#brilliantmistake

“The original [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle] stories had a huge female following, which I’d never forgotten, and that’s because the Victorian ladies liked the way Sherlock looked. (Laughs.)”

Moffat, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

But... the Sherlock Holmes books were books. They weren't pictures of handsome men or films with handsome men or anything about handsome men that wasn't specific to the reader's imagination. Saying women liked the way Sherlock looked makes absolutely no sense. It's just plain misogyny dismissing women's interests.

The rest of that paragraph is even worse:

So I thought, use this massively exciting, rather handsome man who could see right through your heart and have no interest ... of course, he's going to be a sex god! I think we pitched that character right. I think our female fanbase all believe that they'll be the one to melt that glacier. They're all wrong, nothing will melt that glacier.

Holmes isn't good at seeing right though your heart, though (or at least not in a romantic way). He's not a glacier (he's very fond of Watson, for example) - he just doesn't show interest in romance! 

Moffat is creating a fake argument to dismiss the original fans of the books he's adapting while insulting his current audience (except the men, obviously). Does he really think women can't be interested in drama or crime or problem-solving? The Sherlock Holmes series was a huge influence in the crime genre that writers are still mining for archtypes now (*cough* Doctor Who *cough*) - but women didn't appreciate any of that, they just like the books because they thought Holmes was hot?

It's similar to the mocking of the fans in The Empty Hearse, with the implied Sherlock/Moriarty kiss suggested by the teenage girl (obviously a parody of slash fans, implying that they're ridiculous).

I can't believe how little respect Moffat has for people because they like the same books he's adapting into a TV show. 

- C

Conan Doyle made it pretty explicit that Holmes had no desire to be like that. He was 'romantic' in the sense of literature and philosophy, but he stated that Watson is better at understanding the ways of women and the ways of the heart. Also, no woman showed any interest in Holmes beyond his pretend fiancee? There are few times where Holmes showed he understood how women would react (one was Irene Adler with how women will go for their most important possessions in case of a disaster, and the other was wooing the working woman in CHAS), but that doesn't show that he could 'see through your heart'. 

The fact that Moffat believes that women can only be interested in Sherlock Holmes because they were 'attracted' to him is, like C said, dismissive and misogynistic and I have to question his knowledge of the original content when he continues saying infactual and baseless statements like this.