Asexuality in Sherlock

Well put. I like many different flavors of Sherlock, in this and other renditions. But I'm especially partial to ace!Sherlock a la BBC Sherlock, because episode 1 did such a fine job of supporting that and there's very little else in the way of ace heroes. I think we need characters who can prioritize something other than "desperate for a shag."

You're flying through time and space in a phone booth and all you can think about is sex? You! Out of the genre pool, now! The romance hot tub is over there.

>> Not only is the "asexuals are boring" thing bullshit <<

Well, yes. Though to be fair, many asexuals find sexual stuff boring.

>>I can think of at least one scenario in which Sherlock being a romantic asexual would be MORE interesting. Imagine he fell in love with someone who was sexual. If he was just "abstaining", he could just decide to have sex--problem solved. But if he doesn't like or want sex, that creates an issue that needs to be dealt with.<<

That does seem to be a common experience, mainly for romantic asexuals, but sometimes even the aromantic folks find someone they really like ... who wants to have sex, which is awkward. Which is a story.

>> Which of those two scenarios sounds more interesting to you? <<

Both as a writer and a reader, I tend to be attracted to stories that haven't already been done to death. Finding something new to say about sexual relationships is hard, because it's an overwhelmingly popular topic. But asexual relationships, sheesh, people haven't even finished naming the kinds yet, let alone mapped out the common and uncommon variations. There's a lot of potential to get in there and tell NEW stories ... to an audience that wants something other than two bodies humping on a bed and is therefore bored and annoyed with a majority of mainstream media. So it's a low-competition as well as high-potential field. Writer candy. That's one reason I've been writing more about asexual characters recently, though I've had some all along.

>>I've long had a problem with Steven Moffat's sexism and his various attitudes towards non-normative sexuality (don't get me started on his recent spate of offensive tweets about bisexuality)<<

Now you've got me wondering. And tapping my cluehammer against my palm.

>>The idea that asexual people can't generate conflict or tension or hell, even sexual tension (if they're libidoist asexual, for example, or simply an ace person who has sex because they enjoy sensations of physical arousal sans sexual attraction) is just ignorant and harmful and perpetuates this idea that ace people deserve to be othered or invisibilised in the media.<<

Yeah, two minutes on any asexual forum or blog will turn up a whole bunch of situations where aces encounter conflict and/or sexual tension. There really needs to be an article on this, listing common experiences and conflicts, though I don't know if I'm the best person to write it.

>> Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. <<

*blink* That is the opposite of what I have observed. Men tend to really want sex. Women may or may not enjoy it (perhaps because not all men know what to do with a clitoris) and crave it. A good description I've found is that men use relationships to get sex, while women use sex to get relationships. Though none of that is absolute.

>>This was discussed in a panel at Wiscon and we decided anyone who thought that there can't be any tension with an asexual character wasn't a very imaginative writer.<<

... and doesn't know much about asexuality or asexual people, because it only takes a glance to find the conversations about life challenges due to sexual disinterest.

The Woman is in season 2, which I have not yet seen, but my parents are planning to pick up the DVDs for us.

>> Moffat makes a decent point that stories and characters need tension, but his point falls apart at the assumption that only abstaining from sex to concentrate on work creates tension. <<

One classic set is:
* man against man
* man against nature
* man against himself

There are very many different types of conflict. A story is just what happens when somebody wants something and it isn't within easy reach.

>> Being asexual in a world that 1) doesn't think you exist and 2) if it does admit you exist, can't start to begin to understand anything about you (QED Steven Moffat) is plenty tension-generating, as Sherlock shows quite well.<<

I agree. I loved that initial scene in the diner with John trying to figure out Sherlock's orientation.