3 ms·

Every time I re-read the foundation series, I feel like you could take most of the characters, flip a coin to assign a gender and nothing would change.

StrictDabbler 4y ago
This is true. None of Asimov's early male characters have actual gender. Every time he tried to assign gender it was horrible. Susan Calvin as the distant, unfeeling woman who could only be a mother to a robot was one. There was: * the housewife who fell in love with her robot * the mother who saved a robot instead of her biological child and was killed by her husband * the woman who poisoned her genius husband after he created a temporary time-travel technology because she didn't believe he'd ever get the credit * the wife who ruins her husband's chance to hook up with a real bombshell on Mars by showing up a little too early with her mother * about five shrewish mothers who didn't trust robots around their children and were proven wrong * "Little Miss", whose only achievement is being open-minded about her "male" robot being sentient * Several stories about "intuitive robots" who had to be made feminine so that men would bother talking to them. I still remember the cringe-worthy line: “Listen, men respond to voices. At the most intimate moments, are they looking? It’s the voice in your ear.” And I'm just going off the top of my head here. There's so much more. Then Asimov took a three-decade break from fiction. When he came back every explicit woman was some kind of super-powered bimbo. Asimov was at his best when you couldn't sense any gender. His notion of gender was deeply unsettling.
- apocalypstyx 4y ago
  Having read Asimov's autobiographical inserts in anthologies such as Before the Golden Age and The Early Asimov, I get the idea that young (as in prior to the age of 30) Asimov suffered from a problem similar to many male mangakas: their exposure to girls/women is so minimal as to be almost non-existent (in the case of mangakas, of course, this comes primarily from the work schedule), and with such a paucity of experience, they flounder to construct such characters except within the bounds of extreme stereotype.
  - StrictDabbler 4y ago
    I've read those inserts too. They're a little convenient. Pretend he's sincere. He then spent thirty years being a notorious... I struggle for a description. Womanizer? Hound? He called himself a dirty old man and a lecher, and claimed he had been one from the age of fifteen. He wrote a book called "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man". If he weren't already dead years ago he'd have been metooed into the Earth's core. He was literally famous for pinching women's butts when they didn't expect or want it. And he came back from that in the 80s and had learned nothing about women. His female characters are all sex and smugness. I suppose that's common in the mangakas too. Few of them learn how to deal with women as human beings instead of sexual objects.
    - apocalypstyx 4y ago
      One can be lecherous from the age of 15 onward and never actually get to know any women, so the two aren't mutually exclusive (actually, the first might contribute to the problem of the second.) Oh, I know all too well of his numerous sexual assaults. When it gets to the stage that Harlan Ellison makes it a point to get between him and women as they're going up a set of stairs...yeah not great, not great at all. I don't want to downplay it in the least.

StrictDabbler 4y ago

This is true. None of Asimov's early male characters have actual gender. Every time he tried to assign gender it was horrible. Susan Calvin as the distant, unfeeling woman who could only be a mother to a robot was one. There was: * the housewife who fell in love with her robot * the mother who saved a robot instead of her biological child and was killed by her husband * the woman who poisoned her genius husband after he created a temporary time-travel technology because she didn't believe he'd ever get the credit * the wife who ruins her husband's chance to hook up with a real bombshell on Mars by showing up a little too early with her mother * about five shrewish mothers who didn't trust robots around their children and were proven wrong * "Little Miss", whose only achievement is being open-minded about her "male" robot being sentient * Several stories about "intuitive robots" who had to be made feminine so that men would bother talking to them. I still remember the cringe-worthy line: “Listen, men respond to voices. At the most intimate moments, are they looking? It’s the voice in your ear.” And I'm just going off the top of my head here. There's so much more. Then Asimov took a three-decade break from fiction. When he came back every explicit woman was some kind of super-powered bimbo. Asimov was at his best when you couldn't sense any gender. His notion of gender was deeply unsettling.

apocalypstyx 4y ago
Having read Asimov's autobiographical inserts in anthologies such as Before the Golden Age and The Early Asimov, I get the idea that young (as in prior to the age of 30) Asimov suffered from a problem similar to many male mangakas: their exposure to girls/women is so minimal as to be almost non-existent (in the case of mangakas, of course, this comes primarily from the work schedule), and with such a paucity of experience, they flounder to construct such characters except within the bounds of extreme stereotype.
- StrictDabbler 4y ago
  I've read those inserts too. They're a little convenient. Pretend he's sincere. He then spent thirty years being a notorious... I struggle for a description. Womanizer? Hound? He called himself a dirty old man and a lecher, and claimed he had been one from the age of fifteen. He wrote a book called "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man". If he weren't already dead years ago he'd have been metooed into the Earth's core. He was literally famous for pinching women's butts when they didn't expect or want it. And he came back from that in the 80s and had learned nothing about women. His female characters are all sex and smugness. I suppose that's common in the mangakas too. Few of them learn how to deal with women as human beings instead of sexual objects.
  - apocalypstyx 4y ago
    One can be lecherous from the age of 15 onward and never actually get to know any women, so the two aren't mutually exclusive (actually, the first might contribute to the problem of the second.) Oh, I know all too well of his numerous sexual assaults. When it gets to the stage that Harlan Ellison makes it a point to get between him and women as they're going up a set of stairs...yeah not great, not great at all. I don't want to downplay it in the least.