odds :: Gay characters in YA lit :: ends

[pauraque_bk]

eponis asked a good question the other day: Didn't Fred and George ever wonder why this bloke named Pettigrew was always shown on the map in Ron's dorm?

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scarah2 has a post on the perennially popular topic of whether particular characters may be gay in JKR's mind, regardless of whether she'll ever tell us so.

This put me in mind of a discussion keladryb and I recently had on the subject, more focused on whether JKR can/would explicitly state that a character is gay in the books. I'm not sure what purpose it would serve, beyond diversity for the sake of it. Remus is already figuratively queer, so it would seem a bit odd to make him literally queer as well, wouldn't it?

We agreed that JKR can write whatever she wants; no one could possibly stop her. We also discussed the precedent of gay characters in children's/young adult literature. Kel brought up Annie On My Mind, one of the very first YA novels about gay characters.

I've read Annie On My Mind, and it was pretty frank for the age-bracket it was aimed at. With that as a standard of what's acceptable, allowing Remus Lupin to be gay as a small part of an epic series seems like something that should be taken in stride.

Yet, it doesn't feel like it would be taken that way, at least not to me. We talked about the fact that Annie On My Mind is not just a novel with gay characters, it's a gay novel. You'd know that as soon as you read the back cover. It's in its right place on the Gay Interest shelf, where it's easy to avoid if you don't like it.

But mentioning at this point in the HP series that Remus is gay -- that's quite different. It tells us that he's a human being first, a teacher, a wizard, an expert on dark creatures, a person who makes mistakes -- all these things first, and then he also happens to be gay. It tells us that being gay isn't the end-all-be-all of someone's personality and life experience. It tells us that there isn't a great divide in the world with all the gay people conveniently Over There on their proper shelf where you don't have to see them (separate but equal).

And that's what I think would cause the controversy if JKR did decide to tell us Remus is queer. Even if it was only a passing, minor point -- perhaps especially if it was a minor point -- the message that being gay simply isn't anything to get worked up about is something I think a lot of people would have a huge problem with in a very mainstream YA series.

Any thoughts?

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On a totally different note: If you, like so many of us, are possessed by an unexpected love for movie!Remus, go here to add 'lupin's cardigan' to your interest list.

Comments

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

There were gay and lesbian characters in Louise Fitzhugh's mainstream YA books too. It's especially true in The Long Secret which had a society pianist in it named Bunny as I recall. Though it has been, oh, 25 years since I looked at it, so who knows. And of course even Fitzhugh's greatest hit, Harriet the Spy, probably sold less than 1/1000 the number of copies of any Potter book. Still, there she was with precisely that subversive idea of gay characters whose lives were not limited to their gayness ... and she was writing in the early 1970s!

[pauraque]

Did Harriet the Spy have gay characters? I read it when I was a kid, and I don't recall.

[goldennotblonde.livejournal.com]

Here from the Daily Snitch.

Tamora Pierce's Tortal books, specifically First Test, Page, Squire, and Lady Knight had two minor characters who were lesbian but nothing explicit. Her work is definitely YA, but she does talk about sex, mostly in the form of mother(or mother-figure) to daughter talks. I didn't catch that the characters were lesbian until she confirmed it on her website and said we really should have guessed. She confirmed it because people were asking, and she hadn't given us anything concrete.

Mercede's Lackey's works frequently contain gay main or secondary characters, but hers is for a bit older age group.

When SS/PS came out, it was appropriate for the youngest of children, but as the series progresses, it is becoming darker and darker, to the point where the child abuse JKR deals with in OotP would not be (in my opinion) appropriate for the second-graders my friend was reading SS/PS to a few years ago. It is feasible, however, that a child who begins reading SS/PS might be old enough to deal with OotP by the time they got through the previous books, depending on their attention span and reading speed. JKR has said the books will get darker, and that more people will die, and I fully expect the "rating" on her work to go up.

[maidenjedi]

I don't think Rowling will "out" Lupin or any other character in the series....not so much for social or sales reasons, but from an allegorical standpoint. Lupin's carrying the burden of most minorities as it is, and while I have my doubts that he's the allegory for "gay" in the series, right now he's probably the best there is. If Rowling's writing an allegory, and I know some doubt that she is and still others quibble over *what kind* of allegory, then it's safer to assume she won't bring up the issue on the page.

