From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Subject: Re: Heinlein - Politically correct?
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 18:07:56 GMT

In article <1967@spam.ua.oz> jaskew@spam.ua.oz (Joseph Askew) writes:
>In article <1992Dec8.162158.4990@wri.com> novak@wri.com (John M. Novak) writes:
>>In article <9212081258.AA00549@it122.dcs.qmw.ac.uk> winston@dcs.qmw.ac.UK
>>writes:
>>>[... material indicating that Heinlein wasn't PC...]
>
>>Multi-ethnic : his characters are from a variety of ethnicities (for example,
>>_Time Enough for Love_, where the Longs are on Boondock discussing the bad old
>>days, or _Starship Troopers_ (Juan Rico was Phillipino (sp?)), or many, many
>>others...
>
>Just one little quibble - his characters are occasionally Not White (tm)
>eg The Moon is a Harsh Mistress but they are uniformly culturally white.
>I am not aware of a single (positive) character in any of his books who
>could not be accurately described as a WASP American. If they are not
>WASP's then it is incidental. It is almost unthinkable for one of his
>characters to be a Moslem or to speak English badly or to oppose women's
>right to walk unveiled and so on. Just think of Juan Rico mentioned above,
>could you imagine him ever critising the United State for the wholesale
>massacres commited there by the US Army?
>
I think you're right about Juan Rico, but Man from _The Moon Is a Harsh
Mistress_ was pretty much of an anarchist--and I don't think he had 
loyalty to any government on earth. He also spoke pretty non-standard
English, though, admittedly, it isn't any of the low-status variants
existing today. 

Then there's the bit in _Friday_ where the women stop the men from
volunteering for a war--and the women turn out to be right. The war
was (probably) just a power struggle between two branches of a company,
and not some noble thing at all.  

What's-his-name in _Job_ supported a bunch of political policies that
most Americans would consider intolerably repressive.

The only Moslem I can think of in Heinlein is Stinky in _Stranger in
a Strange Land_--I don't know how accurate a Moslem his. At least 
there's some defense of the Koran--something I can't think of in any
other sf.

And then there's _I Will Fear No Evil_, in which the prefered sexual
orientation is bisexual with a heterosexual bias. If this is standard
WASP, I must not have been noticing. 

>>Non-discriminatory (sexuality or gender) : sure, his women like men; but they
>>are still intelligent and tough (I, for one, would not like to mess with Deety,
>>unless I wanted to end up disabled...).
>
>I wouldn't go too far with his women. Sure they aren't all complete losses as
>people but they are usually the exception. Also what I said above applies even
>stronger here - could you imagine Deety wanting to wear a veil for instance?

Sf is generally Islam-deficient....actually, there aren't a lot of believers
(in any religion) in sf. The only sf novel I can think of off-hand that
was set in an Islamic culture was David Moffit's _Crescent in the Sky_/
_A Gathering of Stars_, and I found the lack of people who were actually
religious pretty irritating. (I think that when a religion becomes dominant,
many (perhaps most) of the people in it will be there for habitual/pragmatic
reasons, but there will still be some believers.)

I found it somewhat "un-American" in that the main character is remarkably
powerless and spends much of the books being shoved around by more 
powerful people.

>The experience of 90% of the women who ever lived is beyond him. He can only
>think in stereotypes in this case the pioneer woman who stays behind and looks
>after things while her man is out killing Indians. Not bad as stereotypes go
>but still not good.

Friday was raised to be a slave. Does that count at all?

It's certainly true that Heinlein didn't write much (nor vividly) about
desperate poverty. There's the beginning of _Citizen of the Galaxy_ for
sort of remote poverty (_The Mists of Avalon_ by Bradley is better), 
_Starman Jones_ for white rural poverty, and _Have Spacesuit, Will
Travel_ for scrambling middleclass. All of these are showing financial
stress on male characters, though.

I think it might be fair to say that Heinlein falls somewhere in the
middle range on PCness, for whatever that's worth. I will say that there
are some writers I used to like that I've stopped reading because I can
no longer put up with the way they write about women (Anthony and 
Zelazny), but Heinlein has managed to stay off the list.

Nancy Lebovitz
calligraphic button catalogue available by email   (170K)
nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu

Just think, how would Bugs Bunny have handled this?


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