Teleen's Journal

I was going to cut this, but couldn't decide where, so scroll if you don't want a rant with mentions of misogyny, homophobia, and racism.

You'll notice that I used AND instead of VERSUS in my subject line because unlike what seems like most of the rest of the Sherlock Holmes-loving world, I like them both.

Shocking, I know.  Blasphemy!  I, a woman of thirty-six years and reasonable intelligence, can actually like two shows about the same character who have completely different approaches AT THE SAME TIME!

My sarcasm, it is showing.  Mostly because I'm more than a little irritated that someone actually blocked me on Facebook over this shit (a while ago, actually, this rant has been building for that time - I figured I should get it out before it boiled over).  For that, I think they are an asshat.  They were also an LJ friend and guess what?  I blocked them from this journal.  Because I can be online petty too.

For the record, it took me a few episodes to get into the groove of "Elementary."  I wasn't sure about having Joan instead of John (for probably a lot of the same misogynistic reasons as those who absolutely refuse to watch it, even if I didn't want to admit it) and was even less sure about Jonny Lee Miller's ability to play Sherlock.  Guess what?  He pulls it off.  He is not Benedict Cumberbatch, but he's not TRYING to be.  Miller is is own version of the character.

I started to compare them, but there is no comparison - they might as well be playing completely different roles.  Well, what do you know?  They ARE playing two different roles, neither one doing a "better" job at it than the other.  They each capture Sherlock Holmes in the modern world, they simply approach it very differently.  And I like them both.

Did you hear that?  I.  Like.  Them.  BOTH!

It bears repeating, because I don't feel like I should be forced to choose here.  There is no "side," no "right" or "wrong."  They're both good in their own way.  They each have strengths and weaknesses, neither of which do I wish to discuss at length, mostly because I've seen "Elementary" more recently and so right now I like it more.  When "Sherlock" comes back, I'll probably like it more for while I have it.  It's a matter of changing gears, not fucking RELIGIONS.

Also for the record, I don't give a flying fuck about CBS "not being true to the character" by moving him to New York and giving him an amazing woman partner.  Nor do I give a flying fuck about those who say that CBS "just wanted to cash in on the popularity of BBC's "Sherlock."  Um, yeah - that's what TV networks do.  And sorry boys and girls (I would say men and woman, but the people in this "debate" have shown themselves to be little more than silly children), but neither concept is anymore "true" to Conan Doyle's work than Robert Downey Jr.'s version is.

Fact: John and Sherlock may be your slash OTP, but in the original, Victorian-era canon, they were friends and Watson was married.  To a woman. 

Fact: in the BBC's "Sherlock," both John AND Sherlock have shown attraction to women.  That's not to say that they can't also love each other romantically (hello, bisexual poly woman here), but they are not shown as sexual towards each other.  If anything, Sherlock is shown as being more asexual, with the exception of Irene Adler.  There have been a lot of jokes about John and Watson getting or being together in "Sherlock" canon, but as others have pointed out far more eloquently than I, "bromances" and "winks to the camera" do not equal gay inclusion. 

So sorry slashers, it's not homophobia to turn Watson into a woman for a new TV show.  For "Sherlock" fan fiction, I can see the argument because writers are changing the canon gender of a character because they don't like the idea of two cis-men together. 

For an entirely new show, no, though I do see where you're arguing from.  Your argument is flawed, but I see it.

Fact: the backlash of misogyny and racism against Lucy Liu since "Elementary" came out has been disgusting in the extreme, especially since she is made of total awesome in the role.  Martin Freeman can kiss her beautiful ass, as well.  Don't fucking tell me he was joking.  It was unfunny, m'kay?

To be honest, all of this bullshit (along with the mods of horror at the most popular "Sherlock" LJ site) have kind of turned me off "Sherlock."  I'm not saying I won't watch it (though it's now rather in the category of "liking a problematic thing"), but I'm avoiding the fandom even more ardently since I got blocked on Facebook for telling someone I felt they were missing out* to summarily dismiss "Elementary," because they were "completely opposed to Watson being a woman."

