Dumbledore

Being gay affects who he is as a person. It's more than just who he would like to take to bed. (No, I don't mean that he must have one or more stereotypes about gay men) That's part of what makes a difference for the story. And the main relationship that it affects would be between him and Grindelwald. That also makes a difference for the story.

And anyways, why must he be straight? Are there any clues in the book about his heterosexual leanings? What made you think he was straight in the first place?

Seems logical to me that the fact it made no difference to the story is why it wasn't mentioned in the story. The author stated it as a fact in an interview because it was a fact in her mind when writing that character.

sunandshadow said:

Seems logical to me that the fact it made no difference to the story is why it wasn't mentioned in the story. The author stated it as a fact in an interview because it was a fact in her mind when writing that character.

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i totally agree

sunandshadow said:

Seems logical to me that the fact it made no difference to the story is why it wasn't mentioned in the story. The author stated it as a fact in an interview because it was a fact in her mind when writing that character.

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But that doesn't explain why she said it in the interview. Why couldn't she just have invented it after the fact because it could fit? Who's going to call her on it? Maybe she was just trying to suck up to her libruhl fans? Who knows? I'd say the most likely theory is that it was a conscious choice. To keep him gay but not have it effect the story in any way was a statement about how stupid she thinks homophobia is.

If I'm not mistaken I believe the first person she told was Michael Gambon, who played Dumbledore in the films. When first getting the roll he asked her about the character and she told him, but asked him to keep it a secret, which he did until she revealed it, years later.

edit: read a little bit about it. Richard Harris first had the Dumbledore roll. We'll never know if Rowling told him about it.

DrZoidberg said:

Maybe she was just trying to suck up to her libruhl fans?

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I find that very unlikely. Gay characters, esp. likable characters in kid books (if there are any other examples), are still very controversial. Had she said it from day one, instead of after the fact, there likely would have been protests, outrage from religious groups, negative publicity, and other things of the sort. The only reason there wasn't is b/c by the time she said it it was spilt milk--all the kids had already read it.

Kitty Pryde said:

Being gay affects who he is as a person. It's more than just who he would like to take to bed. (No, I don't mean that he must have one or more stereotypes about gay men) That's part of what makes a difference for the story. And the main relationship that it affects would be between him and Grindelwald. That also makes a difference for the story.

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What do you mean by this? How would being gay affect him outside of his relationships (aside from affecting how close he was to Grindewald, though that could have occurred between straight men)?

Being gay does not make a person a different person. People have known and been close to gay people for years, sometimes a lifetime, and never knew those people were gay. They are the same people they were when everybody thought they were straight.

I don't see how it affects who they are outside of their relationships.

HelloKiddo said:

What do you mean by this? How would being gay affect him outside of his relationships (aside from affecting how close he was to Grindewald, though that could have occurred between straight men)?

Being gay does not make a person a different person. People have known and been close to gay people for years, sometimes a lifetime, and never knew those people were gay. They are the same people they were when everybody thought they were straight.

I don't see how it affects who they are outside of their relationships.

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Let me just cut and paste what I said in another thread:

Being gay relates to who you want to love/sleep with. But THAT affects many other aspects of a person's life. It's not the sole determiner of a person's personality. But it does have an effect: how they dress, how they talk, who they associate with, how they interact with people of the same sex and how they interact with people of the opposite sex, how their childhood was, how they view gender roles, how they perceive their status as insider/outsider in various situations, when they feel safe or threatened, aesthetic tastes, etc. Would you like specific examples? Because I could could up with some.


I don't mean that a person realizes they are gay and suddenly they love interior decorating and show tunes. I'm not talking about stereotypes. I'm also not talking about whether or not other people can tell that a person is gay or not. I'm talking about who they are, inside and out. A gay person isn't merely a straight person + sleeping with the same gender.

Crap. I really don't want to re-hash this again.

Really.

This is just pure silliness. Dumbledore isn't gay or straight. Believe it or not, he isn't even real. He's a madeup character, and no matter what J. K. Rowling says about him, if it ain't in the books, it ain't anywhere, and it ain't in the books.

