Can O'Worms™: Writing characters outside your gender

[thatcrazycajun]

Somewhere in my recent web travels (I coulda sworn it was someone on my friends list, but I can't find the post there now), I came across the following statement re the late Grand Master science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein: "Heinlein couldn't write women if his life depended on it." A cursory Googling of the word pair "Heinlein women" turns up a whole raft of interesting posts, from both genders and on both sides of the question.

Apropos of the most recent posting on the gender gap, and since RAH happens to be one of my top three favorite SF authors (the late Isaac Asimov and the thankfully-not-late Spider Robinson being the others), I thought I'd throw this one out and see if it gets any more responses than the last one. Do you think Admiral Bob was capable of writing believable females, or not? Which author not of your own gender do you feel most gets your side right? Which one of your gender do you feel does right by the other one? And can we even discuss this without (a) getting hopelessly entangled in PC angst, (b) killing each other or (c) dragging in LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness or some other gender-skirting work?

Comments

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I never had a problem with RAH's female characters, but on the other hand, I've never had a big agenda about them either. *shrug*

I know lots of people, many of them female, who can't stand Heinlein's female chraacters. I know lots of people, many of them also female, who love his characters and have no sustained problem with them.

I chalk this one up to the oatmeal shortage.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Charles DeLint, IMO, gets both male & female characters right (but then I'm not a male ;) I certainly have no trouble at all identifying with his females, and to me the males seem believable.

I've always found Marion Zimmer Bradley's male characters believable (but again, I'm not a male, so dunno how much my opinion on this other-gender-potrayal is worth.)

Sharon Lee & Steve Miller get both right, IMO, as well, but then they're a team including both genders.

Hmm... perhaps there is a relation to whether an author writes more character-focussed/-driven or more, umm... for want of a better word "big picture"-focussed/-driven? (With the latter I mean things like concentrating on political/scientific/social development, long time frames, technology etc.) I can't say I've given this much thought before, though. And I can't say anything much about Heinlein - I recall reading him & Asimov in my earlyish teens, borrowed from the library, but they tended to rarely grip me much and I recall them, mostly, as less character-focussed, which would be the reason why they didn't grip me so much.)

Heinlein's women

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

The most militant Heinlein defender of my acquaintance is female; I'll let her know about this debate. I'm trying to figure out, about two characters, how anybody could possibly find them objectionable (or even less credible than characters by other writers -- and let's not get into the dichotomy between credible characters in fiction and people we like in real life) or in any way demeaning examples of women. I am referring to the Mother Thing in *Have Space Suit, Will Travel* and Mary/Allucquere in *The Puppet Masters.* I thought they were both marvelous. (And in reference to Asimov, does one believe that Susan Calvin advanced the science fictional treatment of women, moved it backwards, or left it about the same? I am very pointedly asking about this because my own feelings on this character are mixed.)

Nate B.

Submitted as Examples:

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

1)The title character from "Friday".
Hey, he ALMONST got it right. Until the last 10th of the book where she goes off with the guy who raped her to bare his children.

2)"The Door Into Summer" is back-handed. Ricky is self-reliant. Yes, she's had it rough, but she survived to be the person D.B. Davis falls in love with. By securing her future, he negates the need for her to develope these characteristics.

3)"Podkayne" (or, as I call it "Clark Fries of Mars") is, as much the central character of the book as Frodo was in "Lord of the Rings" (Go Sam!).


Then there are the Juveniles.

Re: Submitted as Examples:

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I had more problems with the ... hrm. The female protagonist, I guess I'll call her, in I Will Fear No Evil [1].

Now, admittedly, her body spends most of the book inhabited by a male mind, and I'm not nitpicking at all the problems he has or the 'mistakes' in 'femaleness' he makes, because, well, I don't object to them, 'cause he gets THAT right. :->

I object to some of the things the female mind tells the male mind to do to effectively 'be a girl the right way'. Like, for example, to rise from a hospital bed, IMMEDIATELY after very invasive surgery, and find not only a peekaboo nightie to put on, but INSANELY HIGH HEELS, and then wear that outfit to greet a visitor, just "because a girl likes to feel pretty".

I understand that he based all his women on Ginny. If the female protag in IWFNE is Ginny-based, I will boggle even harder at the wondrously alien mindset that has in fact ACTUALLY been produced in a biological human, instead of just fictionally so.

--
1. I am told that this is an 'after the brain-eater' book. It shares many of its flaws with other 'after the brain-eater' books; all the ones you mentioned are pre-'brain-eater' books, and I have almost no trouble with them at all.

Re: Submitted as Examples:

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

This topic came up because of a post in my own lj about guilty pleasures.
I listed Heinlein as my prime literature guilty pleasure.
I freely admit that being trans gendered MtF there is more then a little masturbatory fantasy in this for me (decades before I first came out to myself). However, R.A.H. still pretty much lacked clues to writing female characters.
But like all things you love for certain prurient aspects you tend to overlook a lot.


