[ SECRET POST #2216 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2216 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 120 secrets from Secret Submission Post #317.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is a good post explaining why dumbledore being revealed as gay after the fact is not that great: http://applesarefuckinghealthy.tumblr.com/post/40509280705/i-am-tired-of-people-insisting-that-how-jkr

Basically telling fans (and really only the fans, not just people who read the books) after the fact is not increasing queer visibility in the slightest. And while it may be nice that she thought of him as queer in her head, it doesn't count as visibility unless you write it in the fucking canon.

[lunabee34]

I agree with your last statement there.

I can totally see the subtext for Grindelwald and Dumbledore, but that doesn't make them gay. Text makes them gay.

[(Anonymous)]

If she had written the books with a gay man in a position of authority over hundreds of young children, we would not have had queer visibility in the slightest. We would have had no books whatsoever. There is no way in hell that it would have been published at all, let alone become so wildly popular.

[(Anonymous)]

His teacher's sex life would not have been something that would have been discussed in the earlier books.

By books 5? 6? 7? You were talking about the most successful and popular series in the entire world--in the history of the world. Dumbledore being gay would NOT have pulled them off the shelves.

I don't think she's bad for doing it how she did, but it wasn't, as OP said, some sort of LGBT Christmas miracle.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure revealing that Dumbledore was gay in the last book would have caused minimal issues in getting it published.

[(Anonymous)]

Only minimal in the sense that the censors would've cut it out before allowing publishing.

I don't know if people are just really young or really stubborn, but at the time? That shit wouldn't fly in mainstream children's literature. I don't care how much people want to insist it'd be good for kids to see gay characters represented. IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN.

[(Anonymous)]

Except she didn't reveal him as gay to earn ally points. It was never her stated purpose to increase visibility, considering that she probably didn't know the sexual identity politics behind lit. gay characters.

[(Anonymous)]

Then...she still isn't a bastion of gay activism, at least in regards to that. IMO, it being an afterthought sort of makes it worse. Maybe she didn't think it mattered that he was gay, and that's fine. Good on her. But being an ally doesn't always equal being an activist. She passed up on an opportunity to canonically normalize a gay character in a well-loved series...for what? Because she didn't think it mattered? That's a little damning when there was an entirely superfluous epilogue about everybody's Normal Heterosexual Marriage With Children.

[(Anonymous)]

But it shouldn't matter, and that's the whole point. Homosexuality is not normalized when it's some Different Thing that Needs to be Discussed at Length. It's normalized when it's incidental.

Dumbledore happened to be gay. It shouldn't be a big deal. The fact that it is is the actual problem.

[(Anonymous)]

Who said it needed to be discussed at length? I'm just saying that when there are no normalized gay characters in the text (even just by a simple, "his boyfriend/her girlfriend"), but there is a long, self-indulgent epilogue about everybody's heterosexual marriage, it's a little iffy.

But again, I'm not saying she's wrong for mentioning it, I'm just saying that it doesn't make her an activist.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like the epilogue because it's ridiculous wish-fulfillment, but because it's wish-fulfillment, I am less inclined to find it "iffy" in the sense that you mean. A heterosexual author is going to identify more with heterosexual relationships than with homosexual ones, and as such, self-indulgence, as you say, is going to involve heterosexuality. Does this mean that heterosexual authors shouldn't strive to include people of other sexualities in their works? No -- they absolutely should. It means only that, in cases where the author is clearly writing for him/herself self, it's understandable that s/he would depict the sexuality with which s/he identifies and/or is most familiar.

I don't think it makes her an activist, either. I just think it makes her someone who conceived of a particular character as gay and didn't think that it was a big deal.

[(Anonymous)]

Everyone's homosexual marriage at the end of the books when Dumbledore was already dead?

oh. yeah, she should have totally done that.

[(Anonymous)]

That is exactly how I feel. And if she'd included something more obvious about him being gay in the books(though I thought it was somewhat obvious already), then they would just be complaining about how she made him into the ~token gay~ instead, or didn't give him enough ~gay problems~, or shouldn't have mentioned it at all because homosexuality should be normalized.

[(Anonymous)]

You seem to want to both insist she's not an ally and that she's not acting enough like an ally. Can you make up your mind?!

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, that's fine, but it's not like she's claiming to be an activist or something like that.

[(Anonymous)]

Urgh, this reminds me of the current nonsense going on in the Merlin fandom. In the DVD commentary for the very last episode, one of the producers makes about twenty gay jokes - now half the fandom is clambouring that Merlin/Arthur was totally canon, and the other half is (futilely) trying to point out that it's just more queerbaiting.

Though for the people celebrating, it's admittedly more about their ship "winning" than gay rights or visibility. God, it's frustrating.

[wldcatsprstr_14]

Not really much point in queerbaiting if the show is over, IMO.

And regardless if JMurph said what he said or not, Merlin/Arthur has always been canon. Since the very first season. Maybe not in a 'let's make babies' way, but not every love relationship is like that.