Man, I haven't flung a book across the room in forever!

[solarbird]

A. E. van Vogt's The Changeling is almost like a parody of sexism, except for the part where it's not!

Everybody who feels like criticising Heinlein for that should probably breeze through the first 20 pages or so of this thing to see what some contemporaries were writing. Or just, I dunno, punch yourself in the face a few times. Either would work.

I mean, damn.

(Caviat: I could only read 20 pages. Then I managed to skim about 20 more before t3h fl1ng. Maybe it was sekrit parody. But I'm pretty sure not.)

gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Comments

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of how I feel about most of Piers Anthony's pre-Xanth stuff. I don't recall printing years off the top of my head, but stuff like Chthon, Phthor, the Cluster and Tarot and Macroscope trilogies... I finally just gave up. Everything's misogynistic and pessimistic. The really intelligent women are the ones who're good menials. XP

[banner.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'd criticize Heinlein for it. His heroin's (did I spell that right) had attitudes that were in many cases a lot more like men's attitudes then women of his day. Some may say that was because he was a man, sexist, etc.

I think it was more like he could see there were changes coming and took a stab at where he thought it would go. And over all I think he did pretty well with it too.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, how old are you? Because back when I was a kid, that was what it was 90 percent of the time.

My mom was accepted to college, I forget which one, but it was a good one. Full scholarship, wouldn't have cost her or my grandparents a dime. (This was in the 40's).

My grandmother wouldn't allow her to go, Quote:"Education is wasted on a woman". My Grandmother said that, not my Grandfather. (She even said it to me when I asked her once why she didn't let my Mom go if it had been free).

My older sister was the FIRST person in my family to ever go to college. You wouldn't believe the fuss that raised! (We're talking 1969/1970) And not just in the family, but outside of it too!

It was a much different world that those writers grew up in, and were writing in when they were writing. For the most part women were NOT found in the workplace, well not the higher educated or skilled workplace, other than as secretaries. A lot of those attitudes reflect the realities of the times.

[futabachan.livejournal.com]

I reread I Will Fear No Evil every couple of years, whenever I'm in the mood for something unintentionally hilarious, or feel like doing some book-flinging....

[banner.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have to ask why. Remember the story is about an old man put in a young (and very attractive) woman's body. So what is it you find book flinging about it? I'm curious (and bored at work so I'm looking for some kind of discussion!)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

A lot of those attitudes reflect the realities of the times.

...and isn't that just the LAMEST excuse in the world, given that we're talking about the genres of fantasy and science fiction? i mean, c'mon, if samuel r delany could write brilliantly about gender in the 1960's, what's everybody else's excuse?

sexism has been around a long time, up to and including now. but, well, it's been kinda lame and stupid all along, and some folks have been clever enough to be aware of that at any given time. (and not to say that solely in sf/f, either. i mean, i like jane austen as well as the next person, but after i read her i go and rinse my brain out with virginia woolf.)

[banner.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a lame excuse. Does a fish notice the water? No. They were carrying the baggage that they grew up with and I doubt they even noticed it. Nor did their editors, nor did their audience. Yeah now you look back at it and you find it odd, but then? Then there was 'nothing odd about it'.

Look at '1001 Arabian Nights' heck, look at anything written by Barbara Cartland, who was the biggest romance writer in the 70's.

Also remember the prime audience of Sci-Fi (And even fantasy) back in the 60's and 70's: Men. It was a male oriented genre, women leaned more towards Horror and Romance. Heck, look at the Gor books! Talk about insulting to women, yet they sold like hotcakes. And look at the attitudes towards men in romance books, even modern romance books. Want to talk about insulting? :-)

[avram]

Why should we have to remember that? I mean, it's not as if the old-man-in-a-sexy-young-woman's-body story was a real event that Heinlein had to adhere to. He could have written about an old woman in a young man's body, or a straight old man in a gay young man's body, or a gay old man in a plain woman's body, or any of a number of other combinations. Heinlein chose the setup he did in order to write the kind of story he wanted. If the details of the story invite criticism, then the setup doesn't immunize it.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

*i* think it's lame. you may feel free to be less discriminating. like i said, if virginia woolf and samuel r delany somehow managed to notice, i don't think anybody deserves to be off the hook.

barbara cartland managed to be a total fool during one of the biggest feminist-consciousness eras in history. and yes, she's a fool about men and women alike. being popular is not to be confused with not being an idiot.

wrt the primary audience being men, umm, isn't that kind of one of the problems here?