Shelley

[zsero.livejournal.com]

I think the problem people have with his female characters is that they were all Ginny. As he saw her. He worshipped her, and so all his characters based on her are red headed, super competent at everything, speak half a dozen languages, and want to have a dozen babies. Because the Heinleins couldn't have any.

It's somewhat odd that two of my favourite writers are Ayn Rand, a woman who was a male chauvinist, and RAH, a man who was a female chauvinist.

As for Friday, I had no problem with her marrying Pete. Remember, they're both professionals, and the rape wasn't meant personally, it was part of his job of torturing her for information. In his place, she'd have done the same. So she doesn't take it personally. James Bond doesn't take what happens to him personally either, and if years later he met one of his SMERSH torturers under different circumstances, he might put it behind him and fall in love too. There are lots of real-life incidents of soldiers who once fought on opposite sides, coming together after the peace. Until a few years ago you could see this every year at Gallipoli.

Plus, at the time of the rape she had really low self esteem, and thought of herself as nothing more than her job; and she accepted that the job included the risk of being tortured, raped, killed. Since "potential rape victim" was part of who she was at the time, it paradoxically didn't hurt her as much as it would someone who had an off-the-job life, one in which being raped wasn't part of how things were supposed to happen.

Ginny Sue

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

I think the problem people have with his female characters is that they were all Ginny. As he saw her. He worshipped her, and so all his characters based on her are red headed, super competent at everything, speak half a dozen languages, and want to have a dozen babies. Because the Heinleins couldn't have any.

Ding ding ding. And, even putting aside the fact that RAH's view of his wife was too idealized, IdealGinny just wasn't very typical. In particular, even those women who are super-competent are (at least in this day and age) not so subordinate. I found Jubal's assistants especially irksome in that regard.

That said, I was a big fan of Heinlein growing up. But I can definitely see why some of his detractors have so much trouble with his female characters.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Chalk up another person who has little problem with RAH's women. For the most part, they're as believable as his men -- which is to say, very much in some ways, completely not, in others.

And what's wrong with gender-pantsing works, eh? You some kind's chauvinist or something? [g,d,rvvvvf]

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Duh. "kind'a". Typos. :-(

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I find that those who detest RAH's women most will probably be very fond of David Brin's women.

The author himself notes that, if an intelligent, articulate woman comes up to him and gushes about his books, 90% of the time she will cite Glory Season as her favorite of his works, and usually as close to her favorite book of all time.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

WRT favorite character writer -- Lois McMaster Bujold. Very believable characters of both genders.

WRT Heinlien, I have my own literary theory of Friday and what it is all about. Briefly, Friday is primarily about the problem of when society defines you. It is a civil rights book. Friday, the genetic superwoman, is convinced of her inferiority because she has absiorbed the message that because she is an "artificial person" she is 'not human.' Thus, the rape and mutilation at the beginning of the book do not trouble her, she blames herself for the treatment she receives from her first "family," she consistently refuses to acknowledge her beauty, intelligence, etc. Her bond with her rapist at the end is a bond of an AP with an AP. Which is why the book ends as it does, with Friday's realization that being "human" is about being a member of a community of equals.

Eventually, I will get to write the analysis at length.

But check out many of his secondary female characters, particulalry Hazel Stone in Rolling Stones (rather than the younger version in Moon Is A Harsh Mistress). This is a character that explains that she left her professional career because of gender discrimination ("I got tired of watching big hairy men with beards get promoted over me") and went on to success as a private engineer. For 1950s juvenile, that's pretty damn subversive.

Heinlien is often equally subtle and subversive on racial issues. Especially in his juveniles.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I think Heinlein could write believable men, let alone believable women. Then again, I'm not sure he tried. He wrote superheroes unabashedly, and they were fun to read, and they gave him a framework for ideas that were easiest handled with heroic, more-than-human characters, and I'm not sure he made his women much less human than his men, but they sure weren't real people.

Asimov didn't mostly even *try* to write women, but Susan Calvin was marvelous.

I think Le Guin (in The Dispossessed most notably, not in LHoD) writes some pretty believable men. Lois McMaster Bujold writes terrific ones, and Manny agrees with me that they're very believable examples of their sex, so I've got at least one masculine data point on the subject. :) Men who write women well -- hmm. Not that I don't think they exist, just that I've read more female authors lately than male authors, so it can be hard for me to remember stuff that's been off my reading list lately. Parke Godwin's done a nice job in a few cases, most notably _Lord of Sunset_. I also like his Guinevere in _Firelord_... she's the first one I've read who doesn't come across as a total twit.

[filkferengi]

Lois McMaster Bujold has already been mentioned--yay!

Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote believable characters of multiple genders, but put them in a depressing setting that put the O in ose.

Andre Norton wrote extremely believable male characters.

So did Elizabeth Peters in her "Amelia Peabody" series [as believable and fun as the female characters, anyway].

I'll second Charles de Lint & raise Steven Brust.

[I like Spider lots too, but he really needs to come over to the filk side of the force & start putting out albums {of music, not readings}.]