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meetinginsamarra · 7 hours

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Why Sherlock isn’t really sexually oblivious

Sherlock is considered by the vast majority of fans as a sexually oblivious person. But is he, really? I always believed quite the opposite, so I’ll try to explain my viewpoint. Let’s remember the dinner scene in A Study in Pink:

John: People don’t have arch-enemies.

Sherlock: I’m sorry?

J: In real life. There are no arch-enemies in real life. Doesn’t happen.

S: Doesn’t it? Sounds a bit dull.

J: So who did I meet?

S: What do real people have, then, in their ‘‘real lives’’?

J: Friends? People they know, people they like, people they don’t like. Girlfriends, boyfriends …

S: Yes, well, as I was saying – dull.

J: You don’t have a girlfriend then.

S: Girlfriend? No, not really my area.

(Source: timelordemort)

John doesn’t seem to pay much attention at first, but then he starts thinking that the phrase “not really my area” may have a very specific meaning.

J: Oh, right. Do you have a boyfriend?

(Source: pondmelody)

Sherlock turns to look sharply at John.

J: (thinks Sherlock believes he’s judging him) …Which is fine by the way.

S: I know it’s fine.

J: (smiles reassuringly) So you have a boyfriend…?

S: No. (”Why do you insist on asking?”)

Sherlock keeps looking at him sharply.

J: Right, okay! (”Relax, why do you stiffen up?”)

John licks his lips. Sherlock narrows his eyes.

J: You’re unattached. Like me. Fine. Good.

For John, this conversation has come to an end. After one last suspicious glare, Sherlock looks away. However, obviously his mind isn’t on the murderer. He takes a breath and turns to John again.

S: John, um… I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered by your interest, I’m really not looking for any…

J: (only now he understands why Sherlock was looking at him oddly) No…no.. (he nearly chokes) I’m not asking… no… I’m just saying, it’s all fine.

S: (unconvinced) Good. Thank you.

J: (”What the hell did just happen?”)

(Source: http://www.allkpop.com/forums/profile/becci)

This is the definition of a honest WTF moment.

Now, the most popular opinion is that John made an effort to hit on Sherlock and after Sherlock rejected him he decided to never bring it up again and became extremely heteronormative as an act of self-assurance.

In my opinion, this is not what happens here. John doesn’t try to hit on Sherlock. He just chats in a friendly manner, trying to learn more about his mysterious new flatmate. However, when Sherlock responds that ‘a girlfriend is not his area”, it’s absolutely normal and expected that John thinks Sherlock is probably homosexual, taking into consideration everything he’s heard that day. Mrs Hudson, Donovan and Mycroft have already implied that these two might be a couple, but none of them knows anything about John’s personal life - they do know about Sherlock’s life though, don’t they? If all of Sherlock’s acquaintances supposed so quickly that Sherlock and John are a couple, then Sherlock must be gay. It’s the perfectly logical conclusion and Sherock actually underpins it with his reactions. Then John tries to reassure Sherlock that he is open-minded (after all his own sister is a lesbian). Sherlock misunderstands John’s intentions (or perhaps not?).

Everyone analyzes John’s not gay - gay flirting, but in fact there isn’t much in John’s actions. The curious case here is Sherlock.

Sherlock stops responding casually when John asks him if he has a boyfriend. His reaction, though, is very interesting. Let’s see it again.

What does he look like? Well, most definitely surprised. But is he unpleasantly surprised or irritated like John thinks? According to the following gif…

(Source: sherlockbbcgifs)

It’s not really the words, it’s the look. Sherlock becomes passive, stops being talkative and looks at John - uhm what’s the word? Angrily? No. Defensively? Hmm not sure… Examiningly? Yeah, probably… Intensely? Closer…

EXPECTANTLY

Yep, that’s the word. Sherlock is surprised at first, because he didn’t deduce John is gay (and he was right because John isn’t). But then he looks as if he expects from John to reveal his true intentions, which is something that John doesn’t do because he has no such intentions (keep reading, I’m a Johnlocker).

But John makes two mistakes:

He licks his lips.

He says that he is single as well.

These two things convince Sherlock that John tries to flirt with him. While the first needs some further examination, the second isn’t flirting. It’s just a simple declaration. Poor John tries desperately to make Sherlock comfortable and makes it even worse by telling him that they are in the same situation. After some thought, Sherlock then decides to speak openly and reject him. John denies that he had any romantic / sexual intentions and then an unconvinced Sherlock…

…looks away relieved? No. Maybe calmer but definitely not relieved.