She's not really dealing with sexuality, on any level, within the series. Her primary themes have been filial love, loyalty, friendship/brotherhood, etc. She's touched on blossoming attraction at the adolescent stage, but hasn't made it a central point. To bring up the "fact" that Lupin (or Sirius, or Pettigrew, or anyone else) is gay would be purely an afterthought, and it would serve little purpose. I don't think she has *room*, much less interest, in touching on the politics of being a homosexual in the wizarding world.

I think she's more than aware of what's being written in the fanfiction realm, and is happy to leave us to our imaginations in this as well as other points.

[fernwithy.livejournal.com]

Right... lycanthropy has a lot of allegory already attached to it; there is also the overkill factor.

And if it was allegorical of homosexuality, then making him gay as well as being an allegory of being gay would be, um... odd. Generally, what one is an allegory of isn't the case anyway. Since I tend to see it more as an allegory of mental illness (a stigmatized and terrifying behavior behavior pattern that no one really understands and knows how to cure), I also wouldn't give him schizophrenia.

[pauraque]

I agree with you -- narratively, I don't see what purpose it would serve. Our discussion was really using the HP books as an example.

To bring up the "fact" that Lupin (or Sirius, or Pettigrew, or anyone else) is gay would be purely an afterthought

The idea of JKR stating that Pettigrew is gay struck me as viscerally alarming, and I had to pause and examine my reaction to figure out why. Of course, my Peter *is* gay; the notion certainly doesn't disturb me in fic. However, in canon, singling out a character who's consistently portrayed as criminal, immoral, and loathsome, and then saying he's also gay -- no. That's scary and uncomfortable for me. I would feel the same way if, say, it was suggested in canon that Umbridge was a lesbian.

This may not be entirely logical on my part. Of course, all sorts of people are gay, and it has nothing to do with any other personality trait -- that was exactly my point in my original post. But there's also a historical trend in film and literature to make villains gay, or code them as gay (cf The Celluloid Closet), and the idea of JKR outing Pettigrew slams that button hard, to me.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

Gah. This is why I have articulate people like you on my friends list.

I think that nothing-to-get-worked-up-about idea is a really important idea that more people need to use...especially slash writers. Though, glossing over the 'problem' of being gay entirely puts me off as well.

But at the same time, I kind of would rather have subtext, instead of having anything explicitly stated. Sometimes I feel like putting things into words 'ruins' it. Does that make any sense?

[maidenjedi]

Sometimes I feel like putting things into words 'ruins' it. Does that make any sense?

That *does* make sense. Subtext exists for a reason, and to actually *act* upon it, or spell it out, can make it cheap and almost like selling out to the audience.

Things that come to mind (granted, they're het...) are Moonlighting (David and Maggie), and The X-Files (Mulder and Scully).

[pauraque]

With slash, I think it depends on the characters and their situation. If you're writing about a couple of tough American cops, then it would be unrealistic not to at least allude to the problematic aspects.

HP is already fantasy, so HP slash can usually afford to skip over the grim and gritty problems of (internal and external) bias against queers. On the other hand, the HP universe is very concerned with blood and heirs... keeping pureblood families alive. Homosexuality would be a problem for that. In HP, I think you can plausibly take it either way, depending on what story you want to tell.

[threeoranges.livejournal.com]

Much as I wish I could say that children's literature should have moved past the era of "coded gayness" by now, I suspect JKR would never explicitly state whether Remus, or any character, was gay or bi. British children's series - C.S. Lewis, Enid Blyton - operate in a nostalgic fug where sexuality is just not mentioned as it destroys the illusion of youth and innocence. Not that it's not there in Blyton's MALORY TOWERS - the butch horse-riding Bill and her pretty femme friend Clarissa are an inseparable couple and even plan to go into business together by the end of the series! - but it has to be described as a "special friendship". Nothing more.

(Kannaophelia has written some brilliant Bill/Clarissa, btw, if you haven't already sampled the delights thereof.)

So, yes, British children's series tend to want to preserve the innocence of its characters: if gayness is mentioned, it's coded so that the reader sees only what s/he is capable of seeing and there's no suggestion that the young and impressionable child has been "corrupted".

As for Peter Pettigrew, maybe the twins thought the possessor of that name was a ickle Gryffindor in Ron's year?

