Stone Romancer, John Watson: 

Some thoughts on John’s Sexuality

 (Sherlock Meta by Ivy Blossom)

Ivy Blossom:

It seems to me that a man who, upon sensing that someone is making an assumption that his (male) flatmate is his boyfriend, would utter the phrase “I’m not gay!” is unlikely to comfortably and happily identify as bisexual.

No one uses the word “gay” in reference to John. Only he uses that word. People make assumptions about Sherlock being his boyfriend, but they aren’t telling him, in words, that they think he’s gay (though they clearly do, let’s be honest). If John were comfortably and happily bisexual, he would be accomplishing the bisexual erasure himself to respond to these assumptions with I’M NOT GAY. Because no one said he was. They only express the assumption that he’s hooked up with Sherlock. A bisexual man is not suddenly gay if he hooks up with his male flatmate. So it would make no sense for a happily and comfortably bisexual man to respond with “I’m not gay!”.

Phrases that are entirely ambiguous and perfectly natural to utter in these circumstances: “I’m not his date!” “We’re not a couple!” “He’s not my boyfriend!” Those kinds of statements tell you nothing about John’s sexual identity. If he had always responded with the more logical, “we’re just friends!” or even, as would have been entirely apt in ep 1, “we just met!”, the comfortably, happily bisexual John argument would be unassailable. But he responds with “I’m not gay!” too frequently.

John must consider himself a straight man, which I think is the easiest and most natural reading of his responses.

Identity, however, is a funny thing.

Sometimes people get a bit upset about the fine lines and shading around identity politics. There is an idea that your sexual identity is something you’re landed with, like your body type or height. As if it’s scientific, and you have to do the work of quantifying your desires to determine what your identity is. Colour by numbers! Take this quiz to find out your sexual identity! No. Social science this is not.

If you consider yourself a gay person, and you’re really at peace with that identity and it fits, but every once in a blue moon you find a person of the opposite sex attractive, you aren’t contractually obligated to now redefine yourself as bisexual (or pansexual). People on the outside of your head might want to do that, or tell you you’re obviously this or that, but you aren’t actually required to take their opinions on board. Identity is a very personal and complicated thing. it’s more about working out to what general identity you feel you can cleave rather than calculating the odds and counting tick marks in categories.

In short: John can consider himself a straight man and still feel an emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction to the occasional man. It happens. He may not have entirely come to terms with it. It’s possible that his identity in flux. It may be that he’s aware of that flux and is deeply uncomfortable with it (that’s very common: identity shifting is painful.)

In series three they threw an interesting wrench in the works with Major Sholto. John must have admired him very much, and they appear to have had an intense friendship that ended. At first I struggled to see it as a consummated relationship, mostly because of how admiring they both still were of each other. I mean, who invites an ex to their wedding? But then I remembered: these people do. Mary invited her ex to the wedding. So maybe John did too. Apparently not everyone has a scorched earth policy when it comes to exes. (WHO KNEW?)

I was surprised that they chose to include another man with whom John has has this kind relationship. I had thought Sherlock was the first and only. (Obviously so did Sherlock.) Based (it seems) exclusively on Sherlock’s best man speech, Sholto recognizes that Sherlock is John current almost-but-not-quite, and sees himself in Sherlock. So there are at least two men who have been this close to John. Maybe they’re just the most recent two.

Did John have a sexual relationship with Major Sholto? It’s hard to tell. Possibly. Possibly not. If his relationship with Sherlock is the current model of the kind of intense relationships John has with men, it’s as close to a romantic relationship as you can reasonably get while still straddling the friendship line for plausible deniability.

Since there’s now a pattern, it’s clear that John must to go in foralmost-but-not-quite romantic relationships with men he admires. If they have never (or rarely) become sexual, it’s possible that John classifies these relationships as intense friendships (or possibly as unrequited love) and is touchy about the possibility that they might have become sexual. He sees himself as a straight man, and doesn’t let these intense relationships cloud his sense of his sexual identity. But he might be aware that they could, and they might yet do so. Which might also make him touchy about it. Maybe it’s an unresolved issue for him. I wonder if he raised it with Ella. I bet he didn’t.

The fact that Sherlock’s not the first suggests that John knows what he’s doing on some level. He is romancing this particular stone. Maybe Sholto is just like Sherlock: maybe they both consider themselves sexually off-limits and therefore safe and open for John to engage in these kinds of almost-but-not-quite relationships. Maybe he likes the challenge. Maybe he likes the safety of the knowledge that it’s never going to lead anywhere, and the dangerous possibility that it might. Skirting the line like a pro.

I don’t think John identifies himself as bisexual thus far, which I think makes these almost-but-not-quite relationships even more interesting, and John a more dangerous figure. Doe he know what he’s doing? Does he understand that he’s leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him? We see two of them in series three. (Doesn’t Sholto look broken hearted to you, still drawn to please John?) It looks as if John managed to emotionally skewer both of them. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s doing it.

