(no subject)
I'm reading (well, re-reading) Heinlein again, and I realize how much of who I am comes from him. This plain, outspoken, no bullshit voice that I think of as my own is so very much his. Thanks to Heinlein, I thought, I really did, that monogamy was just a farce, a pretense kept up by most people out of custom and habit. I never imagined myself married, and I sure as shit never imagined I would be controlled by someone else's jealousy. I saw (and see perhaps) jealous as a character flaw; truthfully I've never really gotten it--if you love someone, how could you not want them to be as happy as possible?
I raised myself in the 60s image of a sci-fi woman, always written by a man, ultra-competent, yet sexual and kittenish when the time comes. What confidence I have in myself as a woman, my lack of modesty, my power in myself--how much of it can be attributed to this dirty-minded old mysoginist. I re-read now and I can't believe it--my younger self took so strongly to his worldview, a combination of conservative practicality I was raised to and a cautious, yet somehow uninhibited view of relationships and theoretical sprituality.
Sure, I can go back now and see that the entire idea of homosexuality struck him as weird and perverse, but he was trying, trying to see the world through a liberal framework, as he saw it, as the limits of his imagination would allow.
Yet I can't help but think that Heinlein would hate me, and that I would definitely hate him. He was a dirty old bastard, obsessed with incest and screwing around (as he saw it) whatever veneer he tried to put on it.
He assumed that no one would be faithful, given any kind of choice. And that that was a fine thing. That love was ever-expanding, and marriage was a place to share companionship, sex, love, raise children--but not to be everything.
I raised myself in the 60s image of a sci-fi woman, always written by a man, ultra-competent, yet sexual and kittenish when the time comes. What confidence I have in myself as a woman, my lack of modesty, my power in myself--how much of it can be attributed to this dirty-minded old mysoginist. I re-read now and I can't believe it--my younger self took so strongly to his worldview, a combination of conservative practicality I was raised to and a cautious, yet somehow uninhibited view of relationships and theoretical sprituality.
Sure, I can go back now and see that the entire idea of homosexuality struck him as weird and perverse, but he was trying, trying to see the world through a liberal framework, as he saw it, as the limits of his imagination would allow.
Yet I can't help but think that Heinlein would hate me, and that I would definitely hate him. He was a dirty old bastard, obsessed with incest and screwing around (as he saw it) whatever veneer he tried to put on it.
He assumed that no one would be faithful, given any kind of choice. And that that was a fine thing. That love was ever-expanding, and marriage was a place to share companionship, sex, love, raise children--but not to be everything.