Rebecca Allen

I’m late. So sue me.

So Dumbledore has been outed by JK Rowling. This is big news; not for GLBTQ anything, not for literature, but just in general. It’s so big that when I saw the Gentleman Caller last Friday — the man who wore a shirt that proclaimed “Proud Muggle” when he was working at a Borders HP7 release and didn’t know what his shirt meant meant — the first words out of his mouth were, “So, did you hear about Dumbledore?”

Which, I think, says more about the impact these books have had on our culture. But that’s not really what I want to write about, or at least, not directly.

I think there are several stages of Dumbledore Is Gay:

1) Joy. There’s a character everyone loves (or is supposed to — Harry, our POV character, does, and we’re meant to agree with him), and it turns out he’s gay! Score one for queer characters in the media!

2) Confusion. Why wasn’t it made explicit in the books?

3) Irritation. If any writer, any series, has the clout to get away with having a beloved character who is openly gay, it’s JK and HP! How is casually stating it after the fact doing anything special? If you want to have a gay character, make it clear in the books!

4) Contemplative. You mean the only confirmed gay character in the books died? And spent his whole life alone and unhappy? Gosh. Huh.

5) Acceptance. Okay, maybe the whole thing isn’t as awesome as it seemed in stage one, but it’s still more awesome than a lot of things.

6) Bonus stage! More irritation, that as a blogger and a fantasy reader, I don’t have more original things to say.

That said, while I don’t presume to know why JK did things the way she did, I’ve thought a lot about and it is better than I first…um, second-through-fourth thought. I do kind of like that having a gay character isn’t a huge deal, and doesn’t have to be his defining character trait. (Though, in this case, textual acknowledgement would have been nice — in a heteronormative culture, if it isn’t explicit, he’ll probably be read as straight. But still.) And springing it on unsuspecting readers after the fact…well, why not?

Say you have a Hypothetical Reader. Hypo maybe isn’t totally comfortable with gays, or is maybe an on-the-fence, what-you-do-in-the-bedroom-is-none-of-my-business-(please-keep-it-that-way) type of person. They do exist, in spades. Anyway, Hypo reads the books and likes Dumbledore, as he is pretty much the coolest mentor since Obi-Wan. Hypo then feels a little uncomfortable…but deals with it. Because it doesn’t change anything. Albus is still Albus. And so…maybe Hypo still likes the character, because he liked the character first and didn’t avoid reading it to avoid dealing with the hype over the gay character.

Maybe it’s not that different than mentioning it textually in the seventh book would have been; I suspect most people who read the first six would have wanted to finish the series, regardless. But she avoided it being What The Book Was About, while still being public about it. So…I’m justifying here, but who knows what her reasoning was? It wasn’t necessarily bad, is my point.

On a more selfish level, I’m quite pleased, regardless of when and how it was done. I write YA fantasy and scifi; I’m at an awkward phase of doing rewrites and trying to get manuscripts in shape so I can start seeking an agent. Eeeeeeek. But one thing that I’ve been going back and forth on is my inclusion of queer characters — I don’t think I’ve written anything without at least one in years. And I’m never sure if having them there openly is going to hurt my chances of publication. I’d like to think that hey, Dumbledore was gay and people are mostly okay with that, so maybe I can include my queer characters without having to turn them into subtext, and still get their stories out. Anything that nudges gay characters towards being just characters is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.