Ian Johnson, Out Now
October 28, 2007
TOPICS: Effective gay and lesbian communications. Gay and lesbian communications strategies. Gay marketing communications. Lessons to be drawn by gay and lesbian communications professionals from the media furore over JK Rowling outing Dumbledore character in Harry Potter books as being gay.
Gay Market News reported last week that JK Rowling had been quite shrewd from a marketing communications perspective in how she outed the character of Dumbledore as being gay.The fact that there would inevitably be those who would protest this decision as somehow being 'wrong' was inevitable.
Sadly predictable too were many of the arguments raised to object to Harry Potter's headmaster Dumbledore being revealed to be gay by the series author.
They are the same arguments gay and lesbian people hear raised against them quite often whenever matters of gay and lesbian equality are discussed, especially by some who might prefer gay and lesbian people remained largely invisible to the mainstream.
Looking briefly at the various arguments and counter-arguments on this issue are illuminating for communications professionals to understand how lesbian and gay people see their own lives, and how that has communications implications for marketers seeking to win the gay and lesbian consumer market through more effective marketing communications strategies.
One of the more startling mainstream media commentators whom I read on this were various comments made by a Canadian journalist, Barbara Kay -- who contended last week that Dumbledore was "diminished" by this outing by JK Rowling of Dumbledore as a gay character in the Harry Potter books.
Ms Kay seems to have woven her central thesis around her theory that to discuss gay issues is really only about sex, and nothing else.
Here is an extract from Barbara Kay's original comments in Canadian media:
Barbara Kay: Dumbledore has been diminished
There is something very odd though about Dumbledore being singled out from the huge cast of adult characters in the books as having any sexuality at all. Some of the characters in the books are married, many more are single. But their private lives and relationships are, literarily speaking, irrelevant. We only see the adults in terms of their relationship to the children.
Dumbledore's gayness is a brand new element, and from a literary point of view, absolutely inappropriate. There is nothing wrong with Dumbledore being gay in terms of Rowling's imaginative understanding of her character, but the gratuitous projection of this information into the books is inconsistent with the general character of her imaginary world, and in readers' minds will retroactively distort everything Dumbledore has said and done.
However, as a symbol for gay activists eager to inculcate knowledge about human sexuality at the earliest possible age, Rowling's revelation has been a marketing godsend. Sadly, the mighty and inscrutable wizard, in whom sexuality was properly irrelevant, will henceforth dwindle in the minds of readers into the merely gay headmaster.
Ouch.
The communications implications are clear: in Ms Kay's view of the world, to be openly known as being gay is a negative thing, most especially it can only 'diminish' an adult that is known to be gay by children.
And being gay seemingly means primarily one thing to Ms Kay. To her, to be gay is only about sex, to the practical exclusion of any other aspect of how one's life can be affected by being gay.
The fact that to Ms Kay to be known as a heterosexual character connotes no link to sexuality at all, but to be known as a homosexual character can do nothing but link that character to sex seems downright odd.
But it is also a mistake many communications professionals have made in the past when they perceive a gay audience as interested in little else but sex.
I found Ms Kay's argument very flawed to say the least. Being gay is just one aspect of a whole person, and it is one that permeates many aspects of any gay or lesbian individual's own relationship to their environment, and does so in varying ways for each individual.
Most importantly, aspects of 'gayness' manifest in so many ways which have nothing at all to do with sex.
I made some comments of my own on her article's online forum about the matter, including:
Being gay is actually not about merely sex, it is much more about attraction, and, far more importantly, it is primarily about love.
For you to imply that the heterosexual relationships are okay in the book -- because they are parents -- but that a gay relationship is not okay -- because it could only be about sex -- seems to imply that gay relationships, somehow differently than heterosexual relationships, are about sex and nothing else.
You also assume love between adults cannot be understood by children -- who mostly have no idea of what sex means at all until their teens -- which is patronising of the ability kids have to understand that love can exist between people of either gender - love is very different than sex.
