Robert A. Heinlein

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Robert A. Heinlein was a science fiction writer, well-known for his cult classic Stranger in a Strange Land (whence the term "grok"), his revolutionary SF novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and his juvenile SF novels of the 1940s and 1950s. He is noted for writing female characters who were intelligent, competent, feisty, and -- their most notable characteristic in his adult fiction -- sexually available. He is also revered as a "forefather" by certain Libertarian science fiction writers such as L. Neil Smith, Spider Robinson, Robert Anton Wilson.


Notes

People frequently cite Heinlein as a nonsexist or even feminist writer, and just as frequently cite him as sexist. The principle argument that he was nonsexist or feminist is that he often wrote about intelligent female characters, who were sexually liberated. In response, critics have pointed out:

In general "sexual liberated women" = "sexually available to everyone" . Examples include:

  • The scene in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress where the men are training with guns for the revolution, and then the narrator starts to talk about what the women are doing to help, and for just a moment there the reader gets excited about what the women are doing and them getting a meaningful part. Then he tells us that the women get to help "keep up the morale" by bouncing their breasts in low-g. So the only way women can help the revolution is by being sex objects.
  • The treatment of the older sister in The Rolling Stones: She's never as good as the boys at anything, and is a bit of background character. The family seems quite concerned with her being married off, with no corresponding concern for whether or not the boys will get married.
  • Podkayne in Podkayne of Mars is the prototypical spunky girl protagonist — who gives it all up in the end to be a wife.
  • Friday in Friday is an intelligent, beautiful, able young woman, who nevertheless appears governed in significant part by her biological capacity for childbearing.

Notable Heinlein works

gender commentary
other significant works

Further reading

["It's due to bait-and-switch. Because his women are more badass/competent/etc, the female or sympathetic male reader thinks, 'Hey! Badass female soldier! Awesome!' Then, two pages later, the badass female soldier says, 'Oh, I have no interest in the military at all! I'm only doing this because men outnumber women in outer space, so out there I can get a man and have lots of babies! I don't care of he's a total jerk and hideous, all that matters is that he's male. Oh to be pregnant!'"]



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