It’s certainly a kind of cruelty to ask your most recent almost-but-not-quite boyfriend to be your best man. And in their last look at each other at the wedding, it seems as if John may suddenly understand that.

Three-continents Watson, indeed.

shezzacurlyfu asked:

I just read your 'Stone Romancer' and I like your argument especially the one which says John can't be labelled bisexual just because he's got the fancies for this one guy. Contrary to popular belief, I find the Sholto/John relationship absurd. I mean, soldiers get close in war zones where there's no family, so maybe Sholto and John were close in that sense. As to 'neither of us where the first' and Sherlock-Sholto comparison can imply a spiritual/psychological connection. ~~

Ivy Blossom:

Okay: some thoughts below on what I already said about John and his sexuality, and on the plausibility of John/Sholto.

To be clear, when I wrote about John’s sexuality, I didn’t say, and certainly didn’t mean to imply, that John can’t be bisexual because he only fancies one man. I said I don’t think we can assume it’s a label he happily embraces, identifies with, and uses in reference to himself with other people.

I think it’s very much arguable that by the end of series three John has been romantically, emotionally, and sexually attracted to women, and to at least one, more probably two, men. Objectively, because there are two genders at play there, “bisexual” would be a correct classification. It’s just that sexuality is not a classification issue, it’s an identity issue.

You shouldn’t impose an identity on a person, but John Watson is a fictional character, so we’re allowed to impose labels on him. I think he is bisexual, personally. I just don’t think it’s an identity he embraces at this point in the story. Though I think he was close to embracing it after Irene explains to him how he and Sherlock are a couple regardless,but that was a long time ago now. One little jump shatters a lot of things.

I think John would drop everyone and everything for a romantic/emotional/sexual shot with Sherlock, and I think he knows he would, even though he probably think it’s an epically bad idea (John accepts that Sherlock is a sociopath, after all). But he knows (or thinks he knows) that it’s never going to happen (and possibly he’s right). So it seems to me that John’s shoved the reality of that desire to the back of his mind and put the big, pretty THIS IS MY EXCEPTION, WE’RE ALL ALLOWED EXCEPTIONS, SHUT UP, LEAVE ME ALONE OKAY frame around it rather than allowing it to challenge his self-perception as a straight man. Which, to me, helps explain the tension he feels and acts upon when people assuming he and Sherlock are a couple.

The post in question is just me trying to argue that I don’t think John thinks of himself as bisexual, not that he isn’t objectively or quantifiably bisexual in his desires. Just to be clear. Because that’s clear as mud, isn’t it? Yes? Good!

Now, about Sholto: well, I think absurd is a pretty harsh word. I don’t think it’s absurd to posit a John/Sholto romantic/sexual relationship, even though I tend not to take that position.

Subtextual matter is always arguable rather than simply true, leaving everyone to decide what interpretation they want to run with. The thing with subtext, though, is that you aren’t going to be right about it. You can only have a plausible position. Therefore, plausible positions that aren’t the ones you take aren’t absurd, they’re just positions you’re not taking. If you meant a John/Sholto relationship is implausible instead of absurd, well, I don’t know. I would argue that it is indeed plausible.

They set Sholto up as the Sherlock before Sherlock, not just with Mary’s comment, but with Sholto’s to Sherlock. They both love John. If you think that Sherlock is in love with John, then by extension, you have to accept that Sholto is (or was?) as well. I’m in that camp, personally. John has not initiated a physical relationship with Sherlock, so I don’t think he initiated one with Sholto. I think we’re meant to understand their relationships as entirely parallel to this point.

Mary knows Sholto is incredibly important to John, and John never mentions him to Sherlock. What shall we make of that?

Sherlock tends to tune out anything he doesn’t feel like listening to, so it’s possible that John did tell him and Sherlock just opted to ignore him. (If that were the case, we might have seen a montage of John talking about Sholto and Sherlock ignoring him.)

Or, maybe John kept mum about Sholto because it would shine too much light on how John feels about Sherlock, which we know he isn’t all that keen on opening up about. This would be especially true if he had a sexual relationship with Sholto, don’t you think? Given that one of the first conversations they have is about how Sherlock isn’t interested in a sexual relationship with John? Maybe John decided not to make it apparent that he has had sexual relationships with men he deeply admires before now.

The question of what John’s relationship with Sholto was like is an entirely open question, because John’s relationship with Sherlock is also an open question, and the two are in tandem. Some would argue that neither are open questions, of course. They’re just best friends! But John was not troubled by telling his therapist that Sherlock was his best friend. There were other things he felt for Sherlock that he refused to say to her, and didn’t say at Sherlock’s grave, and never says to Sherlock’s face. Whatever that is is up to us to decide at this point. We can assume, whatever it is John didn’t tell Sherlock and didn’t tell his therapist, the same was probably also true of Sholto.

Fortunately, all those open questions let us run wild with theories, and many of them are reasonable and plausible. Including, I would argue, John/Sholto.