What we learn in the conversation with Janine in the hospital

 (Sherlock Meta by sylviatietjens)

Anonymous asked: Hey! IMO your blog is the best for johnlock discussion so I wanted to ask what you thought of the hospital convo between Jeanine and Sherlock! In that moment I came to realise that I think he's in fact gay and he realises it himself. I mean they talk about 'waiting til marriage' and she tells him he's 'that kind of guy' (she could only mean one thing loll) then mentions John! SH doesn't say anything of course but to me he's literally screaming it with his eyes! His expressions say it all if you ask me.

sylviatietjens:

Hello!

I think it’s very possible to take a reading that Sherlock is gay from the conversation in Janine in hospital. He looks visibly uncomfortable when she says “Just once would’ve been nice,” and of course then says “I was waiting until we got married,” to which she replied “That was never going to happen,” which is of course true - when asked by John what he was going to do after marrying Janine, Sherlock said he obviously didn’t plan to marry her. So he’d been avoiding sex with a beautiful woman - and he himself claimed to be “unaware of the beautiful” while looking at her, implying that he is aware that she is beautiful, yet isn’t attracted to her - even going as far as telling her that he “works nights” so that he can visit the drug den and further avoid having to sleep with her. Having a bath while John was in the flat was helpful, too - they’re British, there’s no way she’d initiate sex with him while someone else was in the flat.

Yet Steven Moffat has said that he’s not asexual and “has a past” and Benedict Cumberbatch has said that he “has a sexuality” (notice the ambiguous phrasing), and Mark Gatiss has claimed that he was not attracted to Irene other than intellectually and that “it doesn’t have to be something as mundane as a love story” (not that love and sex are synonymous, but I believe Sherlock to be neither bisexual nor biromantic) so why avoid sex with a woman he knows is beautiful in the knowledge that it would aid his plan unless his attractions lay elsewhere?

There’s also the fact that Sherlock has always been more perceptive to the attention of men than of women. In the beginning of A Study in Pink, Molly is quite obviously asking him out, yet he’s totally ignorant of that fact. He’s also ignorant of the obvious fact that her Christmas gift was for him, bemused by Irene and her overt sexuality (she flirts “at him, he never replies,” despite John insisting that “Sherlock always replies to everything" [he notably doesn’t reply to people presuming they’re a couple]), and shocked when, at the wedding, Janine says “But no sex, okay?” Yet he immediately presumes that John is asking him out in Angelo’s, immediately picks up on ‘Jim from IT’ being gay and interested in him, and doesn’t appear to be bemused by Moriarty’s overt sexuality (“Hello, sexy,”/”The flirting’s over, Sherlock, Daddy’s had enough now,”/”Daddy loves me the best!”/”They all want me. Suddenly, I’m Mr Sex,”/”You have to admit that’s sexier.”). Janine even said it herself: “I wish you weren’t… Whatever it is you are.” (“I know.”) ‘Whatever he is’ isn’t asexual - the writers and cast confirmed that. It isn’t ‘incapable of forming meaningful relationships’, either - just look at his best man’s speech.

[To clear up some confusion, I’d like to note that I didn’t mean that Janine was implying that Sherlock’s gay and just using weird phrasing, I meant that the writers were implying that Sherlock’s gay by having her presume that their relationship wouldn’t work out, and discounting two of the most obvious reasons why that might not be so, the third being homosexuality.]

Sherlock is also much more ‘stereotypically gay’ in series 3 than in series 1 or 2 - he is more flamboyant, more fashion-conscious, he loves dancing (which is a strongly allied with homosexuality in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, aka Mark Gatiss’ favourite film and one of the key influences on the writers) and appears to be using an increasing about of product in his hair, something which he himself equated with homosexuality in The Great Game. I ought to clarify here that I don’t think that these things can be taken as reliably indivative of sexuality in reality, but within a fictional narrative in which stereotypes and associations are utilised to make suggestions about a topic that is not discussed, they’re certainly notable.

Do I even have to mention ‘Happily Ever After’?

Food for thought, isn’t it?