I'm sorry, but the author gets to make all of these decisions, and if you don't particularly like a choice an author has made then switch authors. One of my favourite books is also completely racist, but that doesn't get me undone, because a book is what it is, and what I love the most about old scifi is how different it is, and often how timeless the stories can be. Reading the books under a different light or time.
Sometimes when I read scifi, I wish the world today was more like that world, where a mans role always seems to be so much bloody better then it is today.
Unfortunately, that is a terribly simplistic view of both literature and life.* "A man's role" was never as clear-cut as all that, nor was a woman's. Life is, and has always been, messy, complex, and often a pain-in-the-neck. Simplistic solutions tend, in the main, to lead to oppression, abuse, and ignorance, rather than any genuinely workable solution to life's situations. It can, of course, be enjoyable to read about, and reassuring... but I'm afraid it is a very insidious sort of reassurance, much the same as occultism, mysticism, fundamentalist religions, or isolationism.
And just because a writer (or a particular book) reflects the fallibilities (as well, one hopes, as the strengths) of its time, is no reason to not form a "dialogue" with that writer or work. Quite the contrary; to do so often forms a very useful and informative tool for better understanding both the work and oneself; for challenging one's own opinions and prejudices, as well as theirs (or its). Certainly, when it comes to Heinlein, had I not had such a reaction to books such as
Starship Troopers, I'd never come to regard them as highly as I finally did. And it doesn't matter how much I like or admire the writer; even my very favorites often present me with things I dislike or disagree with, and that provides an opportunity for learning and honing my own thinking. Hence, despite my fervent regard for Heinlein, Lovecraft, Asimov, and Tolkien, I also admire in equal degree Moorcock, Ellison, Ballard, etc. At the same time, I frequently disagree with each of them, sometimes quite vehemently. It certainly doesn't prevent me respecting their work or their talents.
Literature (at least anything which really deserves that name) isn't a passive experience; it is very much an interactive one, and the best writers fully expect it to be so. This is how they do engage in (to use the subtitle of that Heinlein biography) dialogue with their times. I'm certain I'm not getting the quotation quite right, but Ellison is fond of citing one which says that a man isn't engaged in writing one book, or one story, or one poem, or even one line at a time; he is engaged in writing down his life, saying "This is where I am today, and this is what it looks like"... and I tend very much to agree with that sentiment. It is this that makes the best writers the most interesting, whether one agrees with them or not.
And speaking of that biography... I find that it does reconfirm impressions I had gathered on this topic from Heinlein's writing overall: to call him sexist or racist is itself an extremely simplistic and (more often than not) simply dead wrong assessment. There's a lot more going on there, and one should not automatically assign such sentiments to Heinlein himself. Sometimes there is some truth to the matter; quite often there is not. Heinlein's attitude on "racial" discrimination was frankly quite heated, but it was most certainly not in support of; he was vehemently opposed to it. He also had little use for those who saw women as in any way inferior to men, certainly when it came to intellect. Again, quite the contrary. Certain elements of such antiquated attitudes are present, yes; though to a much slighter degree than many suppose; and he was always a proponent of women's equality and liberty to develop and improve themselves and their lot. He did, however (at least through much of his life) see a woman competing in the workforce against a man who was supporting a family as unacceptable,
all other things being equal. This was not, however, a position against women as a hard-headed realistic attitude that, in our society, it was men who were the breadwinners, and a man in such a position took precedence over a woman (at least women who had working spouses) because other lives were at stake. Whether he would have seen it differently in a society where this was not the case, I am not sure; but the fact that he seldom made any objection to women working when they were single or their spouse was unable to do so. Again, he tended to be quite supportive of them.
As I said, it wasn't a simple thing, but rather a very complex issue which, frankly, I don't think Heinlein ever quite resolved to his own satisfaction. But to use these labels so broadly, in my opinion, tends more to show a lack of understanding of the man (and his work) rather than a clear perspective based on the facts.
*If what follows comes off as offensive, my apologies. It is not meant as such, but a challenge to this sort of thinking. I add this to make it clear there is no animus toward
you, but rather at this idea itself. This comes from someone who has been in the position of subscribing to that view himself, and learned just how narrow and confining it really is.