As was posted by Medievalist, which was the version I heard, the sixth movie was going to make a reference to Dumbledore having a female love interest. She wrote him as a homosexual character and told them, so that is why it suddenly appeared. Not that it matters because whether his sexual preference in a children's book is controversial or not, people had already finished the series by the time the story broke and had their own opinions of the man. If one bit of information like this would change the opinion of someone who loved the books, that's pretty pathetic.

Kitty Pryde said:

Being gay relates to who you want to love/sleep with. But THAT affects many other aspects of a person's life. It's not the sole determiner of a person's personality. But it does have an effect: how they dress, how they talk, who they associate with, how they interact with people of the same sex and how they interact with people of the opposite sex, how their childhood was, how they view gender roles, how they perceive their status as insider/outsider in various situations, when they feel safe or threatened, aesthetic tastes, etc. Would you like specific examples? Because I could could up with some.

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I suppose you're right Kitty. Not everybody has the same experiences as a gay person. For some, it could significantly change who they are inside--for others, perhaps less. Any ways that it would change a person would be circumstantial and depend on them and their own experiences.

HelloKiddo said:

I suppose you're right Kitty. Not everybody has the same experiences as a gay person. For some, it could significantly change who they are inside--for others, perhaps less. Any ways that it would change a person would be circumstantial and depend on them and their own experiences.

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Yes, which is true of any human trait None of us are stereotypes, but everything about us can shape who we become. Which is all to say that Dumbledore's SEKRIT gayness shaped how the author perceived his character.

Jamesaritchie said:

This is just pure silliness. Dumbledore isn't gay or straight. Believe it or not, he isn't even real. He's a madeup character, and no matter what J. K. Rowling says about him, if it ain't in the books, it ain't anywhere, and it ain't in the books.

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Gee, gosh. Thanks so much for pointing that out.

If something has to be in books to count, I'm going to list the orientation of every single character in my novel in an afterword, since most of them won't get the chance to be in romantic relationships.

Seriously, don't most authors decide a lot of things about characters that never end up in books? And if some director was trying to make Dumbledore straight, I think it's good that JKR spoke up.

Jamesaritchie said:

This is just pure silliness. Dumbledore isn't gay or straight. Believe it or not, he isn't even real. He's a madeup character, and no matter what J. K. Rowling says about him, if it ain't in the books, it ain't anywhere, and it ain't in the books.

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But it's enough to influence book sales. If she'd included it in Deathly Hallows, she'd have been pilloried and the series flatlined because parents would have had a shit fit conniption that little JoshuaJacobDavid and BritneyCourtneyAshley would have been exposed to...*gasp! shock!*...A DEVIANT LIFESTYLE and would have stopped buying the books to keep their special little snowflakes in a vacuum, away from the realities of life (which, oddly enough, have this bizarre way of working their way into fiction). In fact, there's a good chance it would have killed the entire franchise (books, movies, toys, games, shirts, and all the happy ancillary merchandising that keeps agents and managers well-fed). Maybe it's a detail she'll include in a future story. I, personally, found it an interesting aspect of the character and it explained a lot about the seventh book for me.

I've always held the opinion that with a character like Dumbledore, whose details such as this are not ever spelled out, he's homosexual if you want him to be and heterosexual if you don't.

Jamesaritchie said:

This is just pure silliness. Dumbledore isn't gay or straight. Believe it or not, he isn't even real. He's a madeup character, and no matter what J. K. Rowling says about him, if it ain't in the books, it ain't anywhere, and it ain't in the books.

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I think you're right.

Guess it is up to the Potterite to set things straight, so to speak.

When Jo outed Dumbledore, it was to clarify something in the book, something that was brought up in this thread but not elaborated on.

The reason Dumbledore being homosexual in the books would have counted was how close he was with Grindelwald. Grindlewald was someone almost exactly like him, just as smart, just as wise to the world as he was. Albus was fairly sheltered as a child, immersing himself in books and knowledge, and he could not really relate to anyone.

Then Gellert Grindelwald came along, and Albus found a confidante in him, someone he could talk and relate to. Albus could not help himself, and he fell in love with Gellert, so much so that he even allowed himself to become sucked into Grindelwald´s grand schemes for the Greater Good, which was in effect a plot to take over the Wizarding world. He was so blinded by love that he was even neglecting his younger brother and mentally ill little sister.

