JK Rowling Responds To Fan Who Can’t Picture Dumbledore As A Gay Man


When a fan asked JK Rowling why she had previously stated that Hogwarts Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore was gay, because the fan “can’t see him in that way,” the Harry Potter author responded in the way that only she can: with intelligence, grace, and maybe a little bit of sarcasm.

The original tweet by user @anakocovic21 has since been deleted, but she initially asked Rowling “Thank you so much for writing Harry Potter. I wonder why you said that Dumbledore is a gay because I can’t see him in that way.” The response she got is just one of the reasons JK Rowling could easily be dubbed the Queen of Twitter.

In October 2007, during a question and answer session at New York’s Carnegie Hall that preceded a reading of the seventh novel in her popular Harry Potter series, Rowling was asked by a 19-year-old fan “Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?” to which she responded “My truthful answer to you…I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” It was the outing heard ’round the world, as news websites as far as China and Germany proclaimed “Dumbledore is gay!” in their headlines.

She went on to explain why Dumbledore was always described as having a troubled and mysterious past, though his sexuality was never actually mentioned in the series.

“Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald [another wizard who ultimately turned bad], and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent, but he met someone as brilliant as he was and, rather like Bellatrix, he was very drawn to this brilliant person and horribly, terribly let down by him.”

This isn’t the first time the author has taken to Twitter to show her support for the LGBT community. In 2014, she was asked by another fan whether Hogwarts, the fictional school of Witchcraft and Wizardry that is the setting for Harry Potter, was a safe place for LGBT students. In perfect Rowling-Twitter fashion, her response reminded the world why she was an inspiration to us all:

As for the tweet proclaiming that the fan who wrote it couldn’t see Dumbledore was gay, Rowling made sure that she didn’t take any offense to the question, and nor should anyone else.

The fan, Ana Kocovic, later replied to JK’s response by tweeting “amazing answer… Yes you are absolutely right. Such an inspiration!!!”

And all was right with the world.

How do you feel about the way JK Rowling responds to her fans on Twitter? What did you think when she first revealed that Dumbledore was gay?

[Photo By: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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