Heading out to case the promise land

Obviously, I had to read everything ever written about Sherlock last night, and I can accept a lot of the Irene Adler criticism, even if I don't necessarily agree with it all. But there's one strain of it that is beginning to really irritate me.

The idea that Irene falling for Sherlock and having her plans undone by it is itself sexist/a sign of weakness/typically reducing a woman to nothing but her emotions. If it's weakness for Irene, then it's weakness for Sherlock, too. I remember this being a thing in DW fandom, as well, especially around Rose at the end of the 4th season, and it annoyed me then, too. If John had fucked up his plan by having Sherlock's name as his passowrd, we'd never hear the end of the squeeing (and I'd be a very loud part of it); if Dean or Sam or Merlin or Arthur did what Rose did and found a way to defy the laws of the universe to get back to each other, we wouldn't be accusing them of having nothing else in their lives/revolving only around a man. For the most part, we'd adore it. It's possible for us to accept that a man can desperately love someone else, to the point of danger or stupidity, and still be strong and competent and awesome. Somehow, that seems to go out the window when it's a woman.

And really, all Irene did was make one mistake that tripped her up right at the end. Her initial goals weren't changed by whatever she felt for Sherlock. Her ruthlessness was hardly altered at all by them; she wasn't going to do anything differently for him. Compare that to Sherlock, who fucked the whole thing up from start to very-nearly-finish. I guess I can understand the frustration that Sherlock did inevitably beat her, but the show is Sherlock. Of course he's going to win in the end. You can argue that there should be a show where the Sherlock character is a woman, and she gets to win (and of course there should be), but that's an entirely different problem. In the context of this show, they both screwed up because they got emotionally involved. And the consequences of Irene's mistake were personally devastating, but the consequences of Sherlock's would've been globally catastrophic. If we're going to judge them for their failure here, it seems pretty clear to me that Sherlock comes off worse. But then, I don't really think we're supposed to judge either of them. We're supposed to think they're human.

And don't get me wrong, I'd love a woman who wasn't in an episode just to be a love interest, or who didn't need a man to save her. But in the books, Irene isn't a particularly independent, unconventional woman. She does change entirely by the end, because she finds someone to go off and marry. And even before that, her motives revolve around a man and what he did to her. At least in Sherlock, her motives are all about her own needs and wants, and by the end, she's a free agent and out of danger, which is pretty much exactly what she was after. I'm not saying you can't find fault with her portrayal in the show, or that you have to like it, but I don't see how it's a betrayal of what she should've been, or worse than what she was. And I certainly don't think that the final password slip-up indicates that women are weak or not intellectual or too emotional. (I do, otoh, think it was an incredibly stupid password.)

***

I had been doing very well with my daily writing, but I kinda fell off the wagon. I blame people! And wine! And Sherlock, of course. I'm just saying, I'm putting this here as a reminder that I have to get back on track tomorrow.