If JK Rowling had announced Dumbledore had a broken heart from a female yearning, then you would never have written such an article, nor ever implied that his yearning had "diminished" him.
I then went on to comment further:
For the writer of this article to suggest that being gay can be a 'diminishing' characteristic for anyone -- fictional or real -- deserves to be interpreted at best as lacking in a fundamental understanding of how lesbian and gay people actually see themselves, and others like them (yes - even fictional gay wizards) which is, suprisingly or not, as equal to others in society.
This last part is critical for communications professionals to grasp: gay and lesbian people do not spend their entire lives consumed with issues related to sex. Far from it. They are just as worried about their mortgage payments, their career prospects and for many, their own children's education and welfare.
It is very wrong, in communications likely to be read by a gay and lesbian audience to equate being gay only with matters to do with sex. Gay people do not define their lives in terms of who they have sex with, nor should those outside the community who seek to communicate their own interpretations of being gay to them.
Ms Kay's flaw in her communications about what it is to be gay is assuming that being gay automatically relates to "sexualizing" things. In a follow-up article after stirring much controversy with her original remarks, Ms Kay added:
In saying someone is gay, you are saying they prefer to have sex with their own sex, and nothing else, since they do not have a dual identity as parents do (emphasis added).
Double ouch. Worst to me is that I know that particular statement by Ms Kay is simply not true.
Having had the children of friends and relatives ask me about my relationship to my partner of fourteen years many times before the answer to their questioning about being gay has always been roughly the same: 'He and I love each other and enjoy being together so we want to spend our lives together with each other.' Nothing at all to do with sex whatsoever.
Being out as gay is often about being honest enough to embrace one's own difference from the mainstream and to do that openly as a member of the mainstream as well. JK Rowling seems to have been doing nothing more, but nothing less than that in showing her many millions of readers that one of the most well-respected and important characters in her Harry Potter books, headmaster Dumbledore, can easily be a gay character -- and that that is absolutely okay.
I am apparently not alone with my thoughts on all this as I then received a most welcome note from a reader in Canada who said they already knew of Barbara Kay and her stance on such issues, and they kindly wrote me:
I'd like to thank you for your reasoned and unassailable responses to Barbara Kay's column on the outing of Dumbledore -- very refreshing and effective.
Nice.
In any case, for marketing communications professionals the key message from all this is very clear: do not assume you understand how the target gay and lesbian consumer views their own life.
You may think you know, but you may just as easily make gross assumptions that render your efforts at devising gay and lesbian communications ineffective.
The solution? Get access to good quality, reliable current gay and lesbian market research data. Learn as much as you can about how gay and lesbian people view their own lives. Remember sex is usually no more important, and other issues no less important than for anyone else.
If your budget allows for it, consider engaging the services of a high quality reputable gay and lesbian communications agency peopled by marketing professionals to help you make sure you get it right.
It's not always easy to realize that your own views of gay and lesbian lives can differ radically from the gay and lesbian communities views of their own lives.
JK Rowling said, at the same time as outing Dumbledore as gay, in New York at Carnegie Hall that all the Harry Potter books themselves were, in her mind, "a prolonged plea for tolerance" -- which shows us that in all this media noise over Dumbledore being gay most commentators have forgotten to view that fact in the context of the narrative as a whole.
Perhaps the best way to close is to let someone else have the last word, drawn from amongst the other commenters to Barbara Kay's original item:
Ms. Kay, your homophobia is subtle, but caustic. You see no sexuality in a novel where there are marriages, romances, kissing, parents with children (some sex there somewhere, right?) and yet for some reason you think the mere EXISTENCE of same sex orientation is beyond the pale. Dumbledore was not "singled out" for sexuality -- most of the characters have sexuality in the Rowling books. Gay people run into your glaring, if unconscious, double standard all the time. Shame on you. Shame.
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