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Um, more than a half-century has gone by since Lewis was writing, and longer since Blyton. How can you possibly lump these in with Potter in terms of social mores? Really, I might as well claim that desegregated schools wouldn't happen in modern American fiction.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Actually, the twins said they had the map pretty much memorized when they gave it to Harry in his third/their fifth year. They'd already had two years to study it when Ron arrived at Hogwarts, so they probably wouldn't have needed/wanted to check out Gryffindor Tower, just the approaches to the secret corridors to check for faculty and staff.

Also, Ron seems to have carried Scabbers on his person a good bit - there are lots of references to Scabbers being in his pocket. In that case I'd think that the map would show "Ron Weasley" since Ron is physically carrying the rat, and would show "Peter Pettigrew" as a separate entity only when Ron was asleep.

Does anyone know if the ghosts show up on the map? If so, the twins might have thought Peter had become another Gryffindor ghost....

[overly-shy.livejournal.com]

(drive-by commenter here--I hope you don't mind.)

It's perhaps not all that mainstream, but Diane Duane's YA So You Want to be a Wizard series (I first read them in the early '80s) has a fairly clearly gay couple as secondary characters. They're not explicitly identified as gay, but they're two adult males living together, bantering like a married couple. And when one of the main characters discusses revealing her own identity as a wizard to her parents, one of the men talks about the difficulties of passing vs. coming out of the closet--which is overtly about being a wizard, but can obviously be taken in other ways. (Also, one of her adult series has overtly homosexual and bisexual characters.)

And yeah, nobody in the books gets worked up about it. "Oh, look, these are our friends and neighbors living happily together, and they happen to both be men," appears to be the message. Now, the books are nowhere as visible as the Harry Potter books--I'm sure the controversy would be much greater for the latter.

[pauraque]

Nope, don't mind at all. Thanks for your input -- I've heard of those books, actually, but they'd slipped my mind. Maybe I'll take a look at them.

[florahart]

It tells us that he's a human being first, a teacher, a wizard, an expert on dark creatures, a person who makes mistakes -- all these things first, and then he also happens to be gay. It tells us that being gay isn't the end-all-be-all of someone's personality and life experience. It tells us that there isn't a great divide in the world with all the gay people conveniently Over There on their proper shelf where you don't have to see them (separate but equal).

I imagine if she makes someone explicitly gay, it won't be Remus.

For all the reasons you give here, I do wish she would put in a passing reference to someone being gay--someone whose sex life is patently unimportant to Harry, who knows. You know? He goes to McGonagall's office for detention and waits while she smooches Sinistra goodbye or something. You know, he knows, it's not a surprise, he doesn't care, readers aren't supposed to be shocked or alarmed, and the people who are already burning the books because of witchcraft, well, it's not incredibly ikely they're allowing their children to be corrupted by this in the first place, now is it.

This is, incidentally, one of the things I love about Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, which people say are bad, and maybe they are, but in her first trilogy the main character isn't gay, but a pair of her friends are and she knows it, supports it, and doesn't care, in the sense of, it's not relevant to the relationship she and her friends have. And in a later trilogy, hell, the main character is gay, and again, it's not all he is. Those books, incidentally, are usually classified as juvie lit.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I imagine if she makes someone explicitly gay, it won't be Remus.

For all the reasons you give here, I do wish she would put in a passing reference to someone being gay--someone whose sex life is patently unimportant to Harry, who knows.

Yeah, she probably won't do it, but if she did, I wouldn't be surprised if it were Tonks. We know very little about her, and she's on the periphery of Harry's life - not important enough to be center-stage, but still a character people like. She's also not already a symbol of anything.

[gmth.livejournal.com]

Didn't Fred and George ever wonder why this bloke named Pettigrew was always shown on the map in Ron's dorm?

My theory about the map has always been that you need to be looking for certain people, or at least have them in mind, when you are using the map in order for them to show up. Otherwise, everyone in the castle would show up every time Harry used the map, and that's not the case. He looks at the map and sees Snape, Filch, Mrs. Norris, Dumbledore, etc., but not every single student in the school. He sees Moody in Snape's office because he's thinking about Snape and wondering where he is, and so forth. Since everyone thought Pettigrew was dead, there was no reason to ever see him on the map. That's in the book, of course; the movie treated it differently, as you know.

