Harry Potter Isn’t Gay, But He Could’ve Been
Hogwarts is very, very straight
The discourse surrounding queerness and writing has changed and improved drastically over the years. As a teacher, I have recommended dozens of books focusing on LGBTQ+ characters to my students. I tell them that it is important that they see themselves in what they read and that those characters are not just sidekicks. The writing is changing and the discourse is changing, but there is still much work to do. Just the other day, I saw an infuriating tweet along the lines of this: I’m fine with having gay characters written into books as long as their gayness adds to the plot.
Queerness is not a plot device. It is a norm.
We have an expectation, with nearly all media that we consume, that the normal is straight. Everything else is Other and must be part of the plot. No one asks you why Harry Potter is straight. No one asks you if his straightness adds to the plot of defeating Voldemort. And if you say, Harry had to fall in love with Ginny, please ask yourself: why he couldn’t have fallen in love with a boy? And why could that not have been normal?
It is normal. Whether you know it or not, you are surrounded by gay people. All the time. I am one of those gay people.
So often in the Harry Potter discourse, especially around queerness, we get drawn back to that nugget of information that JK Rowling blessed (or cursed) us with: Dumbledore is gay. If it’s coming from her we can assume that it’s canon. But she did not write Dumbledore as a gay character. She did not hint at it, she did not proclaim it. His relationship with Grindelwald that comes to light in The Deathly Hallows shows us absolutely nothing that is considered to be queer. I am not saying that gay characters have to be written a certain way. I am not saying that gay characters must be referenced as gay. I am saying that simply having a gay character is not enough. Here we find the difference between diversity and inclusion.
Harry Potter is not diverse. When called out on it, it makes sense that JK Rowling, for all of her terrible opinions and thoughts, would double down on making Dumbledore gay and Hermione Black after the fact, when they clearly we were not written that way. This is a cop out — it is a way to make her series diverse, but it is not inclusive. As I discussed with my high school English students recently, the majority of whom are students of color, it is not enough to simply see yourself in a book or on TV. The person who looks like you, the person of color or the queer person, must be part of the story and not just in the background. So much of our media includes diversity — the token Black character, the gay or fat best friend — but these characters do not have seats at the table. They are there to be viewed, not to speak. This is what I mean when I say that Rowling telling us that Dumbledore is gay is simply tokenism. There is nothing in the books that will resonate with a young queer person who is trying to see themselves in the greatest wizard that England has ever known. It is one thing to see a gay person, and it is another to have a story focused on the person who is gay (and not just their gayness). Dumbledore is one of the most integral characters to the Harry Potter series. His gayness does not have to be a focal point because his character itself is. His gayness does not have to be overdone. It does not need to be constantly brought up. But it does need to be known for it to make any impact on representation and inclusion.
When I watch TV I am often hoping for queerness that is seen as the norm. I yearn for queer characters where their queerness is not the center of the universe, where their relationships are not questioned, where they are not traumatized and bullied for being what they are, and where they get a happy ending. Ideally, I would like to see a lesbian couple who starts out that way, who remains that way, who ends that way, and not a single person questions it, alludes to it, or mentions it. So far, I have only gotten this from I Care a Lot, a psychological thriller Netflix original movie. Marla and Fran are lesbians, and not a single person mentions that they are lesbians. No one questions their relationship. They stay in a relationship the entire movie. No one says, “I didn’t know you were dating a woman” to either of them. They exist the same way that heterosexual relationships do. This is what so many TV shows and movies are lacking, and this is what Harry Potter lacks completely. And JK Rowling showing up however many years after the final book was published saying that Dumbledore was gay doesn’t suddenly fix it. Harry Potter wasn’t meant to be diverse because she did not write it that way. Dumbledore is not meant to be gay. Hermione is not meant to be Black. Rowling can say that all she wants, but it is not true. She cannot add diversity and inclusion to it after the fact. We can understand the innate goodness of Harry Potter while knowing that it is straight and it is white. But we have to understand that it is straight and white, and no amount of backpedaling from JK Rowling is going to change that fact.
I like to imagine that lesser mentioned Hogwarts students are queer when I reread the series. Hannah Abbott has a girlfriend in Slytherin. Padma Patil is happily bisexual and she’s dated Dean Corner and Eloise Midgen. There are so many characters like this that we don’t get a chance to know, and more mentioned ones that we get to know superficially, like Lavender Brown and Ernie MacMillan. These smaller characters, the members of Harry’s class whom he knows but is not friends with, well, I like to imagine that they are gay. Statistically speaking, some of them are. Their character aren’t important enough, not developed enough, for us to know for sure, so what’s the harm? It adds nothing to the plot. It cannot be proved or disproved, and in the end, it doesn’t matter. But Hogwarts cannot be entirely straight, so I imagine Hannah Abbott holding hands with her Slytherin girlfriend on the way to Charms class, the way I see my students do in the halls of my school. This is not fan fiction. I do not write fan fiction, nor do I read it. (Fan fiction is excellent though, even if it’s not for me.) This is how I make Hogwarts an inclusive place, a more real place. I am not one of those people who sits around and waits for my Hogwarts letter and wishes that I could go there. I am someone who thinks too much about Harry Potter and hopes that Hogwarts has a girl like me.