[banner.livejournal.com]

Tht depends on what the criticism is now, doesn't it? And I haven't heard that criticism and am curious as to what it is.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I mostly found that his heroines were not unlike men, except for their overwhelming desire to have lots'n'lots of babies! I know I'm in a minority, but I just can't stomach him at all - even in high school, he bugged me.

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

I only ever read one Heinlein book but that made me decide not to read any more, partly because of the sexism issue (that, and that it was rubbish). I don't remember which one it was or the story in detail, but basically there was some *kid* who had to 'protect' (as in gun etc) his adult *mother* or something because you know, she was a woman.

Not many books have irritated me for that reason, actually (I could bear it in Piers Anthony etc.); one of the other cases where sexism irritated me was actually a series of Gael Baudino's. Her male characters (in this series) basically came across as sex-crazed maniacs who could barely think about anything else. Gah. Maybe she did it on purpose but...

[banner.livejournal.com]

You know, that doesn't sound like any Heinlein book that I can think of. Funny thing is, some of his female protagonists were pretty strong people who's concern in life was to get ahead and be all they could be etc.

I find it really hard to accuse him of sexism.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

We could also go into Heinlein's lovely and charming analysis of homosexuality, and why queers were all furtive neurotics who were emotionally fucked in the head, but since he put some vague "it's ok for guys to kiss" shit into Stranger in a Strange Land, people tend to ignore the Lazarus Long "Fags are insane" stuff that he wrote.

Shrug. He wrote stuff. It was what it was. his female heroes would occasionally want to 'be all they could be' ... until they found The Right Man For Their Value System, at which point they wanted to be all they could be in the kitchen.

[annathepiper]

Ah, that'd be the Water! books, right? I wasn't terribly thrilled about those works of hers, either; I didn't like them nearly as much as I liked the Strands of Starlight book and the ones that followed it.

But yeah, I do strongly suspect that she wrote the male characters that way on purpose. I note that a lot of the 'good' male characters, even in the Strands series, are ones who are specifically 'feminine'. She makes a point of describing Varden that way, as I recall.

[banner.livejournal.com]

until they found The Right Man For Their Value System, at which point they wanted to be all they could be in the kitchen.

I can name a lot of his female characters who don't fit that description at all. Actually, I can't think of any who do.

As for the Lazarus long 'fags are insane' stuff, gonna have to go look that up cause I can't say I remember any of that.

[wrog]

hell, even E.E."Doc" Smith has female characters that are worth a damn (*).

Van Vogt was just extra-special crunchy; also a big fan of General Semantics, let's not forget.

(*) ...admittedly, it would be nice to be able to base this on more than just Children of The Lens which was decidedly wonky in other ways [so we're at the final stage of human genetic evolution and all the bad shit has been bred out, so what's next? Incest? This being the 1950s, he had to be very subtle about it, but it's there...])

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can't think of any who do.

Friday comes to mind.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Friday? You have got to be kidding. Did you read the book? She had no interest in having or raising children, could care less. Wasn't looking to settle down and be anyone's cook or housewife. She liked being a combat courier and wanted to continue being that. She only stopped because it was that or die.

[avram]

Wow. It’s been years, but this doesn’t match my memory of the book at all. The Friday I remember had big issues about being an artificial person, was looking for a family who’d accept her, and eventually settles down and marries a guy who’d raped her at the beginning of the book.

[banner.livejournal.com]

She was looking for a group marriage, and I don't seem to recall the 'artificial' person (her genes were engineered) being an issue in that, because I don't think she even knew it at the time of her entering that marriage. Which really disovled for other reasons, that was just what they threw in her face if I recall correctly. I think they were more upset with her inability to be cowed and be the type of wife as described above.

As for the rape thing, remember he had been ordered to. And I've seen people forgive far worse sins

[avram]

Aren’t there lots of references to her being a “creche baby” (“My mother was a test tube, my father was a knife”), even from pretty early on?

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Water books. I can't remember whether I finished the series even... I was reading them from the library and I'm glad I didn't buy them :)

('Strands of Starlight', with all its faults, remains one of my favourite books.)

I think I kind of object to only 'feminine' male characters being 'good'. I mean, I'm not the most masculine person in the world, and I'm happy about that, but... I don't think anyone more butch than me is the devil incarnate. :>

[annathepiper]

It kind of bothers me, too, now that I think about it, and now that I am thinking about it I think it might have twigged me some when I read the books to begin with. But yeah, from what I remember, there was very much this undercurrent of 'masculine equals bad' all throughout her books, and I believe I wound up buying them all. I haven't re-read any of them, though.

She does have some goodness in her writing, but it would be interesting to re-read her books with a more objective eye and see if these trends of hers get in the way of that goodness for me.