Saw on your tags that there's some analysis to be made about Rita Skeeter's homophobia... Please do 'cause that sounds like super interesting meta 😳
Let's pretend this hasn't been sitting in my asks since last week WELL anon, i'm glad you asked! :D Let me just re-assemble my excerpts real quick *proceeds to re-read the entirety of DH again, man that book is good*
Ok, so first, there is Rita's interview promoting her upcoming book about Dumbledore in the Daily Prophet. The entire interview is sprinkled with vicious little jabs at his character (some of which will sound eerily familiar after more than a year of JKR-themed slander, take this for instance:
Family skeletons notwithstanding, does Skeeter deny the brilliance that led to Dumbledore’s many magical discoveries? ‘He had brains,’ she concedes, ‘although many now question whether he could really take full credit for all of his supposed achievements. As I reveal in chapter sixteen, Ivor Dillonsby claims he had already discovered eight uses of dragon’s blood when Dumbledore “borrowed” his papers.’
… Emphasis mine. This isn't why we're here but i couldn't help myself from adding it in! Anyways;)
One of the ways Rita starts her attacks on Dumbledore's character is by implying he comes from a particularly messed up, if not perverse, family, citing Aberforth's “fondness for fiddling about with goats”, his father's attack on the three young Muggles, etc. Later, thanks to Aunt Muriel, we get an idea of how she described Kendra:
‘Dumbledore’s mother was a terrifying woman, simply terrifying. Muggle-born, though I heard she pretended otherwise […] proud and very domineering, the sort of witch who would have been mortified to produce a Squib –’
While in the story Rita is using all of these elements most overtly to claim that Dumbledore was, in fact, raised in an anti-Muggle home, the precise way she goes for it reminds me of those long debunked pseudo-theories about what “causes” disorders in children and in particular, homosexuality in gay men: a missing father, a “domineering” hyper-controlling single mother who abuses her kids by caging them, etc.. (Theories which are still used to this day to claim that marriage = a dad and a mom, that gay couples shouldn't have kids, etc). There is the implication that the other children were just as deranged, like Aberforth with his goats, or came out wrong like Ariana. Skeeter says in her interview that she focused particularly on Kendra over her husband as the source of all of the family's problems.
When the topic of Grindelwald himself comes up, there is a pretty vulgar innuendo which Rita seems particularly gleeful about:
What of his famous defeat of Grindelwald? ‘Oh, now, I’m glad you mentioned Grindelwald,’ says Skeeter, with a tantalising smile. ‘I’m afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Dumbledore’s spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell – or perhaps a Dungbomb. Very dirty business indeed. All I’ll say is, don’t be so sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend. After they’ve read my book, people may be forced to conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and came quietly!’
Again, this is the sort of things a young or unalert reader will not notice, because as much as the internet likes to joke about the accidental innuendos with wands in the series, the books themselves rarely go for that brand of humour (though they're not entirely averse to them, see Ron's ‘It's not all about wandwork, you'd be surprised’ while talking about a book on ‘seducing witches’). Anyone's free to read it as they want, but for me, the precise wording used here makes no sense unless it was meant to allude to a shameful sexual relationship. (Edit: I forgot to add this, but the ‘truth’ of what precisely happened with the duel, and what it is exactly that Rita is alluding to, is never clarified in DH because it’s not really relevant to the plot - unlike Ariana’s story. So the only point, narrative-wise, of mentioning it at all, is so Rita could make that dubious “joke”.)
And finally, the interview branches on to the nature of Harry and Dumbledore's relationship, and that's when the homophobia in my opinion really becomes overt. Before, even with the Grindewald joke, you could argue Rita would have just made a similar one had Grindelwald been a woman, and it was mostly attacking Dumbledore for "bedding the devil, WINK", not specifically an attack on a same-sex relationship.
‘I devote an entire chapter to the whole Potter–Dumbledore relationship. It’s been called unhealthy, even sinister. Again, your readers will have to buy my book for the whole story, but there is no question that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in Potter from the word go. Whether that was really in the boy’s best interests – well, we’ll see. It’s certainly an open secret that Potter has had a most troubled adolescence.’
To be blunt, this entire excerpt reeks of a thinly veiled accusation of pedophilia. It couldn't be more explicit because the HP books are first of all aimed at kids and this is a disturbing subject, but an adult will see the vocabulary being used here and draw their own conclusion. It's impossible to separate this from homophobia, because pedophilia is one of the if not the most common myths about gay men used to attack them, and demonise and forbid homosexuality.
The overall message Rita is trying to send is that Dumbledore was a pervert raised by a crazy, ‘domineering’ mother, who may or may not have murdered his sister, whose brother may or may not fuck goats; he himself had a twisted ‘dirty’ relationship with a dark mage as a young man, whom he finally beat by seducing him rather than actually duelling him (attack on his masculinity); and he later started prying on disturbed kids for his ‘sinister’ purposes (the fact that Rita highlights Harry's ‘most troubled adolescence’ serves to imply Dumbledore specifically targeted him because he was a fragile and easy prey, another call back to the idea that young boys will be ‘turned gay’ by adult gay men as a trauma response).
The book itself is less about titillating the audience as it serves the purpose of providing Harry with slightly altered but not quite false information about Dumbledore's youth. The tone is more serious but it's not entirely devoid of insinuations either:
‘He seemed a charming boy to me,’ babbles Bathilda, ‘whatever he became later. Naturally, I introduced him to poor Albus, who was missing the company of lads his own age. The boys took to each other at once.’ They certainly did. […]
Grindelwald, expelled from Durmstrang for near-fatal attacks upon fellow students, fled the country hours after the girl’s death and Albus (out of shame, or fear?) never saw him again, not until forced to do so by the pleas of the wizarding world. Neither Dumbledore nor Grindelwald ever seems to have referred to this brief boyhood friendship in later life.
It's clear the only reason Rita's not jumping at the occasion of redubbing Dumbledore and Grindelwald's ‘brief boyhood friendship’ into ‘summer fling’ is because she has no actual proof (this would not be something Bathilda would have been able to speak about), which makes all her allusions in the interview somehow worse – she's essentially using vague clues she has to paint Grindelwald and Dumbledore's friendship as even worse because it was "suspiciously intimate" and maybe more than friendship.
Obviously all of this is very subtle and subject to interpretation, and i don't blame people for missing it, or disagreeing with any of it being intentional on JKR's part and providing ‘good enough’ hints about Dumbledore's sexuality. I do feel like if the books were written today, perhaps all of this would have been more explicit because the world is relatively more open to homosexuality being a subject that can show up in books aimed at kids.
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