Queer Bookworm

yellow-dress:

takealookatyourlife:

heroicallyfound:

svetlana-del-rey:

Was she going to slap you because you never in any way made him gay in the actual books, taking zero risks/doing absolutely nothing for gay characters in literature, and only announcing your “authorial intent” afterwards for a cheap shot at looking like an ~ally~

^^^

Gay people are just normal people. We are not told about any of the Hogwarts professors love lives, other than Snape, and it would be completely out of character for Dumbledore to walk around telling everyone about his sexuality.

Did you want her to make him dress in glittery platform boots, a crop top, and decorate his office in rainbow flags to make it more obvious for you? Would that be enough of a stereotype to appease you people? Or what? Please tell me. I’d like to know how you think a gay character is supposed to be portrayed.

And did you miss the Grindelwald chapters in the ‘actual books’? Or was that also not obvious enough for you? Did Dumbledore need to whisper “always” wistfully in order for you to connect that he had romantic feelings for Grindelwald? Maybe you are American and need them to gaze longingly into each others eyes with awkward close ups of their fingers almost grazing each other that Hollywood thinks means ‘true love’. 

It didn’t fit into his relationship to Harry to ever say “I’m gay”, and so it was not stated explicitly (you might have noticed the book was told from Harry Potter’s perspective).

The point is though, that he is a homosexual, well respected, powerful, and very loved wizard- and his sexuality doesn’t matter because no one else thinks it matters. a.k.a. no one cares that he loves men, and that is wonderful. 

^ Utterly agree, takealookatyourlife. OP, did you really want her to make him a flamboyant stereotype? Also, have you even read the books? In the first chapter of the first book, Dumbledore is wearing high-heeled purple boots. In the movies he wears BELLS IN HIS BEARD. And did his relationship with Grindelwald need to be made any more clear? Did she have to write a sex scene for you to pick that up?

If she wrote Dumbledore purely to represent the gay community, as like a Token Gay Character, THAT would be being a shitty ally. Instead, she wrote a complex, brilliant character who, hey, guess what, just happened to be gay but his homosexuality was not the centre point of his whole life: which is exactly how it should be. If all gay character representation centers around the character’s gayness, how are we supposed to show that gay people are normal people who have normal lives and problems just like everyone else, and their sexuality is not their entire life-story and all the entirety of their complexity?

EDIT: From this source:

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, 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!”

She didn’t, as OP suggests, open the closet for Dumbledore after the series was finished for a special ally cookie. She knew he was gay all along.

(via fuchsimeon)