Sexism in SuperWhoLock-- Sherlock

Time for the final part of my Sexism in SuperWhoLock series!! Who else is dying for Sherlock season 4 to start filming?? I know I am, but today we're gonna take a look at the female characters in the show and how they're treated. Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Sally, and Irene are all the four main ones so far (there's also Mary, but I didn't get to talking about her because her main issue is the way the fans treat her). That's about the same amount as the male characters, but for some reason the only episode that passes the Bechdel test is A Scandal in Belgravia (at least I think), and that episode has issues of its own, but I'll get to that later. Probably because of Steven Moffat's attitude towards women.

Molly is so cute. I love her so much I can't even stand it. But she's constantly treated horribly by Sherlock and the writing in general. She is portrayed as weak just because she has feelings for Sherlock, but she continues to have a crush on him and do things for him and be submissive, even though he's pretty gross to her. Look, a harmful stereotype. A sweet, innocent, "weak" woman whose sole purpose in life is serve the man WHO IS ABUSIVE TO HER!! Sigh. The only time we were ever told of any part of her life outside of Sherlock was when she dated Jim, and we can only imagine how that went.

look at this beautiful loser <33
image courtesy Spylight

The best-treated female character on the show is probably Mrs. Hudson, but the problem with her is that her character isn't very well-developed. Yeah, we know she used to run a drug cartel with her husband and work as an exotic dancer, but her part is pretty small and most of what she does is just to enhance Sherlock's character development. The boys are pretty disrespectful of her, too, and she doesn't seem to enforce the fact that she doesn't like that. We almost got a little depth from her when she was keeping the information hidden from the guys who beat her up, but that ended up just being a scene to show that Sherlock actually can have empathy and a soft spot for a mother figure.

a small flicker of character development
image courtesy of Modify Lifestyle

Why does the entire Sherlock fanbase hate Sally Donovan? The world may never know. She honestly didn't do anything wrong, besides not liking Sherlock, which, in my opinion, is completely understandable. He's a jerk and he slut-shamed her within the first 20 minutes of the first episode. She also happens to be the only recurring character who's a person of color. Pretty much the only other one ever who wasn't written in a super racist way was Bainbridge in the Sign of Three (played by my bABY ALFIE ENOCH).

the one true queen
image courtesy Sherlock Wikia

Oh, Irene. How you fit perfectly with the male gaze. I'm sorry, but the Irene in Elementary is so much better, not to mention the fact that she's played by goddess Natalie Dormer. There are so many problems with Sherlock's rendition, the first being that she was canonically a LESBIAN until they HAD to throw in her falling in love with Sherlock, because, you know, every gay woman is just waiting for the right man to come along and straighten her out, right? Wrong. That's gross. She's also dressed in skimpy outfits the whole time probably just to appeal to the straight male viewers of the show. Thanks a lot for only thinking of your own kind, Moffat.

this is one of the few pictures I could find where she was actually wearing clothes
image courtesy KristinKoga

And that concludes the series!! I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like me to do anything else like this, tell me in the comments and I'll get right on it.