Jo recently granted a lengthy interview to the Edinburgh "Student" newspaper, very very interesting, I might say, read it all till the very end. She discusses how Harry never was the most favourtie character and how funny she thought that was ( "There are much more obvious characters to love: Hagrid, Ron, everyone loves Ron. I mean, who doesn't like Ron..." xD), how wonderful was the thought of her books passing through generations ( what?! you thought I wasn't going to read it to my children???!!!! They' will never hear of Cinderella, dear, hell no, that mere illness!), religious fondamentalist point of views (death threats, that mother from Alabama who tried to ban her books even though she never read them, why? "Well, I prayed whether or not I should read them, and God told me no." she says. heh.), and, most of all, Dumbledore's sexuality.
Now, please, I really want to quote this because it is just what i thought from the very beginning when she announced it (after I managed to close that gapping mouth of mine):
"How did Rowling deal with the fall out? "It was funny, mostly!" she exclaims "I had always seen Dumbledore as gay, but in a sense that's not a big deal. The book wasn't about Dumbledore being gay. It was just that he flirted with the idea of exactly what Voldemort goes on to do, he flirted with the idea of racial domination (= no, he did not flirt with voldemort, reread it. Ok? He just considered the same things Voldass did, he just thought for a few months of power and domination and Dark Arts.), that he was going to subjugate Muggles. So that was Dumbledore's big secret.
So why did he flirt with that?" she asks "He's an innately good man, what would make him do that? I didn't even think it through that way, it just seemed to come to me, I thought, 'I know why he did it. He fell in love.' And whether they physically consumated this infatuation (ugh.) or not is not the issue. The issue is love. It's not about sex.
So that's what I knew about Dumbledore. And it's relevant only in so much as he fell in love and was made an utter fool of by love. His lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently he became very mistrusting of his own judgement int hose matters so became quite asexual. He had a celibate bookish life." (that explains it all, indeed)
How does she react to those who disagree with a homosexual character in a children's novel? "So what?" she retorts immediately "It is a very interesting question because I think homophobia is a fear of people loving, more than it is of the sexual act. There seems to be an innate distaste for the love involved, which I find absolutely extraordinary. There were people who thought, 'well why haven't we seen Dumbledore's angst about being gay?'" Rowling is clearly amused by this and rightly so. "Where was that going to come in? And then the other thing was-and I had letters saying this - that, as a gay man, he would never be safe to teach in a school."
An air of incredulity descends on the room as if Rowling herself still can not believe this statement. She continues: "He's a very old single man. You have to ask: why is it so interesting? People have to examine their own attitudes. It's a shade of character. Is it the most important thing about him? No, it's Dumbledore for God's sake. There are 20 things that are relavant to the story before his sexuality." Bottom line then: he isn't a gay character; he's a character that just happens to be gay. Rowling concurs wholeheartedly.
Read the whole article here:
Mugglenet (transcript) *
The Leaky Cauldron (scans) *