Why?  There is no answer to that question that I've seen so far that isn't rooted in misogyny.  Somewhere.  Yes, Watson was canonically male.  But canonically, both Holmes and Watson lived over 100 years ago, so canon is pretty much out the window the moment writers take a modern take on it.

Vaginas are icky, I guess.  And heaven forbid a vagina come anywhere near beloved characters that have been redone and remade so many times I think that only "The Three Musketeers" have them beat for variety of productions.

Finally, to be perfectly clear, I'm not saying that anyone has to watch or like either show.  However, I am saying that it's possible to enjoy both without it being some epic battle over who is more awesome.  And I also think it's wrong to judge something without having watched a single fucking episode.  Now, there are those who say that one can judge something by its previews ("Battleship," anyone?), but when most of the negative press has more to do with casting decisions than actual acting critiques, I start to smell a misogynistic, racist rat.

*The person argued that I wasn't respecting their judgment by saying they were missing out.  They're right.  I wasn't.  And I'm not apologizing for it, especially since they blocked me on Facebook over it because they didn't like my telling them (fairly nicely, I thought) that they were full of shit. 

Inspired by more than one comment on the post that this post links to, I'm finally going to weigh in on the whole anti-PC, thought-police, this-word-has-another-meaning-and-no-one-can-own-a-word, I-don't have-to-change-simply-because-you're-offended school of thought.

I'm going to begin by saying that I'm guilty of using pretty much every word that is at issue at one point or another, some as recently as last year, so I'm not saying that I'm not in a glass house here. 

However.

For those who are against changing their language to remove certain words from their vocabularies because another person is offended by it, I ask the following question:

Who does it hurt? 

Seriously, who does it hurt to make the effort not to use words that others have found offensive?  I know that it's an effort to do so, so I guess someone could argue that it's hurting them by virtue of the fact that changing one's vocabulary and deleting certain words is hella difficult...  Well, I have to say that it's more difficult in the offline world, but online?  It's as easy as being careful of what one types.  I realize that for some, who type as quickly as they think, that could be a challenge, but seriously?  Who does it hurt?  Why is it such a big deal to just not be an asshat when someone asks you to do so?

( Cut for possible triggers and an incomplete list of incredibly offensive slurs that everyone should know not to use. Ever.  )And because I've been educating myself a bunch lately, here are a bunch of links that all say all of this a lot better than I just did.

101 Primer

sparkindarkness' entire journal.

Read all of that and then come back to discuss, if you wish, :).

ETA: Proof that not being an asshat is an ongoing battle: Weak is ableist.  Thank you to 51stcenturyfox  for letting me know, :).

ETA 2: My comment thread on the post that started all of this is here. 

ETA 3: Drama communities are probably not the best place to start, lol, but if it were not for them I never would have found most of this stuff out, which is why I mentioned them.  The best place to start is with the 101 Primer and go from there, :).

This post has now been edited because my essential message was being lost and I was doing more harm than good by defending my position on one phrase.  Most of the comments regarding that phrase have now been screened.  I'm not a PoC, so my feelings on that phrase don't matter whatsoever and continuing to argue about it only detracts from the essential point of what I was trying to say. 

I apologize for the drama.

For the record I am US-born, white, queer though I easily pass for both female and straight, and able-bodied.  I have no personal experience with physical, racial or ethnic discrimination and I apologize for speaking for those groups as if I were personally invested in those particular slurs not being used.

The areas in which I have personal experience and/or a personal investment include: feminism/sexim, sex work, body image/food, sexual freedom, BGLTQP rights/homophobia, bullying, child abuse, the US foster care system, the US health care system, PTSD, anxiety, depression and mental health.  

When I first began to suspect I had HFA, I contacted a high school acquaintance (now facebook friend) who actually studies brains and asked him about it.  His first response (in part)?  

