• evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I like a lot of what ive read from him, and he had a lot of views that were ahead of his time (on social issues as well as scientific), but he absolutely could not write women. You could read full length books of his without a single named female character.

    • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Yeah, that’s not great, but honestly, I feel like it’s better than a lot of alternatives. It feels even worse when the women in the book don’t pass the Bechdel test, or worse, end up in r/menwritingwomen posts.

      • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        Yeah, I think he actually admitted that he didn’t really know any women when he first started writing until he met and then married his wife, so he avoided writing them. It is weird though cause his writing style (from what ive read) is not very character focused, anyway, so a lot of his male characters could easily just be declared female and no one would spot the difference.

        • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          I wonder if he just assumed that his own bias would affect the gender of the characters or if that just wasn’t a consideration. It would have been pretty cool if he had used gender-neutral names to the point where it was never clear, but also didn’t matter anyway.