Now, remember, Sherlock never again acted like that in other flirts. People consider Sherlock sexually oblivious, but whatever he is, that’s not oblivious. He predicted Jim would hit on him, before the latter even closed the door of the laboratory.

#Ohhh shit he’s gay #he came for me #john is right behind me #I must ignore this guy completely

Sherlock is completely rude towards Jim (sometimes even Jim needs some understanding okay?) and this is not because Jim is a human being and Sherlock despises human beings. I stand by the opinion that Sherlock may be somewhat socially awkward, but he’s not hostile to people he just met for no reason! So, Sherlock behaves so terribly in front of Jim, because he realizes that Jim is attracted to him and plays with Molly’s heart. And most importantly, John is in the room, so Sherlock must look as disinterested as possible.

Also, he immediately understood Kitty Riley’s sexual approach was fake. He is the only one who suspects Irene Adler is in love with him from the very beginning, you can read this analysis (”Why was Sherlock so emotional in the last scene with Irene?”) for more on this topic. And look at his face when Molly refreshes her lipstick:

People laugh at how oblivious he is and how he doesn’t understand that Molly just asked him out. And I’m looking at him and I only see suspicion. It’s as if he thinks “Shit, she‘s about to hit on me. How do I escape from that?” Seriously, that’s his face when Molly simply says she refreshed her lipstick:

Then, when Molly asks if he’d like to have coffee, Sherlock takes advantage of her poorly expressed question and quickly rushes out of the room before she has a chance to tell him bringing him coffee was not what she meant.

In TBB Sherlock intentionally compliments Molly’s looks to make her allow him to see the corpses. Sherlock is aware of his sexual attractiveness and uses it to his advantage more than once.

So Sherlock is not oblivious as we usually think. It’s not that he can’t recognise a sexual approach - he can, but he usually chooses to ignore it.

But that’s not what he does with John. In fact, he does exactly the opposite. If he meant he was asexual, he would say that a boyfriend isn’t his area either and everything would end there. But he didn’t say that. He clearly waited passively for John to make a move and when John didn’t, he rejected him in advance, because that’s what he does, that’s how he feels safe.

So, Sherlock didn’t reject John because he wasn’t interested in him. He rejected him because he believes that’s what he must do in order to protect himself from “destructive love”. He doesn’t want to fall for John, but he falls anyway. In other words, if John actually did hit on him that day and his flirting was daring, Sherlock would probably not have the discipline to resist.

So what I mean here is that Sherlock is gay and interested in John, but John is clearly disinterested in him? Nope!

There is this excellent argument that when the most observant man in the world thinks you’re flirting with him, then you probably are. Fair enough.

But I said that John’s words didn’t really hide some romantic interest.

Once again, it’s not the words but the unconscious reactions - the lip licking, the reassuring smile, the effort to make Sherlock feel more comfortable and explain, when clearly Sherlock isn’t very keen to speak about these issues. The really hard effort to play cool. Just to name a few. John thinks he just chats, but his subconscious betrays him in front of Sherlock. John hasn’t realized he’s interested in Sherlock yet. Some claim that John is a bisexual who, after being rejected, started being extremely heteronormative, but this is not the case.

When they left the restaurant to chase the taxi, John didn’t care being rejected by Sherlock, because he didn’t realize he had such feelings for him yet. Therefore he doesn’t act in a heteronormative way in the rest of the episode. In the next scenes John is more delighted than ever and he literally gives no fuck about what Sherlock just said. Remember what followed:

This.

That’s something not-gay-John-Watson wouldn’t do as easily in The Reichenbach Fall. He still doesn’t think about it when he touches Sherlock. However…notice the way Sherlock already looks at him.

And then this mutual mastur… errrr… enthusiasm.

And then this, whatever you want to call it.

(Source: onetrueharem)

This actually happened in front of a dozen of people. And we know that John has an issue with what people think. But we don’t see him acting heteronormatively here. He doesn’t care, because he doesn’t realize that what he does isn’t quite expected of two straight guys who just met. (And this is probably the last time he doesn’t realize it.)

Ironically, Sherlock knows what John feels for him before John himself, because he deduces what he feels by observing his reactions, movements and decisions just like he does with all other people! So there you go, John Watson is the oblivious one of the two. In his forty(?) years of living, John Watson has never experienced something that strong and undeniable, so it ‘ll take him a while to understand what is really going on here. Sherlock never was sexually oblivious and will never be. On the contrary, he’s quite quick on these matters, especially when it comes to men. John will start realizing that something doesn’t feel quite right probably at the end of the episode. When he kills for this goddamn guy without a second thought. Don’t worry, John Watson won’t be oblivious for long. Heteronormativity says hello in the Blind Banker.

#sherlock #metapost

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