I see it repeated as a truism that Heinlein couldn't write women.
Near as I can tell, this seems to translate roughly to "Heinlein's women really like sex. A lot."
Is there more to it than that?
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
It could be if you are talking about the beer. But, since you aren't, I couldn't really tell you. I've not read any of his books.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
There's more to it than that.
You can add, at least, -- Heinlein's women like to be treated as sex objects and patted on the head and/or rump by their employers.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
Wait..you mean women don't like that?
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
But Dana, could that not be merely indicative of an unbelievably casual attitude toward sex in general? I could see a Heinlein woman patting a man on the rump as easily as the other way around. It doesn't seem, in his future history, to mean any more than it does when you pat someone on the arm.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I think it can be said that Heinlein's women generally like sex so much and have such a casual attitude towards it that it seems they do not mind behavior that objectifies them to sexual status frequently.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
IMO, Heinlein's women tended to be idealized rather than fully realized characters. Of course, character development wasn't always his strong suit. He did at least make an effort to write from the point of view of his female characters from time to time.
Posted by aiua (Member # 7825) on :
It's not so much the sex as that there's nothing to them but sex. Take Jill, for example. She started off a strong woman who knew what she was doing, what she liked, etc. After Mike and everything, though, she was no better off that the rest of his women. One dimensional "characters" whose only purposes are to help the men.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
EDIT: this is in reply to Rakeesh
But does it really "objectify" them?
I think of "objectifying" as thinking of women (or anybody) as a means to satisfying a craving only. If I communicate a sexual desire, in a context in which sex is treated this casually, am I objectifying someone?
Does "objectifying" have a meaning beyond "making sexual advances at"?
I can think of many extremely competent female characters in Heinlein novels. It doesn't seem to me that they were merely means to an end.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
aiua, I don't agree. I can think of a lot of extremely competent women in his novels who were not merely there for the men to have sex with.
kate, I'm not sure how you distinguish between an idealized and a fully realized character. I do think that Heinlein falls into a lot of the same characterization traps that a lot of Golden Age writers, including Asimov, fell into, of having a lot of dumb characters who exist for the scientist to explain his smart ideas to.
But people don't assert that "Heinlein couldn't write characters," the say that he couldn't write women. Posted by aiua (Member # 7825) on :
Sorry, I meant main purpose. There are undoubtably times when sex wasn't the only thing on the brain, but the feeling that I got after I was done was that that's the only thing that mattered, especially to the women. It still feels like brainwashing to me, even though Mike claims it wasn't.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Outside of, perhaps, Time Enough for Love (which I personally hated), I would say sex was recreation, but all the main characters, male and female, were focused on whatever the major conflict was.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I refer you to Spider Robinson's classic Heinlein defense (which sounds like something Inago Montoya might employ), "Rah, rah, R.A.H." in which he responds to the complaints against Heinlein back in the 80's. Notable excerpt:
quote:(2) "Heinlein can't create believable women characters." There's an easy way to support this claim: simply disbelieve in all Heinlein's female characters, and maintain that all those who believe them are gullible. You'll have a problem, though: several of Heinlein's women bear a striking resemblance to his wife Virginia, you'll have to disbelieve in her, too—which could get you killed if your paths cross. Also, there's a lady I once lived with for a long time, who used to haunt the magazine stores when I Will Fear No Evil was being serialized in Galaxy, because she could not wait to read the further adventures of the “unbelievable” character with whom she identified so strongly—you'll have to disbelieve in her, too.
Oddly, this complaint comes most often from radical feminists. Examination shows that Heinlein's female characters are almost invariably highly intelligent, educated, competent, practical, resourceful, courageous, independent, sexually aggressive and sufficiently personally secure to be able to stroke their men's egos as often as their own get stroked. I will—reluctantly—concede that this does not sound like the average woman as I have known her, but I am bemused to find myself in the position of trying to convince feminists that such women can in fact exist.
I think I know what enrages the radicals: two universal characteristics of Heinlein heroines that I left out of the above list. They are always beautiful and proud of it (regardless of whether they happen to be pretty), and they are often strongly interested in having babies. None of them bitterly regrets and resents having been born female—which of course makes them not only traitors to their exploited sex, but unbelievable.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote: kate, I'm not sure how you distinguish between an idealized and a fully realized character. I do think that Heinlein falls into a lot of the same characterization traps that a lot of Golden Age writers, including Asimov, fell into, of having a lot of dumb characters who exist for the scientist to explain his smart ideas to.
In saying that well-developed characters have flaws, they grow and change. Heinlein's women (for the most part) are perfect. Smart, strong, beautiful, sexual, brave. They very seldom have much growing to do. (Friday is, perhaps, an exception.) I think he addressed this later on by occasionally having a female "narrator".
