gyzym:

Not linking to the impetus of this post it because I really try not to do that, and because the creator of the gifs I’ll be talking about clearly worked hard on them and this is not a post about hate or hating and I REALLY DO NOT WANT IT TO BE. This is me trying for discussing a thing; please do not attempt to track down the original poster and send them hate, and if you are reading this, original poster, PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT I AM NOT ANGRY AT YOU. I just want to talk about the way we interact with this particular thing as a fandom.

So. There is a post going around with gifs of various Sherlock characters. The gifs flip back and forth between two shots of each character, and put a word underneath—Moriarty’s words are “insane” and “mastermind,” for example. It’s a good post! I don’t agree with some of the words chosen, but the gifs are well done and, again, clearly a lot of effort put in. My kudos, etc. 

Thing is, the Sally Donovan words flip from “professional” to “bitch.” And…look, I’ve got complicated feelings about the word bitch, which can mostly be summarized to “I would like women to reclaim that word and use it as a positive (hot bitch in charge, etc), but when it is used in the negative it means ‘person who is bad and the reason they are bad is because they are a lady’ and that shit is RIGHT OUT.”  

I will be upfront with y’all: I don’t love Sally Donovan. I think she has a tendency towards being judgmental and abrasive; I think “professional” is actually not a great word to describe her, because we regularly see her offering verbal abuse to civilians assisting on her cases (at the behest of her boss, no less); I think she’s fairly close-minded, and it shows. She’s far from my favorite character. But! I don’t think she did anything wrong in doubting Sherlock in TRF—the situation was designed, by Moriarty, to cause that doubt, and she has always thought Sherlock was going to snap and kill someone eventually. And we don’t know why she thought that, guys—she’s a cop, so maybe she’s seen it happen before. Maybe she’s just got a less trusting nature than, for example, Lestrade’s, because it is actively insane of Lestrade to give Sherlock as much access as he does (and he does anyway because he’s ever so slightly mad and believes in the goodness of people, ilu Greg). Maybe, like so many women, she’s a survivor of violence or assault, and thus moves through the world with a wariness she wouldn’t have otherwise. Maybe she looks at Sherlock and sees a man who keeps human eyes in his microwave—and, I am sorry, god knows I love the show, god knows I love Sherlock, but I would have some serious misgivings about putting my trust in a man whose microwave I’d found thus occupied, and I like the idea of getting tattoos at each of my pulse points.

Sherlock is a show told primarily from John Watson’s point of view. It’s a great thing, that fact—a nod to the canon, of course, and keeping that tight focus is one of the things the show is fantastic at. We see the world as John sees it, or, occasionally, as Sherlock sees it, and they’re both more than a little bit crazy—but it is worth remembering, in forming opinions about these characters, that the way these two mad, brilliant men see the world is not the way the people around them see it. At all. 

Sally Donovan is a lot of things, but I, personally, don’t think she’s a terrible person for doubting Sherlock, and she’s certainly not a terrible person because she’s a woman. And that’s really what bitch means, when you boil down the way it’s used in the negative. When I call myself a bitch—and I do, proudly—I mean strong and outspoken and yeah that’s right I’ll take that word and make it mine. When someone else calls me a bitch? I know they mean “you suck for reasons derived from your womanhood.” And that shit is some bullshit. So let’s stop, yeah? You can feel however you like about Sally, but have those feels for reasons of character, not reasons of gender alignment. <3