{"id":208820,"date":"2014-05-30T14:22:14","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T14:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/05\/30\/the-navel-treatment-the-navel-treatment-the-2\/"},"modified":"2014-05-30T14:22:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T14:22:14","slug":"the-navel-treatment-the-navel-treatment-the-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/05\/30\/the-navel-treatment-the-navel-treatment-the-2\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

the-navel-treatment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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the-navel-treatment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The next time I see the \u201cit wasn\u2019t canon argument,\u201d I\u2019m going to run screaming at you with copies of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and news articles detailing the treatment of convicted homosexuals in 19th Century England, and then continue screaming until you understand\u00a0exactly<\/em> what would have happened to Arthur Conan Doyle had he explicitly written Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as gay lovers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, I wrote this a bit cheekily last night, but now I want to expand on it with some actual facts. \u00a0I see a lot of people saying, \u201cOh, back in the 19th century, Sherlock and John couldn\u2019t openly be together.\u201d And that\u2019s true, but what\u2019s at the heart of that sentiment is this one, \u201cArthur Conan Doyle couldn\u2019t have written them openly together, because the general public would assume he was encouraging homosexuality, perhaps was even homosexual himself, and that would have been dangerous.\u201d Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

In 1885, the British Parliament enacted section 11 of the\u00a0he\u00a0Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885<\/a>, known as the\u00a0Labouchere Amendment<\/a>\u00a0which prohibited\u00a0gross indecency<\/a>\u00a0between males. It thus became possible to prosecute homosexuals for engaging in sexual acts where buggery or attempted buggery<\/em> could not be proven. Note that they didn\u2019t have to actually catch you in the act, they just had to suspect that you did it. During this time period, many notable men were prosecuted with\u00a0disastrous\u00a0results; Lord Arthur\u00a0Chilton committed suicide after being implicated in Boulton and Park trial involving two transvestites and Oscar Wilde was sentences to prison and hard labour after being found guilty.<\/p>\n

Was there still a homosexuality culture in England at the time? Yes, it was around this time that the culture began to flourish, with clandestine gatherings preceding the opening of the first gay pub,\u00a0The Cave of the Golden Calf in 1912.\u00a0<\/em>There was even the beginnings of gay erotica and publishing, but it was still very much subversive and not opening distributed among the public.<\/p>\n

The opposite of who Arthur Conan Doyle was;\u00a0Sherlock Holmes<\/em> increased subscriptions to\u00a0The Strand<\/em> magazine by 30,000. While Oscar Wilde, if not embraced, accepted, the consequences of his actions, Arthur Conan Doyle was not in a position to do that. He received a knighthood in 1902, he was involved in political campaigns and other civic work throughout his lifetime, and he had 5 children to support. He was not in a position to risk what an accusation of buggery would bring.<\/p>\n

So, when you look at the situation, Arthur Conan Doyle was unable to go any farther than he had with Holmes and Watson in his original stories. Even if he wanted to. Even if he tried to fill it with as much subtext as possible, he would always have to be mindful of what would happen if he went to far.<\/p>\n

This is why this argument bothers me so much. Were Sherlock Holmes in John Watson explicitly in a romantic relationship in the original stories? No, and no one is arguing that they were. Are we intended to imply, with the clues that were safe to include given the environment at the time, that it\u2019s a possibility? That\u2019s up to you to decide. But demanding that the only way a relationship could be legitimate is if it had been clearly stated by Arthur Conan Doyle is frustrating because it\u2019s imposing today\u2019s standards on a time period where they do not fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the-navel-treatment: the-navel-treatment: The next time I see the \u201cit wasn\u2019t canon argument,\u201d I\u2019m going to run screaming at you with copies of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 and news articles detailing the treatment of convicted homosexuals in 19th Century England, and then continue screaming until you understand\u00a0exactly what would have happened to Arthur … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[922,261,22020,148,1810],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}