So...Dumbledore was gay.  I feel like I should be pleased, but, instead, I'm irritated.  I know fandom is terribly divided over the issue, and that much of fandom is utterly unsurprised.  Hell, I'm not the world's best at spotting subtext and the whole Dumbledore/Grindlewald thing had me wondering.  But so did Sirius's fondness for James.  And I could list half a dozen other characters who certainly could be gay or bi.

Which is the problem.  Why weren't they?  Why is the only gay character in a book filled with couples only given a hint of a relationship?  Sex might not be part of Rowling's Wizarding World, but relationships sure are.  A couple of same sex Hogwarts students holding hands, McGonagall and Madam Hooch (what happened to her, anyway?) sharing quarters, even a conformation of Sirius having a thing for James, Remus, Tonks, or both being gay as many fans felt they read, some suggestion that homosexuality is not limited to villains and morally questionable supposed heroes.

What irritates me about Rowling is that she had some great ideas, an interesting world, good characters, and the series totally disintegrated.  I don't know whether she desperately needed an editor, got sick of her own books, started riding her fame, or what, but by the last book, she'd abandoned half the issues she raised, no longer had a functional world, had forgotten how to plot without relying on phenomenal stupidity by her characters, and had lost much (all?) of the distinction between good and evil.

Now it feels like she's trying to keep people interested in her stories by any means necessary.  Worse, outing Dumbledore after the fact just makes it _more_ obvious that her world has a shortage of gay characters, not to mention characters of any type of real world other (There are, what, seven non-white students at Hogwarts, counting walkons?  Add in Kingsley and we get a whopping eight.  Out of how many characters?  Wow, great representation there.)

Of course, her treatment of unique to her world others is the final nail in the coffin.  Muggles, Squibs, non-wizard magic users, werewolves, the list of discriminated against groups goes on and on.  And her heroes don't question most of the discrimination, even when, if they were true to their character, they would.  (Hermione objects to the treatment of House Elves, but doesn't spare a moment to consider Muggles, despite the fact that her parents are Muggles?  Riiiiiiiight.)

For that matter, why is Mudblood an unacceptable and horrible slur, but Muggle and Squib, both of which sound like derisive slang, acceptable for use in polite conversation?  Why aren't there other terms for regular humans?  The real world has any number of terms for various groups, ranging from the horribly unacceptable to the academic.

Oh, why do I bother.  Oh, right, because the books had so much promise, dammit!

Edit: So, I listened to the NPR blurb on the subject, which is by a gay teacher and comentator, who tells us he understands why Dumbledore stayed in the closet.  And skips right over all the other gay people (and others) who are irritated at Rowling over this, leaving one with the impression that the only people not happy are the rabid "Christians"* who already wanted to burn the books.  Way to cover the controversy, NPR.


ETA2:  What bothers me about people giving Rowling a pass on keeping Dumbledore in the closet in the books is that it's applying, almost unquestioningly, real world problems to her Wizarding World.  Doing that is aways a bit questionable, but in this case, if you accept that, it makes the already horribly bigotted Wizarding World that much worse.  It doesn't really have sexual equality, it may have ethnic equality, but gays have to stay in the closet?  *sigh*  In addition to everything else that went wrong with the series, she failed to examine what she was writing in view of her liberal beliefs, and ended up reinforcing attitudes I don't think she meant to reinforce.  Worse, people accept that a gay fictional character in an alternate reality had to be in the closet to have power (and so deep in the closet that Rita Skeeter didn't out him...or homosexuality is so unmentionable in the Wizarding World that she couldn't).

Look at it this way, how would it seem if she'd revealed that Dumbledore was actually a woman?






*As opposed to actual Christians, who actually do try to follow Christ's teachings.