When Albus finally took a look at how Grindelwald was treating his siblings, and finally how Grindelwald supposedly even killed his sister and ran off, he was crushed. Not that he was ever really a bad person, but I think it helped him make a better man of himself, to not ever be lured to the dark side again and instead fight it for all its worth. For the good of mankind AND to serve justice for his sister.

If people stopped being so shallowminded, they would see that the main point, just like with a lot of other points in the Harry Potter series, is about love. It explores all sorts of variations of love; the powerful love of mothers, the love that is true friendship, the love that is trust, the love that is between two people in a relationship, etc. This just happened to be a case of how love can create rose colored glasses and you refuse to see past them for the person they really are.

I just realized I am going to become this website´s official Potterite.

The question was: 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,

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A full report of JKR at Carnegie Hall can be found here:
http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2...neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more

I wonder what exactly JKR meant when she said she "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." Falling in love with someone of the same gender does not mean that the person is gay. It could be a crush/hero worship type of love.

BenPanced I found your comment about a deviant lifestyle interesting - JKR came in for a lot of criticism because many people saw the wizarding world as a deviant lifestyle. Many libraries would not have her books in stock and she was accused of all sorts of idiot stuff. So adding a gay character might not have been that bad.

Shakesbear said:

I wonder what exactly JKR meant when she said she "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." Falling in love with someone of the same gender does not mean that the person is gay. It could be a crush/hero worship type of love.

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That is a fine point indeed. But its much more stronger, emotionally, for him to fall head over heels in love with this man who he cannot see is doing things only for his own good. Much more plausible, as well. Gellert was his equal, although darker. There was no reason to think of him as a hero.

Rufus Coppertop said:

I think you're right.

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A number of readers disagree with you, so much so that they came to the conclusion that Dumbledore was gay long before Rowling affirmed it.

I suspect it has to do with how careful, and how heteronormatively, one reads.

Shakesbear said:

I wonder what exactly JKR meant when she said she "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay." Falling in love with someone of the same gender does not mean that the person is gay. It could be a crush/hero worship type of love.

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I suspect that when she said "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay" she meant she thought he was gay, rather than heterosexual or bisexual.

I note as well that "falling in love" is different from "having a crush," and that Dumbledore's actions with respect to Grindelwald are not those of a crush.

I would hate to see the relationship dismissed as a crush, or otherwise diminished in an effort to remove the "deviant" nature. There's been a tendency to do that with same-sex relationships in literary analysis.

WalpurgisQuill said:

If people stopped being so shallowminded, they would see that the main point, just like with a lot of other points in the Harry Potter series, is about love. It explores all sorts of variations of love; the powerful love of mothers, the love that is true friendship, the love that is trust, the love that is between two people in a relationship, etc. This just happened to be a case of how love can create rose colored glasses and you refuse to see past them for the person they really are.

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Nicely put.

Medievalist said:

I suspect that when she said "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay" she meant she thought he was gay, rather than heterosexual or bisexual.

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I actually meant if she thought he was an active gay, that is having active relationship/s or someone who prefers their own gender but not in a sexual way.

Medievalist said:

I note as well that "falling in love" is different from "having a crush," and that Dumbledore's actions with respect to Grindelwald are not those of a crush.

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I think it depends on how the text is interpreted. Falling in love is different from having a crush but the person who does the falling or has the crush is not always able to distinguish one from the other.

Medievalist said:

I would hate to see the relationship dismissed as a crush, or otherwise diminished in an effort to remove the "deviant" nature. There's been a tendency to do that with same-sex relationships in literary analysis.

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I take your point and agree with it.

Shakesbear said:

BenPanced I found your comment about a deviant lifestyle interesting - JKR came in for a lot of criticism because many people saw the wizarding world as a deviant lifestyle. Many libraries would not have her books in stock and she was accused of all sorts of idiot stuff. So adding a gay character might not have been that bad.

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For some, that would have made it worse. They have no trouble with equating some of the magic elements in fantasy with witchcraft, devil worship, and homosexuality.