Discussion prompt gathering

[damned_colonial]

Over on podficmeta they did something for 3W4DW that I think might work well here. One of the moderators, zvi, posted asking people to suggest things they'd like to have discussed on the community. So, I'm going to do the same, lifting most of the phrasing from her post ;)

Please comment to this post if there's a discussion you'd like to see happen on this community. If you have a full fledged entry, you can tell me that you'd like to do the posting. If you just have an idea you'd be okay with me riffing on, say that and I will.

I'll then post top-level posts prompting discussion on the subjects suggested.

Comments

[damned_colonial]

Some things I'd like to see:

1) Discussion of articles from the Baker Street Journal -- which, if any of them, touch on subjects of interest to us? Or, if they don't, how/why don't they?

2) Crossdressing in the canon.

3) Reviews of specifically queer pro-published pastiches, or stuff like that series of Oscar Wilde mysteries I've heard of.

[language_escapes]

I am quite interested in all three of these options, very much so.

Is there a, uh, slightly more public way to view the BSJ articles? I know some are provided by them, but are there any through other avenues?

[damned_colonial]

Libraries, maybe? Worldcat knows. Looks like the journal is available in my city's public library system, for example.

[starlady]

One thing I'd like to see: discussion of queer women's experience in the era, particularly as it differed (or didn't) from men's. With book recs.

[melannen]

SO VERY SECONDED.

[copracat]

Just in case it doesn't go without saying that I approve this suggestion: I really approve this suggestion.

[softestbullet]

Yeahyeahyeah!

[oursin]

This is a topic on which, at the very least, I can waffle about the historiographical problems of uncovering queer women's experience (and what, contextually, might thusly be categorised) at that period, with reading recs (such as they are - much less than there is for queer men in C19th).

[starlady]

such as they are - much less than there is for queer men in C19th

I suspected something of the sort. I think there'd be multiple hugely interested people, though!

[marshtide]

Am so very for this topic and for reading recs on the offchance I've missed something... actually I rather fancy I've read more that falls a bit earlier or a bit later, hm.

[melannen]

I'd be interested in talking about Holmes pastiches and contemporary detectives who aren't middle-to-upper-class white men. I'm not really sure if that fits the mandate of the community, since it wouldn't necessarily go to a lgbt place? The userinfo gives the impression that you're using a really broad interpretation of queering, though, and it might work.

I have a start on a post about it, and asked awhile back on dreams_library about detectives in the period who were neither male nor white, so there are interesting places to go.

ETA: And I could always post about Their Majesties' Bucketeers. :D

[starlady]

And I could always post about Their Majesties' Bucketeers.

YES.

[wrabbit]

I think this was touched on by other comments, but it would be cool to explore Holmes and Watson as a character/duo type. For example Strangers talks about Poe's detective fiction and the queer nature of the detective character. Then there are re-interpretations like House and Wilson and to what extent the show is or is not drawing off the same tropes.

[damned_colonial]

Hmm, that's a good one! You've got me thinking about other pairings that have a similar dynamic in any way (The Sentinel, for instance... or is that stretching too far?) and also about the extent to which pairings/duos like H/W *originated* with H/W, or is there an earlier history of that kind of dynamic?

[wrabbit]

There's certainly a history of it before H/W e.g. with Poe, but I can't say how far back it reaches. That would make its own reading list :D

[damned_colonial]

I've posted a top-level post for this discussion, here. I just kind of riffed off what you said here, so I hope I took it in directions that are interesting to you. Please feel free to raise other points or drag the conversation in other directions in comments there.

[oursin]

As indicated above in thread on the topic, I'd be happy with putting some thoughts and reading suggestions out there re queer women in the later C19th

[damned_colonial]

Yay! Feel free to do so any time, but if it's useful to you to know, I'm planning on posting a discussion prompt post from this thread every few days til we run out, probably posting the first one on Monday.

[damned_colonial]

Another one I thought of last night... I would like to gather up all the references to music (eg. what Holmes plays on his violin) and see if they suggest anything. There was some talk in this thread about queer composers, so basically continuing along those lines.

[mllesays]

Oooh, very interested in this topic! A while back I found a site discussing which operas Irene was likely to have performed, which is another, related topic I'd be interested in discussing.

[damned_colonial]

Now that's interesting... the publication in which that essay was printed is The Serpentine Muse, which is the journal of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, a women-run organisation: "ASH achieved early notoriety when its members picketed the Annual Dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars in protest of the BSI policy of excluding women."

I wonder if anyone here on q_h knows any of the ASH folks?

[naraht]

I'd definitely be interested in this!

[damned_colonial]

As per this thread, we should totally have a discussion about Bohemianism and what it meant.

[ingridmatthews]

I'd like a topic about Watson as an observer of Holmes. Obsessive, list-making, hand-fetishizing repressed lover or just a thorough journalist/biographer?

I think Holmes deduced it was the former, in not so many words. ;)

[oursin]

Watson as archetypal C19th observational scientist?

[melannen]

How about Holmes as asexual, in the context of queer readings of Holmes, modern asexual identities, and the ways previous commentators have used asexuality to refute his queerness?

[damned_colonial]

YES.

[ilthit]

I was just about to ask for this. :D Well, more or less.