[maidenjedi]

But even in the book, Remus sees Pettigrew on the map when he's watching to see what Harry, Ron, and Hermione are up to the night of the Shrieking Shack incident. So your theory does work, provided that Remus is actively looking for or is thinking a lot about Peter.

[tagore.livejournal.com]

not sure what purpose it would serve, beyond diversity for the sake of it.

Interesting topic. Do you have similar reservations about the Dean Thomas character being black, and by that I mean do you see some kind of unnecessary tokenism in it? Or maybe I'm reading you wrong.

(please note: I'm not asking this with an accusatory tone - I'm really interested :)

[pauraque]

I almost mentioned Dean Thomas, actually. I didn't intend to say that diversity-for-the-sake-of-it is bad -- I was merely contrasting it with making a character gay for narrative purposes. Dean Thomas isn't black for any specific narrative reason, but acknowledging that people from various ethnic backgrounds go to Hogwarts is a nice touch that does add something to the created world.

[thepiratequeen.livejournal.com]

maidenjedi's already said most of what I came here to say so my post is basically "what she said". :)

Seriously though I think subtext exists for an important reason, to put into words that any character in the HP universe was gay from Harry to Dumbledore to Lupin to Draco to Dobby to Ginny seems unnecessary and cause for a violent shift in the tone of the story. I'd admire and applaud her for doing it in some respect b/c if anyone could come close to getting away with, she probably could but as many here have stated the inherent danger in making any of the characters we already know gay or lesbian seems too great a risk.

That whole Harriet the Spy thing has blown my mind. I read that book a million times and never saw a speck of subtext in it. I kinda want to reread it now.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

I think in order for it to be subtext and not something HP-bashers would immediately pick up on, it would have to be something that didn't include a main character.

I don't know why this first springs to mind, but in the comic "For Better or For Worse," when a main character's friend says he's gay, I think the strip did a good job talking about several hard-to-discuss issues while not making it the centerpiece.

Hell, I wouldn't mind if Harry was outed as gay. Almost wish it was.

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I don't think it'll be Remus, for reasons stated above. I do think it's quite likely that there'll be a passing reference to a minor character's homosexuality, just a reference, it not being a big deal.

JKR certainly doesn't care about sales revenue by this point, and she'd probably love to stick it to all those crazy American neocons who called the books WITCHCRAFT OMG!

from one who EXPECTED to love Movie!Remus

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

As I said in my long screed about the film, I think it would be entirely in character for JKR as a writer to have Remus be *both* literally and figuratively gay. It's like the way the books are allegory and psychological fiction at the same time. I also think of it as a version of "copia," which was a rhetorical term for something a lot of Renaissance writers liked, which was to be inclusive, to have a bit of everything. Like she likes to have every magical creature you've ever heard of, all mixed together. Like there are 12 kinds of meat at every meal. And that superabundance carries over into her stylistic choices. Sirius' incarceration in Azkaban symbolized his depression, but he was also depressed...

Anyway, I rilly rilly rilly hope she does it. I think it would be mighty excellent, and I love Cuaron for pushing it so hard.

Re: from one who EXPECTED to love Movie!Remus

[pauraque]

I remembered you saying that, and I actually brought it up in my talk with keladryb. I didn't want to cite you here because I didn't remember exactly what you'd said or where. I do get what you mean, though, the simultaneous symbolism and literalism.

[pedantic-celia.livejournal.com]

I want there to be a gay character in the books. I'm sick of subtext. I'm sick of metaphor. I'm sick of people telling me that my own sexuality is not suitable for children, that gay people ought not to be around children, lest children get any funny ideas. Oh, sure, people say things like "It would be confusing". Yeah, right. Children will be so confused, they might start thinking it's okay. We can't have that, can we. People also say "well, who would let their child read a book that was full of gay stuff?" because all homosexuality is to some of you is a rampant bunch of hornies having a bunch of sex for pornographic purposes. Gay people apparently don't have relationships like straight people do, because heterosexuality is fine and dandy for a kid's book, but homosexuality has to be shrouded in some cheap metaphor, so that the writer can say "Look, I addressed the gay issue too!" without actually adressing any shit, because if anyone complained, she could just say "What are you talking about, it's just a story about a werewolf" and therefore nothing is challenged, no-one has their prejudices addressed and we all go home vaguely dissatisfied. Fun for all the pseudo-liberal family!

