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Re: book thoughts

 In article <1.0j_rl2bfc@one.net> Whitney J. wrote:
 : 	I recently picked up two books that I read in high school (~4 years 
 : ago) and remembered liking.  But, reading them now, I found neither of 
 : them to be as good as I remembered.  Strangely, it was for the same 
 : reason in both cases, although they were very different books, _Atlas 
 : Shrugged_ by Ayn Rand and _Stranger in a Strange Land_ by Robert 
 : Heinlein.  I found both of them to be extremely misogynistic, and 
 : Heinlein's was also blatantly sexist, I thought.  It actually included 
 : the sentence, "9 times out of 10, if a girl gets raped it's her own 
 : fault," said by a woman, and it seemed almost homophobic in its 
 : convoluted attempt not to be.  
 i read _stranger in a strange land_ recently and i really liked it, but
 i was kind of wondering what would have happened to the story had it
 been written in some non-heterocentric parallel universe. heinlein
 makes a big deal of the whole male/female thing, like it's just about
 the only way in which mars isn't an improvement over earth. there's
 something almost funny about the contrast between this whole concept 
 of free love between heterosexuals and the ways in which the other
 characters sort of brainwash mike into heterosexuality (he doesn't
 really know the difference at the beginning). 
 i find that i tend to get a lot more detached from what's happening in a
 book as it gets more heterocentric-ish. i remember that happened a lot
 when i was younger. i read a lot of mystery novels which featured gutsy
 female private investigators and there was often this point where i would
 be enjoying the book a lot, thinking "wow, this character is so cool" and
 then the straight love-interest subplot would show up and it would be
 disappointing and boring because it was just so predictable. it probably
 had something to do with closet-angst and feeling like there were no queer
 people in my corner of the universe, because books were the first place i
 looked when i started thinking i might not be straight and it was always
 really neat when gay people popped up in them. 
 -beth
 --
 Beth Linker					
 bslinker@unix.amherst.edu
 http://www.amherst.edu/~bslinker/
 "Actually, all 10 doctors recommend breathing..." - Dirk Stanley

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