A Twist of Things to Come

I recently read a lovely Gen Case!Fic in the Sherlock fandom. It's called Rigging Screws, Size 1 3/8 inch, Galvanized. It's just over 15,000 words long, and is told almost entirely from the POV of an older woman, who is convinced her husband has committed murder but doesn't trust the police because her husband convinced them that she was hysterical when she tried to report him for domestic abuse. It's fast-paced, with a good character development and is very tightly plotted. It also has a LOT of nifty sailing/yachting terms in it that flew right past me but sounded nice. *g*

In the last post I said this fic blew my head wide open. Obviously, I did not mean that literally. I should also probably explain that it didn't do it alone.

I re-wrote a chapter this week that made my protag very vulnerable, but it also gave her more agency. I'd had her ready to fight people who were attacking her, it was a bit Buffy-ish. For some reason, having my character get in a physical fight was easier for me emotionally than having her think. (It's funny because I'm definitely a think first kind of girl in real life. Maybe that's why having her be tougher was easier, now that I think of it. It's hard to reveal yourself, even in fiction, sometimes.)

It affected my mood. I was suddenly taking all the slights and injustices of women everywhere very, very personally. Not in a productive way. In an emotional way. I know that some people are emotional Einsteins, and use emotion to fuel productivity. I'm not. I'm the sort of person who uses thinking to evaluate and motivate rather than feelings. When I have negative feelings overwhelming my thinking box, it's like going through life wearing boxing gloves and mostly NOT boxing.

( Here's where I explain the metaphor in concrete terms by describing the things I couldn't deal with well because I was feeling so damn angry. )

Then, Nalo Hopkinson (who rocks REALLY HARD) retweeted this link: http://anytimeyoga.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/i-wouldnt-do-anything-differently/ Go read it. I'll wait.

( Click here when you're done, if you're still with me. May be triggery. )

Suddenly my feelings turned to harmless snark and I could think again. I maybe wondered why it hurt so much when people were dismissive to women, but I shrugged it off and read a nice juicy Case!Fic in bed.

The fic itself was well-written enough that I suspect the author (AJHall) may write professionally. If not, s/he could. It's not uber-copy-edited but still better than stuff that has seen print. Fast-paced, perfect characterization, and a surprisingly unsentimental look at a very privileged woman who is still almost entirely without resource. Just wonderful!

I read the comments when I really like a fic, to see if there is interesting discussion or just squeeful praise. (I suspect that AJHall is something of a BNF, if not a working writer who pops off fanfiction for fun/as gifts, because there were a LOT of them.) Someone had tagged the story as "Mary Sue" somewhere, and the author referred to this as a misogynist slur in the comments. I thought, "Well, 'Mary Sue' (as I have come to understand the term) doesn't apply here, but I didn't know it was misogynistic." I suppose it is used as a dismissive term in fanfiction. This character had a brain, but she wasn't some idealized person that the characters fell in love with or what have you. I totally understood taking it as an insult.

In any case, further down the comments, the author made a convincing case for Sherlock Holmes not being a misogynist despite Dr. Watson referring to him as one:

But the other thing that characterises the ACD incarnation is what you can only describe as Holmes's female referrals network; it's a sort of Victorian Linked In that actually works. Every other story some woman shows up on his doorstep explaining that she's been referred to him by some other woman to whose help he came "in her direst need" and would he mind doing the same for her, please? And, usually, the "help" he provides is help against the traditional male authority figures whom Victorian conventions suggest women should submit themselves to; he helps women with respect to their husbands, fiances, fathers, step-fathers and harassing employers. And in at least three occasions when it's the man who calls him in, he ends up siding with the woman in the case (Scandal in Bohemia, Noble Batchelor, Sussex Vampire) or making some extremely telling remarks to the chap about his moral character viz a viz the women in his life (Abbey Grange, Thor Bridge).

I've no idea why Watson keeps promoting this idea of Holmes the misogynist given all of the above.

To which someone responded:

My guess is that at least half of Holmes' gibes are not so much at women-in-general as at the fact that leisure-class Victorian women were taught to be fundamentally dishonest in order to make everything gracious and at the people who buy into that (especially as it makes more work that isn't even interesting); and that Watson is either misunderstanding them (particularly in the early days) or deliberately playing them up to try to keep his friend from getting the reputation of a dangerous radical, as it would limit the sorts of cases offered.

The author also linked to this story by ACDoyle (but not one with Sherlock) which also supposedly skewers the patriarchy. (I haven't read it yet.)

That seems a respectable case for the argument that Sherlock Holmes is not a misogynist, and I think that, as an asexual (or gay man, depending on the reader, I suppose) he would be even less interested in women who lived up to societal expectations of vapidity than he was in garden variety criminals.

Being a proverbial "fly on the wall" to this discussion brought home to me that I am unfamiliar/uncomfortable with a lot of the vocabulary used in feminist/women's studies discussion. Not that I didn't understand them, just that I suspected they had additional meaning for the people using them than they have for me. That is how the story got my wheels turning about the context of my anger at the world in general during a vulnerable time.

( So I'm willing to concede that Sherlock Holmes, as originally written, may not be as misogynistic as the author claimed. But why do I say that *I* am a misogynist? )

This is kind of serendipitous, too, since cafenowhere just posted about a very much related topic -- Secrets, and the stress that is caused from believing/wanting two different things. Also about how your subconscious sends you messages. :D

So maybe we're BOTH on the verge of some big breakthrough. For now, I'll just keep up the mantra, "Don't feed the Trogs." Even the one inside my fluffy little female head. :P