I loathe the idea of lycanthropy as a metaphor for homosexuality. I think it's vile. Yes, absolutely, gay people are a danger to children, yes, they have to be prevented from attacking children, yes, they all have a contagious disease FUCK RIGHT OFF. Don't give me any of that "but Remus isn't like that" shit. If he doesn't take his potion, he is. If that's a metaphor for homosexuality, it smacks of "Take this course of pseudo-scientific therapy and learn to control your sinful urges" shit. It works much, much better as a metaphor for a psychotic illness, right up to the prejudices of others. To a fucking T.

The issue of homosexuality seems pathetically easy to address. There's a group that's obsessed with the purity of the magical race. They want only pure-blooded magical people in their world. So they'll certainly be wanting to breed more purebloods, won't they? And do you know who doesn't do much in the way of breeding (traditionally)? Gay people! That's right, the Death Eaters also crack down on "inverts", which is the cue for some gay character to speak out about how worried they are. It's got potential, and I am so revolted by people who think that, in books which supposedly purport to address issues of inequality, that the slashy subtext is more important than showing actual gay characters because, heavens, we like our hot boyz kissing, but we wouldn't let our children hear about that kind of perversion.

[pauraque]

I've no idea who you are, but you're being rude. Chill.

If you're interested at all, I addressed some of what you bring up here in a previous comment:

I understand why a lot of people don't like to see him as allegorically queer for these reasons. But it somehow doesn't read like queer-is-scary to me -- I end up separating the fantasy/plotty elements from the allegorical/emotional ones, if that makes any sense.

I'm queer, by the way.

[shagsthedustmop.livejournal.com]

Howdy, I wandered in from the Daily Snitch...

Much as I love slashing Remus, Snape, etc. I think I would be happiest if JKR just had one of the kid characters mention in passing in a non-judgmental way a gay relationship between two other students.

Something on the order of Ginny saying that she and Dean were going to do a double date with Seamus and Neville. Not them necessarily, but just some random casual comment that implies that yes, there are gay people at Hogwarts and no, it's not a big deal. Because I too want to see a world where people's sexuality isn't considered a big deal.

[exbentley]

I was talking to my friend the other day, and we're studying the 19th Century and he was saying "I reckon in 100 years time people are going to look back at shows like 'It's All Relative' and 'Miriam' and say things like 'see the way that homosexuals were stereotyped in the media," and I said, "yes, and people will have to study texts with homosexual main characters, who'll be the individual, and they'll have to interpet what made them differ from societal values" and generally we had a big conversation on it, but my point is that in this day and age "the gay issue" is a big issue, though it shouldn't be an issue at all.

I think that I would be surprised to see Lupin as canonically gay (beyond subtext) and I also think it would be a great step towards all sorts of communication if she did it correctly. After all, it'll only be the parents who censor it, not the children.

Harry Potter is, at heart, a series of childrens books (however much extra depth they may display) and while I cannot claim to know JKR's stance on gay marriage but I don't think that she would want to push her political position beyond parallels.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I cannot claim to know JKR's stance on gay marriage

Civil unions for same sex couples are being introduced in the UK at the moment with very little opposition. Not quite the same as gay marriage, but J.K.Rowling would have to distinctly illiberal in the British context to oppose that, and I think it's safe to say that she's not.

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

I have very little opinion on whether or not there will be 'canonically' gay characters in HP.
If there were, though, I would hope Remus wouldn't be the one - the lycanthropy issue clouds it too much.

Didn't Fred and George ever wonder why this bloke named Pettigrew was always shown on the map in Ron's dorm?

Someone made an interesting point somewhere that after Ginny's experience with an object that 'you can't see where it keeps it's brain'; Fred and George were quick to dispose of the map, although not to *their* family members. Which is a rather cynical view of Fred and George, but imho, perfectly in character.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I believe that Angelina Johnson is also black, as is Lee Jordan. The Patil twins are Indian, Cho Chang is Chinese, and Anthony Goldstein is Jewish. Lord only knows what everyone else is - they're all witches/wizards, and that's all that seems to matter.

[pauraque]

The PoA movie seems to suggest that Lavender Brown is black as well (though it could be one of those mysterious Other Gryffindor Girls).