{"id":235494,"date":"2013-12-28T02:51:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T02:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/12\/28\/female-reading-of-the-male-gaze-and-sherlock-2\/"},"modified":"2013-12-28T02:51:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T02:51:05","slug":"female-reading-of-the-male-gaze-and-sherlock-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2013\/12\/28\/female-reading-of-the-male-gaze-and-sherlock-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Reading of the Male Gaze, and Sherlock"},"content":{"rendered":"

acafanmom<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

221beemine<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Why the dismissal of women\u2019s readings of Sherlock bothers me so much<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Male showrunners and actors:<\/strong> They\u2019re just friends. Why are you reading sex into this?<\/p>\n

Female fans<\/strong>: They obviously want each other.<\/p>\n

Male showrunners and actors<\/strong>: No they don\u2019t. You\u2019re hysterical and oversexualized and deluded.<\/p>\n

Female fans<\/strong>: No we\u2019re not. It\u2019s OBVIOUS they desire each other.<\/p>\n

Male showrunners and actors<\/strong>: NO THEY\u2014<\/p>\n

Female fans<\/strong>: YES THEY\u2014<\/p>\n

[ad infinitum]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Film and television are visual mediums. The text comes from what we see, not just the script, and definitely not extra-text commentary. Sherlock<\/em> especially is a strikingly visual story that is all about looking.<\/p>\n

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Any woman with any sense of self-preservation spends her whole life learning to read the male gaze. The reason is not because women are constantly checking to make sure they are desirable (as many men like to think); the reason is because women have to. The consequences for not noticing when a male gaze equals \u201cdesire\u201d are very dangerous, and so obvious I don\u2019t even have to explain them. Any woman who walks through a parking lot at night, who has to spend her days avoiding a co-worker who sexually harrasses her but not enough to make it worth it to fight back, who deals with members of the public service who laugh at her when she is being threatened (I am thinking of that woman in San Francisco who tried to get a BART bus driver to call the police when a man was threatening to rape her and got ignored)\u2014any woman who LIVES ON THIS PLANET has to learn to be aware of the male gaze and interpret it for signs of arousal and\/or danger from a young age. This is SO MUCH BIGGER than \u201cwomen want romance\u201d or \u201cwomen want love\u201d or any of that ignorant shorthand for \u201cwomen aren\u2019t reading this show correctly.\u201d It is definitely bigger than Sherlock<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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If a man stood right in my personal space and stared into my eyes I would know how to interpret that. If a man licked his lips while staring at my face I would know how to interpret that. If a man belitted and chased off my romantic partners I would know how to interpret that. If a man asked me to reach into his jacket and pull out his phone<\/em> I would damn well know how to interpret that<\/em>. Any time I have tried to brush aside suspicions under these circumstances, I was proved right that I should have trusted my instincts, and I wound up in dangerous situations (luckily, nothing terrible resulted thanks to being able to escape, but the danger was real). If I\u2019m wrong, I\u2019m wrong, but at least I don\u2019t get locked in a basement in Cleveland for a decade. Women have to err on the side of caution. People are right when they say the sexual tension moments in Sherlock are brief, but that doesn\u2019t matter: if you\u2019re a woman you have to take even the briefest flashes into account. There is a reason we call these moments \u201ceyefucking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Sherlock<\/em> is all about the power of sight, of the gaze, specifically the male gaze. (There\u2019s a whole article in that, but I\u2019ll resist.) <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

We get Sherlock POV when he interprets a scene, with those subtitles and graphics; we get John POV for everything else (that\u2019s my reading, anyway; Watson is the narrator of the Sherlock Holmes tales, after all). There are only a few establishing shots\/omniscient narrator scenes that aren\u2019t from John or Sherlock\u2019s POV, e.g. the victims at the beginning of ASIP, or Moriarty texting in front of Big Ben in ASIB or in a cell in THOB. We briefly see Irene\u2019s POV as she looks at pictures of Sherlock (in that beautiful sequence where they look at pictures of each other), but that\u2019s about it. (I\u2019ve never been certain whether that dream sequence of Irene interpreting the \u201cbed scene\u201d was from her POV or Sherlock\u2019s or both.) I have hopes we\u2019ll see Molly\u2019s POV in TEH but of course I haven\u2019t seen it yet.<\/p>\n

The denial of the male showrunners of Sherlock<\/em> and the firm disagreement of the female fans just proves to me that even in the 21st century, men and women live in different worlds.<\/p>\n

\n

5 men<\/strong>: There\u2019s no sexual tension.<\/p>\n

Thousands of women<\/strong>: Yes there is.<\/p>\n

5 men<\/strong>: Clearly you\u2019re wrong!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t need this ship to be canon, it\u2019s not the differing opinions that bothers me. The writers are free to write whatever they want and I\u2019m on board. I just want some acknowledgement\u2014from the world at large\u2014that women\u2019s perspective on human interactions is just as valid as men\u2019s and doesn\u2019t come from wishful thinking<\/em>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Quite the opposite.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Bottom bit bolded, because THIS<\/em>. Fucking THIS<\/strong>, a thousand times THIS<\/strong>. It cannot be said strongly or loudly or often enough: we get so, so fucking tired of being told that we\u2019re delusional, when everything – everything<\/em> – is telling a different story than the ones TPTB think they\u2019re telling. <\/p>\n

Women are forever being told we\u2019re imagining it all – from PMS to actual hostility and danger to narrative romance, and everything in-between. Women are always<\/em>\u00a0\u2019imagining things\u2019, and men are always there to set us straight. Well, fuck that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

acafanmom: 221beemine: Why the dismissal of women\u2019s readings of Sherlock bothers me so much Male showrunners and actors: They\u2019re just friends. Why are you reading sex into this? Female fans: They obviously want each other. Male showrunners and actors: No they don\u2019t. You\u2019re hysterical and oversexualized and deluded. Female fans: No we\u2019re not. It\u2019s OBVIOUS … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Female Reading of the Male Gaze, and Sherlock”<\/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":[208,15,23901,4,3127],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235494"}],"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=235494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}