Dumbledore is gay!!!

[sigune]

YAAAAAAAAAYYYY! Dumbledore is gay!!!!

...I'm sorry, I should not perhaps be all whoopee about this, it's a bit childish... The thing is that Dumbledore is the one character in canon who has always given off a gay vibe to me. I have read slash with Snape, with Lupin, with Ron and Harry and Draco - just about everyone. But none of these characters ever seemed gay to me. Dumbledore did. He always did. Seriously. I'm not sure I can explain why, but it was just there.

Because I am into Queer Studies, and many of my favourite artists were/are gay, and I actually like to write about gay characters, it troubled me a little that I could never see that in Snape or Lupin or James or Sirius or whoever. I mean, it's sort of my job to detect that sort of thing. But Dumbledore... Ha! What a relief! Finally Rowling said something in an interview that makes me really, really happy. Happy because she did include a queer character, and supremely happy because I spotted it :D.

I wish I could refer you to a post or a comment as proof of my long-standing belief in Gaydore, but I'm afraid I no longer remember where to look for one. You'll just have to trust me to speak the truth :-).

Yay! Yaaaaayyy!!

*goes off to celebrate*

Comments

(part 1)

[sigune.livejournal.com]

First off, I have to say that, as in the case of Slughorn, the things that strike me as potentially signifying that Dumbledore is homosexual do not have to mean that he is indeed that. They just gave me indications in that direction, so that JKR's statement didn't come as a surprise.

Second, the elements I am about to quote are to a certain extent stereotypical or clichéd. I can very well imagine a gay character not displaying these characteristics.

Third, Dumbledore, like Slughorn, has the right age to fall within the period that I am accustomed to study. It's possible that I find them easy to recognise as homosexual because they fit the patterns that I happen to have been studying closely, and my modern gaydar might be a bit less accute :-).

Dumbledore then. Let's start with the most stereotypical things: he is self-consciously eccentric, flamboyant, and unconventional. He has a particular style, a manner and a sense of humour (absurd, ironic, a mixture of formality and odd elements of vulgarity, saying/doing the unexpected) that make homosexuality plausible to me. There are straight men who display a similar style (off the top of my head: Casanova is probably one), but of a character pictured this way, I won't be surprised if I am told he is gay.

He is brilliant, he knows it, and he doesn't hide it. He has a particular sort of vanity and immodesty that I associate with gay geniuses. That's probably because of my Wilde thing; I can't be sure that straight male geniuses aren't liable to it :-). The ones that I have read about aren't, but there are many that I have not read about, so...

Dumbledore profiles himself as a young man's mentor. Now that is a great classic of homoerotic relationships, of course. Nothing carnal has to happen for it to be, well, gay. Also, there was never any hint of Mrs Dumbledore or Dumbledore Jr. The gay man as a celibate tutor, shaper of young minds, is - well, as I said, a gay stereotype. Again, not every celibate tutor has to be gay, but it is a fact that homosexual men, especially in a not-so-tolerant past era, often sought refuge in positions that required celibacy, such as Catholic priesthood or becoming a university don (back in the old days, the dons were not allowed to marry).

Re: (part 1)

[sander123.livejournal.com]

First of all: thank you very much for your efforts! I appreciate it very much and I'm loudly cheering about the merits of the internet: I asked a humble silly question and got a elaborate scholarly answer! :D

Your answer lessened a certain degree of my dismay with the Dumbledore-outing. I was judging it more with modern homosexual way of live (I'm at my mothers place, my brother watches telly, this moment they sing YMCA ;)) You are putting it back into the right historical frame it belongs to.

You really taught me something with it. I would like to encourage you to make a post on its own about it!

I'm now reconsidering all the (academic) rumors about the probable gayness of 19th and early 20-century-writers I love and study. I have to reconsider a lot of things. First of all the attitude towards their own geniality.

"The gay man as a celibate tutor" that's a very interesting point. One I'm very jealous of men, unfortunately it rarely happens that a female-female-relationship evolves to a mentor-mentée-one (there's often the jealousy). (And my attempts to coax elder men into a mentor-relationship got completely havoc, after months or years, sexuality kicks in :( and I had to end it.)