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Rowling's Heteronormative Law: In any discussion of Rowling's post novels outing of Albus Dumbledore the probability of someone trying to defend her position by asking how she would have done it in the novels, then using some ridiculous example (Dumbledore wearing leather chaps, being photographed at Duckie etc), approaches one.

OK, it needs a bit of work.

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*grins*

It needs to be embroidered on a cushion or something. Quite a heavy cushion that you can use to clobber people round the head with.

Is there any mileage in defending her position on the grounds that she's managed to have a key character in one of her books be gay without anyone much noticing? And that this may cause some people to challenge their assumptions about how easy it is to spot gay people?

Serious question. I was quite impressed with what she'd managed to do, but I know nothing about the theory behind this, and I'm interested to find out exactly how wrong I am (I'm clearly somewhat wrong, based on the reactions of pretty much everyone I respect who actually knows about this stuff).

The problem is, how do you tell people that he's gay within the novel without, erm, revealing that he's gay? Sure, the newspapers picked up on this story once bloggers found the story, but I would expect a vox pop of kids who have taken the book out of our library, say, would reveal that the majority of them have not heard this.

The closet in fiction is possibly even worse than the closet in real-life, although at least in fiction there's a chance that you'll be transported to a magical world of dominatrixes and furries. ;)

She's managed to have a key character be utterly sexless, his homosexuality be hidden to the extent that not even he seems to notice he's gay. I think it'd have been more impressive (and more useful) to have a gay character with whom one might readily identify ie. not apparently nailed into the closet.

Duckie is post-gay. Dumbledore is post-canon gay.

I bow to your superior knowledge.

Well, you're pre-Duckie, are you not?

He was wearing leather chaps. Just under his robe. ;)

I wish she had made everything explicit and given us clear stereotypes to guide us. Oh, it's all too complex for me. I want to get a head of steamy outrage up but cannot.

There are shades of explicit not necessarily amounting to stereotypes (although, in presenting us with an elderly chap whose one experience of - unrequited? - same-sex attraction in his youth tragically blighted his love life forevar!1, I'd argue that she is giving us stereotypes, 1960s ones).

Given the extent to which growing up gay can be an isolated, miserable experience, it'd have been nice if one or more of Potter's peers had been other than heterosexual. 'Twould have been interesting to see how those in the wizarding world accommodate/react to queerness.

"I've always liked Dumbledore - just not in that way."

Dumbledore holds a scroll that contains his five kids' names, apparently, which appear to be:
Charlotte, Deanna, Brandon, Tarzan (really?), and Paris.

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