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TROOPERS_AGAINST_SEXISM

                                                    June    25, 2017
                                                    December 7, 2017
One of Heinlein's many "modest proposals" for
alternate democratic systems was that if
government was restricted to women-with-children             TROOPERS
it would be automatically more far-sighted, more
concerned with the future of humanity.

   I think that illustrates something about
   Heinlein's trend of thinking, both ahead
   of his time-- and remember how *early* his
   time was-- and at odds with current lines
   of thought.


Consider that in "Starship Troopers",
all of the pilots are all female-- and       TROOPERS
for Heinlein, "pilots" have always
been intelligent, technically-trained                 In a typical Heinlein
professionals.                                        scenario, spaceships get
                                                      where they're going
However, there doesn't appear to be any               because someone does a
intentional gender-segregation going on:              good job of figuring with
the society is at least depicted as                   paper and pencil.  He was
entirely meritocratic-- and yet, the                  writing long before the
best-qualified people for different roles             computer revolution.
just happen to follow gender lines.

Here, Heinlein's take would seem to be that
women deserved to be taken more seriously           One of the young female
than they often were in the late-50s, but           pilots we see on stage
this is very different from what you might          is evidently latina, as
call the standard-feminist expectation of           I remember it.
roughly equal capabilities.
                                                        TROOPERS_AGAINST_RACISM
   Women are inherently different from men,
   but not inherently inferior.


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