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Oooh. I was looking for that, Chris. Yes.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I wonder if this could be an artifact of when most of his female characters were written. To my tastes, at least, the juveniles are rather better than the later, long books for adults; and the juveniles tend to feature boys as protagonists. So it could be that the females are bad (assuming for a moment that they are) because they are in books that seriously needed editing, rather than because they are female. Podkayne of Mars, for example, is pretty believable and certainly no sex object.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I'm trying to think of nasty female characters in Heinlein and having a hard time. The wife in Farnham's Freehold, Maureen's mother,...
Anybody else?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
KoM,
Could be. I think that, in general, he just thought women were great. Also, I don't really think his male characters showed a great deal of depth either. They also tended to fall into "types".
Don't get me wrong - I love his characters. I wouldn't have read everything he published otherwise.
Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :
I don't think it's so much that he couldn't write women, it's more that almost all his women seemed to be the same, probably because the lens he viewed them through always seemed to involve what they thought about sex. That's going to limit the character a bit as the lens is so limiting. He had the occasional odd one, like Maureen's mom or Grace in Farnham's Freehold, but those two characters in particular were not, I think, fully realized so much as placeholders of dislike. Rather than exploring these personalities, they were just there for the main characters to dislike or compare themselves to.
'course, that's the adult stuff.
With the juvies, I think he just had two female characters: tomboys and useless girls who are there just to annoy the boys.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:But Dana, could that not be merely indicative of an unbelievably casual attitude toward sex in general? I could see a Heinlein woman patting a man on the rump as easily as the other way around. It doesn't seem, in his future history, to mean any more than it does when you pat someone on the arm.
Probably. So you can just add me to the radical feminist category that was dismissed in the quote Chris posted. It's more annoying in the women, because real women still have to deal with men patting and patronizing them in the workplace, whereas men don't (or at least not as often.) And I've dealt with that particular attitude often enough that when Jubal tells his secretaries to run along now while the grown-ups talk, it makes me see red. And that fact that they (the women) think it's "cute" rather than telling him to drop dead, puts them in the "unbelievable" category for me -- not saying that I don't believe people like them might exist, saying that I am so far from identifying with them that it tears me out of the story while I roll my eyes.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
In his novels, Heinlein wrote three types of women: idealized, perfect women who were sexually omniverous; shrewish, incompetent women who were sexually repressed; and cunning, evil women who were sexually omniverous.
His attitude towards women is, in ALL his books, either a patronizing "run along now and we'll call you when we need your booty," or an equally patronizing "you must save us all, you perfect goddess, you." I can't think of a single Heinlein female who ever appears capable of actual thought.
Then again, Heinlein's characterization sucks in general, so it's not really surprising that he couldn't do female characters. He was more of an "idea" guy.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I don't think Heinlein himself necessarily thought his books were good or realistic. I mean, he knew he was pandering to his audience, giving them what they wanted. In the early days he did a lot of preteen-boy-wish-fulfillment-fantasy, and in the later days it was dirty-old-man-wish-fulfillment-fantasy. I personally prefer the former type, but since he was Heinlein, his stuff was good even when it was bad. He never fails to entertain. I read almost everything he wrote, I think.
I do think his women were very unrealistic, but so were his men. His men (or boys) were characters a person could identify with, though. Not so his women, for the most part. That might be because he idealized women in his own mind, or just because he knew it would sell. Science fiction, in his day, was not a genre many girls read. His audience was guys, so he satisfied his audience.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
TomD - Wyoming Knot (Moon is a Harsh Mistress) and Hazel Stone (Rolling Stones, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) both come to mind.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
Wyoming Knot was completely ineffectual. . . she gave good speeches and looked pretty but didn't understand why her ideas weren't practical. She was mostly there for sex appeal and comic relief.
Hazel Stone acted like a complete submissive while using trickery and manipulation behind the scenes. The only time she stood up to the protaginist in person was over Bill, and then she came running back in tears apologizing for being wrong. She was competent in her little tasks he left to her, sure, but she still deferred to him on everything important.
Now, mind you, I enjoyed both of those books very much. And Friday, and a lot of other Heinlein books. In most books, however, I identify with the point-of-view character, so the fact that the women were mostly simpering idiots didn't pull me out of the story.
Posted by JenniK (Member # 3939) on :
Apparently it isn't just this Heinlein's women who like this patting on the butt thing...several rather large, burly type men in football uniforms do that to each other all the time!!! I've seen this on the football games that Kwea makes me watch, and they do not seem to be offended by this. They even return the greeting in kind! Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Now try imagining all of Heinlein's women in helmets and heavy padding.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
And a ray gun.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
*wants a ray gun*
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I've only read one Heinlein book, for children, and I really didn't find it particularly well written overall. But I can well imagine that he might write women a certain way...
