I'm not gonna go to bat for Doyle as a perfect progressive ally but I actually am pretty sure it was, to a degree, intended Holmes, multiple times, lectures Watson about how Watson isn't stupid but just imperceptive, he ignores people he's socially expected to ignorehttps://twitter.com/snarkbat/status/1298712492026155008 …
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The fact that Watson has spent just as much of his life in the company of cab drivers as Holmes but he never LOOKS at them, he never THINKS about them
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Holmes is supposedly a genius because he's a "master of disguise" and can blend in perfectly with working-class service people But like any member of the upper classes he's surrounded by those people constantly, and the only difference is he pays attention to them
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The issue of gender and feminism isn't quite the same thing, and Doyle goes out of his way to have Watson say he thinks Holmes "had no interest in women", in the prurient sense But yes, Holmes also demonstrates an unusual willingness to see things from women's POV
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A TON of the canon stories are Holmes stepping in to do something about a woman who's been wronged, in a situation where ordinarily no man would think it was any of his business
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Anyone remember how the bad guy Holmes personally despised most -- apparently even more than Moriarty -- was Charles Augustus Milverton, Britain's most prolific blackmailer Because of the sheer intimate cruelty of it, aimed specifically at women
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And it's when Milverton decides he's going to go ahead and expose one of his victims to make an example of her so he can keep his rates high for the others -- despite how this will destroy her life -- that Holmes decides he absolutely has to take the motherfucker down
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And then the ending of the story is a shaggy dog story! Holmes tries to get his hands on Milverton's file of dox but Milverton actually outsmarts him And then some random woman busts in at that moment and just pulls out a gun and shoots the bastard
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(The same shaggy dog ending as the 2000 film Shaft, where Shaft completely fails to get the racist murderer taken down in court but then the victim's mom just pulls out a gun and murders him in broad daylight and goes "ARREST ME")
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And Sherlock and Watson just let the woman go They're even willing to take the fall for it When Inspector Lestrade asks them about the murder case they're like "Nope can't help you"
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When he's like "The staff saw two suspicious guys on the grounds, one of them was this big guy with a gun" they're like "Oh that could be anybody, come on, Watson is a big guy with a gun" (This, by the way, is strong textual evidence that Movie Watson should look cool/badass)
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Holmes fandom, btw, takes this whole series of events as a hint that what actually happened was when Milverton smugly told Holmes how he'd foiled his plan Watson lost his temper and just pulled out his gun and shot him right there Then made up the lady as legal ass-covering
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That's a good story, but I think I prefer the version where the lady killed him It's actually more satisfying
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End of conversation
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