I’d be interested to read the analysis on Sherlock & asexuality. I need to go re-watch ASiB, especially the scenes in Irene’s sitting room and the seduction at 221B, to see if Sherlock ever expresses desire, and if so, whether it is sexual desire.
In terms of sexual storytelling, this scene, to me, clearly expresses sexual desire (and the ever-present Male Gaze):
We never see the camera zoom in so close on Sherlock’s eyes like this (to my recall). To me this says: that woman is all he sees and all he can think about. It might be possible for an asexual to have a non-sexual attraction like this to a person, I just don’t know enough about the subject to speculate. (If you are asexual and can clarify, please do.) But I see attraction, sexual attraction. His mouth drops open. She is literally falling right into his gaze. She takes up his whole world. Plus the lens flare/backlighting gives a sense of lightness, dreaminess, unreality, all of which to me says love and/or sexual attraction. It’s repeated a bit later when he is floating through the streets.
And then there’s the other shot, where she kisses his ear, back at 221B:
Again, we get an extreme close-up of his face, his eye, his reaction as she touches him. That is a visual translation of what it feels like to be kissed. Such a tight close-up, we are right there in his face being kissed, and he turns his gaze to her again.
My POV from a visual language perspective.
No, it doesn’t read as definitively being sexual attraction. It reads as definitively being attraction OF SOME KIND.
But Sherlock is, as we have already repeatedly seen and as is deliberately reinforced by this episode, attracted and fascinated by challenging puzzles. In fact Irene KNOWS that, and all but explicitly states that she’s actively and deliberately using it to her advantage (‘brainy is the new sexy’). She doesn’t walk in naked in order to be physically attractive to him. She walks in naked in order to optimize how fascinating she’ll be to him.
So his attraction to Irene doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sexual desire. It’s the assumption of the viewer that if there is desire of some ambiguous sort, it must therefore be sexual.
We see him being fascinated by a lot of different people and/or crime scenes in the series and none are represented like this. And I think Irene wants to be fascinating AND attractive. Sex is her main weapon. I don’t think Irene really knows him well enough (no matter what Jim may have told her) that he WOULDN’T be attracted to her. There are a lot of reasons for being “virginal” besides asexuality.
His face is NEVER that open when he’s being fascinated by any other case.
We can agree to disagree here…I am sticking to Occam’s Razor in this case.
Welp, you’re the one who asked for an asexual perspective, so I gave it to you.