[ SECRET POST #2570 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2570 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[The Lying Game]


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03.
[Hobbit movies, LOTR movies, Tolkien]


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04.
[Perry Mason]


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05.
[Carnivale]


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06.
[Downton Abbey]


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07.
[BBC Sherlock]


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08.
[Lee Pace]


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09.
[Virtue's Last Reward]


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10.
[Deep Space 9]


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12.
[Elementary]














Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #367.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What? All five of them have agency, and the ones that are in Sherlock's or John's immediate orbits have personality traits and backgrounds that make it reasonable to think that they might remain in these men's lives. One of the points of the last episode is that John's as much of a nutter as Sherlock, and I don't think anyone would deny that Mycroft is as off as either one of them. What kinds of women do you think, realistically, would choose to be close to them?

And how are they all being damselled, except in ways that the men are being damselled too? Mary needs to be saved, yes, but at various points so do both John and Sherlock. For the same reasons, too: that their fondness for the others makes them vulnerable in ways they wouldn't be if they didn't care. Mycroft needs saving in precisely the ways that the powerful civil servant needs saving. The women here are being treated in the same ways as the men, and I'm not sure why that's not exactly as it should be.

I don't know Moffat's other work. Maybe if I did it would make me see these characters differently. But standing alone, I don't get what the problem is supposed to be. Did you want your basic tv-femininity tropes? If you'd got them, would you believe that these were women who would put up with these particular men, or be respected or loved by them?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT Haha no, I want kickass strong women, believe me. What I'm seeing is a pattern, over and over, and it seems so well-worn to me.

The key phrase of my argument is "battle of the sexes dominatrix bullshit". It's like Moffat has only one way to conceive of "strong" women, which falls nearly in with the type of pedestal worshipping that he obviously has for women. It's a different flavour of sexism that still treats us as a slightly irrational and volatile and mysterious separate species, always acting in relation to and opposition to men, according to the dictates of our gender. I'm so frustrated by it. His offscreen comments about women and his wife match up with his writing too. It's like he sees us as "women" first and "people" second, yanno? Not everyone gets annoyed by his treatment of female characters, and that's fine by me, but it personally rubs me raw when I'm otherwise enjoying his stories :(

[(Anonymous)]

The strange thing to me is, if I saw these characters as a slightly irrational and volatile and mysterious separate species, always acting in relation to and opposition to men, according to the dictates of our gender, I'd be every bit as irritated by it as you are. And to be fair, I can see how the series' Irene Adler conforms to that pattern, and she did irritate me.

The reason that Mary, Molly, Sherlock's mother, Lady Whoever, Mrs. Hudson, and the girlfriend from this episode don't bother me is that they don't feel to me as if they're being written as a mysterious Other. Mrs. Hudson and Molly feel authentic to me, like women who are displaying mannerisms and defense mechanisms that come from being socialized into, and having to negotiate, feminine gender role presentation when it doesn't necessarily accord with their core personalities. And Mary and the minister, it seemed to me, were written just like the male characters. If you'd flipped all the genders, you wouldn't have had to change anything except some pronouns. I didn't think, anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

Fair enough. I'm glad they work for you. For me, I find the women so jarring, which sadly annoys me, I just wanna enjoy the show.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it's a pretty limited scope of writing, if you think about it. A lot of male writers have problems conceiving of a "strong female character" as anything other than a literally strong woman, whereas male characters can be layered and diverse and strongly written without it becoming "kickass character" = actually kicking people's asses. It's like with women, the go-to method of jazzing a character up is to make her "sexy and dangerous". And sexy and dangerous characters are cool, but is that the only way a woman can be interesting?

I mean, let's look at the two most prominent characters here, Irene and Mary. In the source material, both were women of high intelligence and good moral standing who fit perfectly well into the dangerous setting the protagonists rolled in, and were interesting in unique ways. But that's not good enough for a modern audience, I guess, better make them morally dubious and have problematic relationships with the men that never existed in their original incarnations. And yeah, a big part of this is just like the thread OP said, it is Moffat and he has an established pattern and once you've picked up on it you can't enjoy his characterization at face value anymore. I'd have liked the super assassin reveal more if they hadn't done what they did with Irene last series, and also if, like you, I wasn't familiar with the rest of this man's works.

[(Anonymous)]

But again, we're not reading these characters against the universe of all possible characterizations for women. We're reading them against the background of this canon universe. Where the prominent male characters are also sexy and dangerous.

Every single complaint here about Mary and Irene could be made about John. Being sexy and dangerous is not the only way a man can be interesting; we know that, right? John is smart, dedicated, a fine doctor and a good friend. Why does he also need to be hot and a first-class pistol shot and good at hand-to-hand combat? Why does he have to have that not-so-hidden attraction to violence and darkness?

It's the same with the second-rank characters. Mrs. Hudson is both a fluttery older woman and a person with an interesting background and set of talents. The drug guy from this last episode also starts as a stock comedy character and turns out to have an interesting and scary set of interests and talents. Maybe Moffat also writes women this way in series where he's not writing the men to match, but in this series I'm not seeing any difference between the ways he writes men and the ways he writes women. You could genderflip the whole thing, and not have to change much beyond the pronouns. And to me, at least, that's something to be celebrated.

[(Anonymous)]

Thread OP / NAYRT sees a clear difference, and a very gendered one, but I feel I've said my piece earlier. Moffat isn't a sexist in the way some describe him, imo, but I agree with the AYRT that he thinks "strong female" means, well, "sexy and dangerous", in ways that are pretty much gratuitous in the third ep but I didn't really see in the first two. Watch for gratuitous slapping of men as a symptom. As I said, it's a pattern, and My First Moffat Show was twenty years ago so I feel I've been a bit overexposed to it. I'm not involved in the fandom for Sherlock, but the Irene ep REALLY made me upset.

[(Anonymous)]

oh damn double post cost I hit stop to edit

[(Anonymous)]

Thread OP / NAYRT I see a clear difference, and a very gendered one, but I feel I've said my piece earlier. Moffat isn't a sexist in the way some describe him, imo, but I agree with the AYRT that he thinks "strong female" means, well, "sexy and dangerous", in ways that are pretty much gratuitous in the third ep but I didn't really see in the first two. Watch for gratuitous slapping of men as a symptom. As I said, it's a pattern, and My First Moffat Show was twenty years ago so I feel I've been a bit overexposed to it. I'm not involved in the fandom for Sherlock, but the Irene ep REALLY made me upset.