When I was in a writing-type class (mostly of inexperienced writers, for the moment I'm calling myself more experienced than these) last year I discovered that a lot of people who are perfectly normal and non-chauvanist guys, or even women themselves, seemed to have issues with writing women or women-substitutes. In numerous stories a certain type of character "the wife/girlfriend" "the best friend" is only there to offer empty advice and stand at the top of the stairs and wave goodbye. I pointed out (and got a reputation for it) again and again that this particular character was empty. In the case of the male writers I think it was because they thought their character should have a wife, but, being 18 or 19 or so just kind of stuck "the sidekick"/"the wife" in without rememebring that this creation bore no relation to real women or friends that they knew.
I find that in the first season of Stargate Atlantis the situation was similar. The female characters encountered on planets (although oddly, not those from earth) not only look the same (me and my friends, all female, call them the "glowy women") but act the same- they're all this kind of non-character, and yet each is a very "strong" figure. Strong, yet totally empty. It's like the writer or writers forgot to include the fact that this woman is just a person, also. This is how I imagine Heinlein's characters are. They're not weak or wimpy or necessarily stupid, they're just not people.
The same goes for the unfortunate girls in films of comic books, like Spiderman's Mary Jane, for example. The writer often tries his or her best to make the character as strong and independant as possible but the problem remains that the girl is just an accessory.
And many men, like Spider Robinson did, mistake the fact that the written women are not weak, wimpy or stupid for it being enough. They often forget that they're not real characters, and that is what is most important.
When I was trying to explain this to the people in my class it took a lot of persistance on my part before someone else finally caught on and actually said about a best friend in one story "he's the wife!", and everyone got it...
It's not necessarily about gender, but the fact that one or more of your characters is there to simply pass the screwdriver or the scalpel when it is needed. Gender is only one line which some people forget to fully cross with some of their characters, especially the minor ones.
Heinlein's writing is probably partly a relic of this kind of "accessory" writing. I agree with jeniwren, TomD and dkw in their assessments, as far as I can judge without having read the books *ahem*.
My advice: Write people, not characters!
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
Lovely post, Teshi.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
quote:I agree with jeniwren, TomD and dkw in their assessments, as far as I can judge without having read the books
erm, and I agree with jeniwren, TomD and dkw about okra, which I have never eaten. (But I had some lima beans, once.)
>_>
<_<
Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :
Chris, you're right about Hazel. She is different. I don't remember Wy Knott well enough, but Hazel was fun without being all about sex.
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
The list of competent women in Heinlien is endless, his repect for female power is total as any real mans is.
I think it is a reflection of the general prudishness of this audience that you reguard the sexual aspect of female power as being unrealistic, you need to spend more time in Strip Clubs. The laws of Physics themselves often bend there!
BC
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Is it me or does the phrase "real man" immediately make you roll your eyes?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: I think it is a reflection of the general prudishness of this audience that you reguard the sexual aspect of female power as being unrealistic, you need to spend more time in Strip Clubs
Yes. Because there's no better place to really get to know women than strip clubs, where of course you can expect all the women to be completely honest about their feelings. Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
*snort*
No one has argued that the women aren’t competent. OR that real women don’t like sex. The question (IMO)is whether intelligent, competent, women would really act like they do, particularly in their male-female non-romantic/sexual interactions. Some reviewers seem to believe that if a woman is secure in her intelligence/competence/femininity then she should be okay being treated like a child or a toy. I disagree. I am secure enough in my intelligence, competence, and femininity that I expect to be treated like an intelligent, competent, adult.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
To me, the message in that case -- and Heinlein is by no means the only author who does this -- is "if this woman is so strong and competent and assertive, and yet she lets this man treat her like a plaything, just imagine how strong and competent and assertive he must be." I think it's a convenient narrative shorthand that helps further establish the hero's idealized virility.
That's not to say that it's any less icky.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I generally got the impression that Heinlein's women allowed a certain amount of familiarity with men who were somehow "family". And that it was strictly on her terms. Anyone not "family" that pushed her limits was likely to regret it. I also go the impression on an underlying acknowledgement of women's general competence. Hilda Burroughs comes to mind. When it became clear that her husband (can't remember his first name) didn't really get that she was captain, it became a serious issue for them. One where he was clearly in the wrong.
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
Hilda is the only one of the examples mentioned so far that I can't come up with counter-examples off the top of my head. And since I don't really have time to go re-read The Number of The Beast, I'll conceed her. So that's one out of a hundred or so portrails of women that isn't icky.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Hmmm...I just don't get "icky". They are as likely to be doctors, engineers, captains, mathmaticians as they are to be anything else. And they are "calling the shots" sexually.
Posted by Bean Counter (Member # 6001) on :
Dora comes to mind, Maureen as well, Ishtar... I do not think you even read what you think you read...
BC
Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
I enjoyed a lot of Heinlein's books, but my favorite criticism of them was a friend who said "Each Heinlein book should be split in half and sold as two separate books. First half: Actual science fiction. Second half: Crazy freaky sex party."
--Enigmatic
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Which half would you read?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Dora comes to mind, Maureen as well, Ishtar...
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