I've been trying to write Holmes/Watson fic and I'm finding it extremely difficult, because any way I play it Holmes turns out to be an asexual. Even if we assume he's asexual and aromantic by choice, having rejected sensuality on intellectual grounds, that doesn't make his asexuality any less legit.

I got no further than positing Holmes and Watson as a couple in love that doesn't have sex or talk about being in love, having it merely tacitly understood, with Holmes as a repressed bisexual rather than naturally asexual and Watson as a healthy sensualist who used to consider himself heteroromantic (though he wouldn't use that word of course) before Holmes. Clearly I need to read more slash...

[ilthit]

(Nitpicky note: asexuality could be considered queer in itself. But I know what you mean.)

[damned_colonial]

I think that's what melannen was getting at, to some extent, with "modern asexual identities" ... though I don't want to put words in her mouth.

ETA: I just posted a discussion post on this topic: http://queering-holmes.dreamwidth.org/3408.html

[damned_colonial]

I posted about this here: http://queering-holmes.dreamwidth.org/3408.html

[kindkit]

1) The cultural norms issue, especially as it turns up in the anti-slash argument in Holmes and other historical fandoms: "But they wouldn't have done that! That was criminal/sinful/taboo back in those days!" It would be nice to get into some nuanced discussion of how people are influenced by their culture's sexual ideologies without necessarily obeying all the rules.

2) The nineteenth-century medicalization of homosexuality, especially since Watson is himself a doctor.

[oursin]

how people are influenced by their culture's sexual ideologies without necessarily obeying all the rules

Anna Clark, in Desire, which is an overview history of 'Western' sexuality, has a very useful formulation of 'twilight moments' for behaviours which were condemned or at least not approved, but nevertheless took place. (It's a useful read generally)

I think I did some bibliography on C19th definitions of homosexuality as a comment to an earlier post, but the medicalisation issue and how influential it was is something I could oh so easily expand on!

[kindkit]

Thanks for the rec! And more from you on the medicalization issue would be great.

[marshtide]

Kind of following on from the general stuff about queer womanhood that's being discussed at the moment, I'd love some more specific discussion of Irene Adler as a possible bisexual character. I'll just leave this here and run off again to try and work through my thoughts on the topic a bit more thoroughly.

[ilthit]

Or genderqueer, perhaps? Adventurous and wearing men's clothes doesn't necessarily indicate lesbian or bisexual, though there might be a link via lesbian subculture, and historical female crossdressers who may have partly inspired the character, such as La Maupin and allegedly George Sand, were bisexual.

[marshtide]

Sure, & I'm all for genderqueer interpretations as well, but I do think bisexuality is a valid possibility. This is basically a problem common to a great many actual historical figures, though - that one really can't distinguish between identities which are more to do with gender and identities which are more to do with sexuality in a great many cases. ETA: and of course it can be both.

[damned_colonial]

Lots of crunchy stuff to discuss, then ;) (Somewhere else-thread, but on this comm -- perhaps in comments to oursin's post about queer women in the late Victorian period? -- there's some discussion of how sexologists of the period tended to conflate sexuality and gender expression, which would be good to bring into this.)

[marshtide]

Oh, yeah, that'd be good. I sort of tend to think of sexologists' ideas as applied to queer women really got going a bit later, with people like Ellis, though I guess Ulrichs et al really were talking about both to a certain extent - it just gets more attention as applied to men. (Which then takes us into the tangled realm of the invisibility of female queerness...)

[ilthit]

Well, bisexuality's a possibility, I was just saying there's little real indication of it; we don't see Irene interacting with any other females, so it would have to be inferred from literary inspirations and/or cultural signifiers. It'd be interesting to see the case properly put, though; it's been a while since I read that story and I'd have to do more reading about 19th century lesbianism (all I know comes from Victorian and 18th century porn, the idea of romantic friendships, biographies of crossdressing women and some anecdotes about the lack of legislation, and it's all sort of jumbled together in my head). Irene does cross the gender line quite gleefully, though, and it would be interesting to think about how that might compare to modern genderqueer identities.

Now my mind's going off on a tangent about women's rights movement and caricatures of the activists and that naughty "bifurcated girls" magazine cover I saw in The History of Girly Magazines. This is why I'm bad at academic discussions. All connections and no conclusions.

[damned_colonial]

OK, shush! Save it! Or post it as a top-level post so everyone can join in! :P

ETA: errr, sorry, that came out sounding really wrong. I don't mean to be all DO WHAT I SAY, but since this is just the prompt thread, it might be good to try and get a full post up on this subject so that more people can be aware of/join in the discussion. Please feel free to post one up there yourself if you like (you can see the most recent 3 posts for the general way of it) or, if you don't, I will probably do so in a day or two's time.

[ilthit]

:D Don't worry, I didn't take it that way!

Is it okay to make that post even though I have no conclusions to offer? I'd just like to see someone else put it all together!

[marshtide]

Oh, please do. It's more about getting discussion going than having conclusions right off the bat, surely. :)

[damned_colonial]

Oh absolutely! That's often the best way to get discussion started -- leave it open-ended so there's lots to talk about.

[marshtide]

That's how quite a lot of things about identity have to be interpreted in this sort of context, though. Which isn't to say I'm necessarily right, for whatever value of, but this does come back to the invisibility of this stuff in general, I think.

We really should take this to a top-level post, though. damned_colonial is correct. Oops. ;;

Oh, well, sounds like a pretty interesting tangent, anyhow. :D