About Irene and Sherlock's sexual awakening

 (Sherlock Meta by Loudest Subtext In television)

anybannannie said:

Been re-reading your take on Irene. It just hit me over the head that we got a strong visual in A Scandal in Belgravia for her awakening Sherlock's sexual awareness. He disguises himself as a priest, someone who choses to live celibate in favour of his work. As Irene says, a disguise is always a self portrait. And within the 1st few minutes of meeting Sherlock, she literally strips him of that disguise (and his self-appointed celibacy) as she yanks out the priest collar and even bites down on it. Brilliant. :)

Loudest Subtext In television:

I view it a bit differently… I don’t really see Sherlock as having any kind of sexual awakening until his drunken deduction scene in The Sign of Three, because he doesn’t even know his sexual orientation when that scene begins. In A Scandal in Belgravia the idea that the priest disguise means Sherlock’s deliberately celibate is intentional I’m pretty sure, but I read all of A Scandal in Belgravia as Irene basically forcing sexual stuff on him and causing him distress and turning him off to sex. So she shows up naked without asking, aggressively takes his collar, literally drugs and beats him without his consent, then deduces to him while he’s helpless (when the show has a running subtext that deducing is analogous to sex for Sherlock) which combined with the drugging and beating is sort of like metaphorical rape,  then threatens to beat him until he begs for mercy, and then brings up sex again even when he’s clearly not interested (he’s visibly irritated when she asks, “Have you ever had anyone?”) by the fireplace and grabs his wrist, etc. Irene’s behavior is, to put it mildly, incredibly uncool.

It seems to me she made Sherlock think of sex in a very negative, manipulative, violent way (just like she’s responsible for his thinking of romance negatively in Mycroft’s office) and was responsible for reinforcing his continued burying of his sexual urges, not any kind of awakening.  That’s why Sherlock doesn’t suddenly start toying with relationships after interacting with her: she just reinforced all the awful things he already thought, and he went on acting like he always had.

That’s in opposition to John, who’s never pushed Sherlock at all. When they end up drunk by the fireplace on the stag night, Sherlock is really relaxed and happy, unlike how on-guard and calculating he was with Irene. And then John backs off when Sherlock doesn’t give any obvious positive signal to his advances, even though he didn’t really get a negative signal either. John was incredibly respectful, whereas Irene didn’t really care about Sherlock’s feelings at all and treated him like a puzzle she could solve through brute-force. I think that’s why we get the drunken deduction scene so quickly after the knee grope: Sherlock actually felt safe enough to subconsciously consider sex because John wasn’t a manipulative maniac about it like Irene was.