A Faint Taste of Bitter Almonds My name is Lenna, but I more often go by Sherlock.
I enjoy the violin, writing, and forensic science. I still want to live in a charmingly cluttered flat with ugly vintage wallpaper a dubious shade of brown, with my violin Benedict, my guitars Sherlock and Harry Darren-Criss, and many, many books, as well as enough tea to sustain my mortal soul.
Mainly Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Tintin, and old British comedy, but for a full list go here.
A Slytherin, with Ravenclaw tendencies.
I spam a lot of Vincent van Gogh.
Previously pocketwatchgirl
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I get the post going round that Tumblr is complains that America needs to be less racist and sexist, then also complains that CBS are genderswapping Watson, but I feel that’s kind of separate from the complaints that people are trying to make.

I think genderswapping would be a great thing if done in an interesting way. But already it seems they’re still being sexist - they’ve taken away Watson’s backstory of being a soldier as well as a doctor - and have genderswapped her for a potential romance with Holmes rather than for the purpose of creating a strong female lead.

They’re making a great show of doing the right thing, but they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. It’s early days yet, so I’m just judging from the one article, but it seems they’re just doing things for the sake of it.

There’s this trend in television, particularly American television, of making a point of portraying minorities in a certain way that often makes a huge deal of them being minorities, and the characters are mostly based around the minority they’re representing. It’s all very well to explore the stories of minority groups, but when it happens so often on television it not only gets boring but it reduces the characters to confined stereotypes and makes them people who are only concerned with being part of a minority group.

For example, characters who have an Asian appearance are often portrayed as sushi-eating, kimono-wearing, bilingual people regardless of whether they’ve actually grown up in a Western country their entire lives. This irritates me in particular because I’m Asian-Australian and I’m a mixture of both cultures and lean more towards Western culture - I don’t dress in traditional Asian dress whenever I have a Yule Ball to attend, and I don’t survive solely off bento boxes. Gay people often are portrayed as going through the great struggle of acceptance, and I’ve rarely seen a character who is just gay, and there’s no huge amount of attention drawn to the fact that they’re gay.

And this makes it harder to make people understand that being of a different race or sexuality is just normal. That it’s not a big deal, that minority groups don’t want to convert everyone, that all everyone deserves is equal treatment. Television just can’t seem to get that equality right, and often become preoccupied with telling the beautiful lie and not questioning the choices they’re making.

That is the problem I have with Watson being genderswapped - they just seem to be doing it so that she can have romantic potential with Holmes, which raises of the question of why does she have to be female to have romantic tension with him? Why have they decided to delete half her backstory? How are they planning to portray her? What is the reasoning behind the decisions they’re making and the direction they’re taking?

We’ll see when it comes out. These are just the judgements I’m making off the information at hand.

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