You strike me as a very empathetic person. Your Facebook posts show that you have a keen sense of how others feel. (For example, think of how you feel about all this recent bullying news!). You probably don't have to "figure out" or "calculate" how others feel... you just empathize automatically. You also seem to be a person willing to try new things and can be social when you choose to be. If you were "autistic enough" to have anything to worry about, you would probably have been diagnosed by now. ASD folks tend to be noticeably weird. But then, there are also perfectly normal people who are weird. :)

I wrote back with my (very long list of) suspicions as to why I was feeling that way and he was very supportive and felt that since I was so high-functioning, I should only mess with a good thing if it was making me unhappy.  I felt fairly comforted by it, especially by his impression of me as having empathy for others, but recent events have forced me to realize that he was wrong.

I have empathy for certain people and situations.  If we agree (or mostly agree), I have empathy for you.  However, if you disagree with me, a lot of the times I am actually completely unable to see your POV.  At all. 

( Cut for epic! length, rambling and incoherence. Read at your own risk. )
There are no rules to human interaction, but I really wish there were some, :(.  I also wish that there were a way to predict how people would react in a given situation, but I know it's a forlorn hope.  

In summary, I'm stubborn, set in my ways and will defend my position to the death if you come at me in a way that makes me feel as though it's necessary, even if you honestly aren't attacking me, only my position.

However, if you give me a thoughtful, reasoned, CALM explanation of why and how the Earth goes around the Sun, I'll listen.  It might take me a while to reset that part of my brain to accept it, but I will listen.

Finally, if for whatever reason you feel that what I've said is so made of fail that you can't be respectful, please send me a PM and vent there, because if you do it publicly, it won't end well.  

Thanks for your time and attention.

That's what we all want to tell everyone who's ever been bullied.  It gets better.  At some point in your life, you'll look back and realize that those who hurt you were small-minded, stupid asshats who are probably unhappy with their lives now and who will never feel as good about themselves as you do now.

It's a beautiful sentiment and I've really loved seeing the outpouring of similar messages all over the internet. 

That said, I'm sorry.  I'm sorry to be the cynical, depressed voice that cuts through all of the love and says, "Hey, wait a second..." 

To someone who is being bullied, no amount of 'It will get better' from random strangers will necessarily help.  To someone who's in that dark place, they feel as though their pain is unique and nothing and no one could ever understand it, even if the person telling them has been in the exact same situation before.

Because the pain of someone else isn't mine.  What I went through and got through doesn't mean dick to someone who's still going through it right now.  All the, 'there's light at the end of the tunnel's' in the world don't make a difference to someone who's being systematically tortured every moment of every day.  

Again, it's a beautiful idea for people who aren't in that place any longer to reach back and try to pull someone forward with them, but speaking as someone who's both been in that place and had people tell me that it'll get better....  I was going to say that I can say that it might not help but then I realized - I'm speaking for those who are in that dark place.

I'm saying that my pain was comparable to theirs and because all those 'it gets betters' didn't help me, it won't help them.

I'm wrong. 

I'm depressed right now and it's clouding how I'm looking at the world, but not so much that I don't realize how wrong I am.  

Just because 'it gets better' didn't work and doesn't work for me, as a rule, doesn't mean that it won't work for someone else.  So if you have a chance to tell someone it'll get better, take it.

They might be lucky enough to be nothing like me, :).

I have an account over there.  Someone gave me an invite code a while ago and I thought it'd be good to have if I wanted to log in and comment on something.  The name there is the same as the name here and if you friend me over there, I'll friend you back.

That said, I'm pretty much never on Dreamwidth unless I'm linked there by someone else.  I had to struggle to remember my username over there the other day when someone friended me.

I also have no plans whatsoever to migrate for the simple reason that I've only recently gotten the hang of LJ, FFS (after ten years, thank you very much) and I really don't have the time to futz around with another platform right now.

Plus, I think that Dreamwidth is ugly.  The color scheme is hard on the eyes and I don't like looking at it.  While I know that I could probably customize it to make it less so, again, I don't have the time to futz around with it right now.

( Finally, and this is just me being a total bitch -  )

Moral of this whine?  I'll migrate to Dreamwidth when the pain in the ass of doing so is less than the pain in the ass that is LJ.