and lesbians.  I'd hope we get kids hearing that agenda as early as possible, through school and through the media, whether their parents like it or not - the same way we do for tolerance of racial and ethnic differences and gender equality.

I highly doubt she's paid any attention to the media landscape in America, since she likely doesn't have much day to day exposure to it.  If I remember correctly, she doesn't even like the British media.  The only agenda being served here is that of the gay-bashers.

I'm going to have to call bullshit on that one. This chick and her publicist has been all over the news for the last few years, for a goddamn children's book. It's impossible to say that she wouldn't have any day to day exposure to the American media.

I would point out here that O'Reilly is an attention whore.  It would satisfy previous complaints in this thread, but is I think, beyond obvious.

Yes, even bigger than Rowling.

Individual media people?  Sure.  Does that qualify as having a working knowledge of the "media landscape in America"?  You get that by watching Amercian media, which I highly doubt she does.  Now her publicist should know, but it wasn't her publicist that answered the question and do you really think there was a meeting beforehand that involved said publicist saying, "By the way, whatever you do don't let out that Dumbledore is teh gay!"

If I were Rowling I'd have answered the question honestly too, and I wouldn't give a flying fuck what O'Reilly thinks about it.  What, is the book going to get banned now?  It's hilarious the amount of attention this is getting and the apoplexy it's causing when there's not a whiff of homosexuality in the books themselves.

Sorry Mate, you're not correct.

I can quite easily see any UK person (even with a lot of interest in the American Psyche) just flat out answering that question like that without a second thought.

I fear I upset my American/Canadian relatives recently with some of my 'off the cuff' remarks.

Mostly about how morally bankrupt their Country was, but you can't win em all.

British people cannot watch American TV news or current affairs. And you don't really get the fox news viewpoint from Friends reruns.

I mean, physically cannot watch, even when we happen to get access to it. The need to break for commercials about haemorrhoid medication every 7 picoseconds causes our brains to bleed out of our noses.



I'm convinced it's how you guys won independence in the first place.

lol this thread.

When you talk about an old man's past wife/girlfriend, does it also immediatlely make you think of an old man having sex?

If it doesn't, consider the posibility that you're piling on sordid prejudice into the otherwise commonplace occurence of gay people being in love.

When I think of old gay guys, the only thing that comes to mind:

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/Abagadro/bartles_jaymes.jpg)







You need to be of a certain vintage to get that joke.

Thank you for your support.

Is that the Bartles and James guys?

Yeah.  Not that old, I didn't think.

That's when you are old, when you are fondly remembering Bartles & James and playing Q-Bert while the people standing next to you don't even know what the Moonwalk is.

Ah the '80s. Nothing really good or important has happened since.

 Fade Into You by Mazzy Star, 1993.

I win.

If you guys were true 80s denizens you would know it is Bartles and Jaymes, with a superfluous y.

Um.. yeah. Old people having sex is not overly appealing to a 24 year old me. It's got nothing to do with whether the old people in question are gay or not.

I'm sorry but my taste in music was set in stone 3 years prior to that. They might as well not exist for me. And being a boomer I know there will always be enough people my age around that there will be an oldies radio station dedicated to us wherever I go.

Sorry buddy. Its the fact that you immediately (your words) think about it that's the worry.

When I think of salmon I immediately see a picture of myself eating salmon while watching a specific episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a kid. I've wearing a blue shirt and I'm covered in an orange blanket. The episode had a fish-mutant in it and I can picture him perfectly after all these years. I can do this because every time I think of salmon I get this image. Everytime I hear the song Without Me by Eminem I immediately see the recorded WC3 match I was watching one time I heard that song. It's a 2v2, Night Elf + Undead vs Human + Undead. And every time I hear talk about someone's girlfriend/past lovers/sexlife I picture them having sex. Hell, when Ironwood posted about his daughter being born I pictured his avatar having sex. I just visualise everything I think about and my mind wanders all over the place. You can see this in how often I derail/participate in derails.

So yeah... stop trying to say I'm homophobic because I visualised Dumbledore having sex with another old man and wasn't at all pleased about the image.

I thought them antiquing in Vermont, so maybe you are just a garden variety perv.

Those are my first 3 posts in this thread. You will note that it takes 3 posts and 2 days before I comment on sex at all and even in that post it is not the only thing I talk about. Clearly I'm a perv who thinks about sex all the time and not simply someone who's mind wanders over everything about everything. Go on, take a look at my post history if you like, there's many posts where I comment on something just barely relevant to the topic because my mind has wandered that way and I thought it worth throwing in there. That's what I did here. And I wasn't even serious. I could set lemonparty as my desktop background and it wouldn't bother me. I could probably set tubgirl as my desktop actually. I've spent a lot of time on the internet and very little genuinely shocks or disgusts me anymore. But I guess making flippant comments about whatever crosses my mind is so very badly wrong in serious business.

This thread is like politics. I make a flippant comment about oldmanophobic (a word that indicates I'm fully serious, honestly) and one guy is all over me because he thinks I'm trying to make a correlation between gays and old people and somehow excusing something or other. Then another guy jumps on me for being a closet homophobe because I don't want to think about Dumbledore's sex life, and then I'm a perv because I didn't immediately make the gay = antiquing in Vermont connection even though I don't even know where the fuck Vermont is or that people actually do antiquing anymore at all.

This rant brought to you by 50k honor earned so far this AV weekend.

I agreed with you earlier in this thread. Came to your defense even. And I believe Abagadro was also backing you up, in his flippant way (Of all the invective thrown around here 'perv' is not especially harsh). I wouldn't get too worked up.

But.. you play WOW?! Horrible deviant!

That's why I threw in the AV comment. I finished the rant and thought "wow that's a pretty big overreaction there Calantus don'tcha think?" but I let it go cause it was already typed and everything. I've been been doign the same thing over and over again 3-4 times an hour for almost 3 days straight while arguing with morons in BG chat and all on very little sleep so I'm in a fiesty mood.

You think of yourself that way ?  :-o

Is it your real name ?

No. :P

I just thought Calantus would be more appropriate here.

Ah. Was just wondering. Because, once people refer to you by your internet persona, all goes downhill from there ...  :hello_thar:


I should know ...  :awesome_for_real:

So, his literal avatar, like she was sticking this little square picture in her hooter? Or Terrence Stamp doing his wife? This is important damn it!

Why am I picturing Smallville,  except with Zod's daughter and in Scotland?

Um.

Lots of short people here on the board.

More like Zod with a generic female. Fortunately I don't recall what Ironwood's wife looks like so he doesn't have to kill me.

Fairly sure I've never posted wife pics.

It's kind of a rule I have.

It's a good rule to have.

Yeah that's a rule I'd have to agree with. I just wasn't sure if you had or not so used "don't recall" like a sneaky politician.

Kirk/Spock and Dumbledore (http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/10/kirkspock_and_dumbledore.html)

The Onion wins. (http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/r_l_stine_reveals_slappy?utm_source=slate_rss_1)