“Oh, have you had sex?”

 (Sherlock meta by notagarroter, addignisherlock and mirajani)

notagarroter:

So some people are reading this as Eurus deducing from Sherlock’s playing (of Irene Adler’s theme) that’s he’s had sex. Which is a very plausible reading.

But I think it can also be interpreted in the opposite way.

We (the viewers) have heard a lot about Sherlock “the virgin” who “wouldn’t know” about sex, so we think it’s self-evident that he’s virginal, and it would be surprising if he weren’t.

But Eurus hasn’t been around for all that. To her, he’s just a 40 year old man who has *not* been raised in an institution. It would be natural to assume he has had sex at some point. So quite possibly her deduction based on his playing is that he *hasn’t* had sex, and that’s why she asks the question.

addignisherlock:

That’s what I thought too tbh, the way she asked the question it’s just…. To me it sounds similar to when you ask a 20 year old “have you ever ridden a bike” as a more polite version than “have you never ridden a bike” (because this version contains negative word “never” and therefore seems more rude and condescending) coz you just sort of assume that everyone learnt to ride a bike during childhood and that not being able to ride a bike as an adult is generally perceived as embarrassing or incompetent. And I feel like the tone in which Eurus asked the question is similar to this, except it’s about sex instead of cycling.

mirajani:

Maybe she felt his playing lacked passion, the kind that could be released by expressing oneself sexually.