Re: [UUPoly-L] Evoking Heinlein

["Jason B." <brithistorian@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 6:46 AM, Valerie White <valerie@valeriewhite.org> wrote:
> sexually to the heroine's nudity.  And nearly all of Heinlein's women
> are responsible for the cooking!  I think it's in "Number" where a
> man has a pot of soup on the back of the stove that he inherited from
> his grandmother--but after all, HE's French!

Unless Heinlein used the same gag twice (I've never read _Number_, so
I can't say for sure) I believe you're thinking of Georges from
_Friday_.  I also think you're being a little hard on him - sure he's
French (French-Canadian, technically), but I think he also comes
closest of any of he men in the book to meeting the ideals of a
Heinleinian hero.  He's a scientist and an artist.  He can cook.  He's
resourceful.  He's even (in what is certainly a major sacrifice for a
man in a Heinlein book) willing to disguise himself as being gay.

_Friday_ has long been my favorite Heinlein book, the one I come back
to over and over.  It examines discrimination, explores polyamory in
several different forms, and makes tentative glances at incest and
lesbianism.  Other than Georges' disguise bit in California, male
homosexuality never comes up, but that's hardly surprising, and I
suppose one can't have everything.  Ultimately it's a story about
identify and family and belonging.  I've lost time of how many times
I've read it - I was thinking just the other day that it's time to
read it again.

I know a lot of people criticize the book because of Friday's response
to the rape.  I think that's a case of people mistaking the
character's thoughts for the author's.  Even though Friday is
ultimately proved to be definitively human, one must not forget that
her early upbringing was not.  She was raised in a creche and given
training to be, as far as I can tell, basically a sex slave.  Given
that upbringing, it's hardly surprising that her ideas about sex are
somewhat warped and that she's still trying to figure out which parts
of her upbringing are shared with "real humans" and which ones aren't.

Well, that's enough of that for now.  Off to work.

Jason