Heinlein’s Female Troubles

More unsophisticated claptrap

. . . “Starship Troopers” (1959), a young-adult novel whose glamorization of combat caused some critics to view him as a fascist.

Starship Troopers was not a glamorization of combat, it was a brief and incomplete examination of the issue: Why does mankind fight. Bertram Russell asked that question himself in some of his philosophies, and Heinlein probably got it from him.

Among the critics was Scribner, his longtime publisher, which refused to issue the novel.

Partly true; Heinlein’s biggest problem at Scribners and Sons was his own editor, Alice Dalgliesh. She was one of those hide-bound idiots who couldn’t understand the cutting edge. When she spoke out against Starship Troopers Charles Scribner sided with her.

Heinlein has also been attacked for being a misogynist – in large part for his 1982 novel, “Friday,” whose eponymous woman narrator enjoys being raped.

Which only shows to what length ignorance can go. The idea that Heinlein was a misogynist is absolutely laughable given that he never once portrayed a female character in the chauvanistic context of the mid-20th century. As for the part of Friday enjoying being raped, I replied to that in the comment linked to above.

The real “problem” with Heinlein is that he was very much a tragic hero; quite along the lines of Robert Bolt’s Sir Thomas Moore. He was passionate about his convictions: personal freedom and liberty, the United States, human dignity, et al, and he didn’t care who didn’t like that.

The hero of “Starship Troopers” follows a woman he admires into the military. But because she is sharper than he, she gains admission to the prestigious pilot corps, and he winds up stuck in the infantry.

This is a grossly inaccurate summation of the plot point. In Troopers, women invariably wound up as pilots because of quicker reflexes. Rico wound up in the infantry because he didn’t meet the standards for any other trade. The summation about Have Spacesuit – Will Travel is close enough that I won’t quibble about it.

In many novels, Heinlein’s characters commit to group marriages – less because the arrangement offers sexual variety than because it can free women to work.

Oh, hogwash! Heinlein’s purpose in questioning these issues was to challenge the basic assumptions of society. One of which, I will grant you was the reactionary ignorance surrounding sexuality (addressed primarily in Stranger In A Strange Land), but in this case it was the one-man-one-woman idea of marriage (and equally restrictive definitions of family) currently touted by ultra-conservatives.

Friday is an “Artificial Person”; she was conceived in vitro and brought to term in an incubator, which in the book’s fictive world is a terrible stigma.

This is also grossly inaccurate. Friday was a bio-engineered product of a laboratory, and the primary issue in the book was simple, old-fashioned bigotry. APs were the niggers of this world. She wasn’t stigmatized for being born not human parents, but for not being a human at all.

Heinlein has so thoroughly objectified her that her subjectivity falls flat.

Stuff and nonsense. She is a fully fleshed character and a human being. She has her own way of trying to get through life. Heinlein, did, I will admit, focus overly much on Friday’s sexuality as a coping mechanism, but I don’t see how that objectified Friday. I see that as writing that should have been better edited, is all.

How in later life could someone who once wrote so expansively produce work that only a Mother Thing could love?

Because the complexity of thought and questioning he exhibited in his earlier works grew increasingly complex as he explored the issues he questioned. Basically, Heinlein grew beyond your ability to understand his thought processes and the questions he was asking. This is not a barrier, however, Ms. Lord. You can catch up.