Someone tagged the secret I last responded to with the following:
Tagged as: I’m a feminist. I ship Sherlock/John like there’s no tomorrow. and I absolutely love Moffat’s portrayal of Irene Adler. but the more I think about it the more I’m convinced that all the hate for Moffat’s female characters has nothing to do with feminism. or feminist ethics or whatever. but with the fact that he writes really strong women. and it can sometimes be difficult for teenage or twenty-something girls to identify with them. like most of us are more like Molly than Irene or River.
And I just… no. All my rage, I just. Flames. Flames… on the side of my face.
I hate this shit. I hate this dismissive bullshit that says you can’t possibly be offended or see sexism in Moffat’s female characters, you’re just ~jealous because you’re not as “strong” as they are. It strikes me as, despite the author’s claims to be a feminist, very anti-feminist and sexist in and of itself (“oh, you silly girls are just jealous, you don’t really have legitimate concerns!”). Dismissing women’s concerns as simply “jealousy” or an inability to identify with strong women? God, that’s pretty fucking sexist, isn’t it?
I won’t start in on Moffat’s women in Doctor Who. To be perfectly honest with you, I’ve had that discussion so many times by now that it runs my temper straight into surface-of-the-sun temperature range and I just… can’t. But the next time you think Moffat isn’t sexist, just remember what he did to Amy Pond. Just remember River Song running about asking if she looks fat or her hair’s alright in the middle of World War II.
As far as Sherlock goes, I agree wholeheartedly with what someone once said here on Tumblr (I don’t have the source, though): Any story in which Irene Adler loses to Sherlock Holmes is inherently sexist. That doesn’t touch the character, but I feel it sets the tone. I won’t go into all my issues here, because… frankly, I have a bus to catch in a few hours and shouldn’t do it on an empty stomach. But a few points, briefly:
1) Moffat’s Adler is a “strong women” brought to her knees - in the end literally - by her emotions. Her feelings. She was beaten because she ~fell in love. If you really think this isn’t ridiculously sexist, I don’t think we’re watching the same show.
2) Her sexuality was everything. Literally. Everything about her seemed defined by her sexuality. Her profession, her personality, her manner of dress, her interactions with others, etc. Sure, this can look like “empowered woman who is secure in her sexuality”… but to me, it’s an unrealistic portrayal that reduces Adler to her sexuality and nothing more. It is everything. Which brings me to my next point.
3) They sexualised and demeaned her “title.” In the short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Sherlock Holmes is the one who gives Adler the name of “The Woman” - a title of respect from a nineteenth century man who has never met a woman of his match before, who outwitted him and thus became singular in his view. In Moffat’s Sherlock, “The Woman” is Adler’s working title as a dominatrix, making it something that she did not earn through her own virtue as well as making it an inherently sexual title - which adds to point number two as well as making me, personally, feel incredibly awkward when Sherlock addresses her that way (because it is her title as a sex worker, her byname, his refusal to call her by name rather than using that seems dirty, demeaning — it indicates a lack of respect, where in the ACD stories the title was a mark of respect). The sexism here should be quite obvious even to the most casual viewer.
4) Her, um, lesbianism. I don’t know about you all, but as a queer woman, this infuriated me. I was on with the idea of a lesbian Irene Adler. I love that, I think it would be awesome. But no, lo and behold, Moffat has the only person Adler actually falls for be… a man. Sherlock Holmes. She is never shown to have an actual relationship or anything of the sort with a woman - she is shown “working” with one woman, and makes one or two comments about her assistant, and that’s it. This is both homophobic and sexist, as it reeks to high heaven of the straight male fantasy that lesbians will suddenly stop liking women for the “right guy”.
5) Irene Adler in the original story was far from a dominatrix or a master criminal. She was an adventuress and former opera singer, with no actual malicious aims. I find portraying her as a criminal mastermind to be fairly sexist if only because it implies that an “ordinary” woman could not possibly be the woman who bests Sherlock Holmes - she must be evil.
6) She couldn’t, apparently, figure out what to do with all that blackmail material she had… until she was told what to do with it by a man. Er. What.
As I said, not an exhaustive list— but enough to be getting on with. I’d like to disclaim here before someone accuses me of it that I do not, for the record, believe that sex or sex work is inherently demeaning or “dirty” in any way. I am a sex-positive feminist who supports legal, heavily-regulated sex work under certain circumstances. However, I must stress that I had many issues with the way Irene Adler was portrayed as a sex worker in the show, especially within the larger cultural context, the fact that the character herself seems to have been largely exported from Stephen Moffat’s wet dreams, and the overall sexist themes emenating throughout the episode. I do not mean this to be in any way a commentary on my general feelings about IRL sex work, merely the depiction of it in this show. I do, however, firmly believe that taking a title borne of legitimate respect and turning it into something basely sexual and devoid of respect is wrong and sexist, and nothing will change my mind on that.
In short, my issues with Irene Adler have nothing to do with being unable to relate to her. They have everything to do with her being a sexist caricature who was treated horribly by Stephen Moffat as her writer. Though, you are right about one thing, tagger — I can’t relate to Irene Adler as written in Sherlock. She comes across to me as entirely too one-dimensional to identify with.
(I also really, as an aside, dislike a) the idea that teenage and twenty-something girls are somehow “too immature” to identify with those characters and this is somehow a flaw rather than a fault of the writing, b) the implication that Molly is not a strong female character, and c) that there is something wrong with being like Molly. There is nothing wrong with “being a Molly” and it hardly means that you are weak or immature. For the record, I do not identify more strongly with Molly, though I love her and all other loyal, sweet Mollys out there - I identify the most with Sherlock, for reasons that are probably significantly less obvious on this blog than they are in real life.)
Anyway, now that I’ve done that tirade, I’m off to make something to eat.
If you don’t agree with me, I will ask that you do me the respect of not flaming me. I’ve got quite the day ahead of me on very little sleep, and I don’t want to start a Tumblr flame war.
