Why Moffat and Gatiss are so adamant about keeping John and Sherlock not gay

 (By violethuntress)

reader1895:

Hello. I liked your analysis on BBC Sherlock. I was wondering do you know why Moffat and Gatiss are so adamant about keeping John and Sherlock not gay? I mean Gatiss is gay himself, so I don't think either of them they have deep seated homphobia. Is it the money and concern over international distribution? This always puzzled me. They said they would respect Conan Doyle but they've added plot that clearly deviate from canon (like making Mary assassin, adding Eurus.) Love to hear ur thoughts!

violethuntress:

Hi! Thanks for you question. I’m going to try to answer, though I think it’s mostly just speculation on my part, and also based I’ve seen other very smart fans write throughout the years.

I’m of the same generation of Moffat and Gatiss (they’re a little older than I am), and here’s what I know about straight and gay men of my generation (Gen X). These are going to be huge generalizations, and they totally completely and utterly do not apply to everyone:

* mostly they don’t believe bisexuality exists, except maybe for some women, because women are like that (!)
* being gay is fine (”not that there’s anything wrong with that!”), they just like to know upfront whether a dude is gay or straight
* straight men are still threatened by gay (male) things or things that might seem gay (probably because it might indicate that their sexuality is more fluid than they’d like to believe, but shhh I didn’t say that)
* they made or were subject to horrible homophobic jokes when they were kids in the 70s and 80s and that’s become a real part of their internalized selves

My sense is that if Moffat and Gatiss were really going to just go for a m/m interpretation of ACD (”not that there’s anything wrong with that!”) it would have been signalled upfront in Series 1 as a kind of warning label for straight men of a certain age who would want to nope out right from the start. They would see this as just being fair ( = internalized homophobia). Once S1 ended with John dating women and no overt mention of Sherlock liking men I knew that they weren’t going to go the full m/m route.

Since then, I’ve been surprised by some of the homoerotic and homoromantic moments they’ve actually included in the show, from so much in TRF to the knee grope. I would imagine they see this as “just good fun,” the way innuendo is played in a lot of British media (see: Carry On films)–but that never bears fruit. (Is this queerbaiting? You be the judge.) I also think it dawned on them some time around S3 that lots of (predominantly female) fans were taking their playful innuendo (too?) seriously, and that they’d better cut it out. Which they mostly did.

I think media is changing rapidly. While women have been surprise-revealed to be gay or bi in tv shows for a while now (often for male-gaze reasons, sometimes for representation / inclusivity), I watch (and loooove) “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and they did a similar surprise-reveal (Gay / Bi) for men–the first time I’d ever seen it done, tbh. The “warning: gay men ahead” idea is quickly going out of fashion (thank god). But this is a new thing. Maybe Mofftiss will catch up; maybe if there’s a Sherlock Christmas Special in 2024, things will have changed enough for them to go, fuck it, let’s have them get married. I kind of hope so. But being Not Gay unless Clearly Stated Otherwise is where I think things were when Sherlock started, and now, unfortunately, they’re sticking with it.