Sherlock and the aromantic erasure

[ARandomAro]

I was on a twitch chat when someone casually said that BBCs Sherlock was gay.. I know people ship Jon and Sherlock, which is fine. But Sherlock is also one of the few aromantic canon character that I know (It's written with all the words in the first paragraph of "A Scandal in Bohemia").

So I just replied playfully saying "me seeing this when sherlock is aroace untill proven otherwise 🤡". Just as a way to put this thought out there. And the person replied saying that he can be a gay asexual. Which again, nothing against this, specially when it comes to the BBC adaptation and not book Sherlock.

And yet... am I crazy or is just odd how someone can casually put the aromanticism part aside? Like, If I said that a gay character was bisexual that would not be acceptable. But just casually erasing the aro of the aroace is fine? 

I feel a better response would be - "oh in the books sure. But in the series he can be seen as a gay ace character"

 

Not sure if I'm making a big deal out of this or not.. 🤔  any thoughts?

[dewy]

I mean, to be completely honest, he's a fictional character. You have the right to see him however you want, and so do others. You also have the right to disagree on your interpretation as long as you're respectful of others. I see him as a gay aro dude though I prefer the source material and don't care for BBC Sherlock. I know other people see him differently, especially seeing as because of the times, Arthur Conan Doyle could not write him to be explicitly any type of queer. It's all implied. Every Sherlock is just another version of ACD Sherlock, who's not written to be any sexuality in particular. Once again though, I watched BBC Sherlock and don't care for it, this is just my opinion as a fan of Canon.

[Collie]

I'm not terribly familiar with BBC Sherlock. I saw the first episode years ago, that's about my extent of exposure. But yeah, people do tend to think "lack of interest in opposite sex.... must be gae". And yeah, that's a bit frustrating cuz it reminds that we are an afterthought at the very most.

[Ekaterina]

Agree. Cannot say about the BBC series since I am not familiar with it, but I'm aware that adaptations and fans tend to ignore the book character's aro tendencies. There isn't that many classical characters of this level of fame and love from readers who would be explicitly not interested in romance, so in my opinion it matters a lot. Yet fans  insist on shipping Holmes romantically either with Irene (who appeared in 1 - one - short story, but is constantly treated in fans' eyes as one of the central characters solely by virtue of being Potential Shipping Object, no other one-story character receives anything close to this much fan attention regardless of how interesting, relatable or admirable they are) or with Watson (because of the How Dare People Not In Love Care About Each Other So Much, even if one character - Holmes - literally said himself to be uninterested in romance and the other - Watson - has a canonical LI and these relationships are clearly very different type of relationship for him). 

Holmes is probably one of the best candidates to be the fictional emblem of aromanticism, and what do we get? 

Edited February 6 by Ekaterina