was Robert Heinlein a Dom?

[sinderella]

:blurp_ani

i sometimes think this when i read his books, since the protagonists are men who take control of the situation, and the women in their lives. one story where this is most evident is in "Farnham's Freehold", a post-apocalyptic tale of a dystopian society where women are valued for their breeding and sexual abilities. while individuals of higher castes control lower-order people with whips, the element of D/s is clearly apparent when Hugh Farnham, the hero, meets his 'bedwarmer", Kitten. Kitten had no name until Hugh named her. usually she just goes by "hey you", and was flattered and touched when Hugh gave her a name. she was given to him by the people in charge as a gift, and she existed to please him, and others, at their whim. each bedwarmer, or 'slut', has her own rank according to her abilities and function: bed slut, kitchen slut, nursery slut, etc... They speak in their own language, which is a passive voice and where they use protocols to distinguish themselves as beneath those they serve, referring to themselves as "This one", in answer to a question like "Why are you here?" she would say "This one exists only to serve you.", that sort of thing.

the promise and intrigue between Hugh and Kitten made me wonder if he were a Dom/Master in his personal life. i fell in love with him when i was 11 and read my first RAH story. hmm maybe that was the little subbie in me.

are there any other fans of his, and if so, have you pondered this as well? thank you.

[sinderella]

...plus, in his books, his main characters referred to their lovers as "pet" or "babygirl"...anyway i think he might have been...as a writer myself, i know that you write what you know, and this seems to be a prevailing thread in many of his books. plus he was called the GrandMASTER of Science Fiction. :cool: Robert Heinlein shunned the spotlight and lived quietly, which made him all the more mysterious and appealing. i guess his secrets died with him...

(oops, i just realized i may have posted this in the wrong section - sorry about that)

[his_girl_l]

i think he was just a libertine.

But i do know what you mean, in a lot of his writing he seems to view women as beautiful amusing pets who need to be taken care of but also gently kept in line.

Some of the quotes in the middle of "Time enough for Love" could be interpreted with a bdsm twist, but i can't remember any off the top of my head.

i too remember reading Farnham's Freehold when i was about 12 and being very excited by it.

Lots of other sexual themes reoccur in his writing too. Incest for one, and free love.

[angela_shy]

wow - i was thinking the same thing a few weeks ago!

[leah06]

In I Will Fear No Evil the protagonist undergoes a brain transplant from his old withered male body into a beautiful young female body, and hir personality shifts from aggressive alpha male to manipulative female who gets hir way by acting as if s/he were extremely submissive. S/he also experiences hir first female orgasm via a bare-bottom spanking, and concludes that female orgasm is a lot better than male orgasm.

In Friday, the female enhanced human protagonist is gang-raped and enjoys it with one of the perpetrators, who in the end turns out to be another enhanced human who only raped her because he "had" to - and they fall in love.

In Stranger In A Strange Land, the Heinlein stand-in, Jubal Harshaw, lives with a non-sexual harem of beautiful young women who alternate serving him when he shouts "Front". Eventually these women become a sexual harem for the putative protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, who dominates everyone he comes in contact with through a combination of charisma and Martian magical abilities, including telepathy and the ability to alter someone's physical state through his mind alone.

In Glory Road, the male protagonist keeps the female Queen Of The Universe in line by threatening to spank her with her own sword - but apparently she has a hard limit about being spanked with HIS sword, God knows why.

Hope this helps.

[angela_shy]

goodness rachel that was thorough work...

i remember I Will Fear No Evil... many years ago lol... i wasn't hooked but thinking now i need to give him another chance.

[fetishdj]

You do, however, have to consider other aspects. It may be that he was merely expressing the misogynistic views popular at the time of his upbringing and using them to add versimilitude to his settings.

A lot of Starship Troopers (the book, not the film but both are great) reads like the journal of a soldier during the second world war (down to the antagonism between the navy and ground forces) and I suspect that he was writing about some of his own war experiences (I have no idea if he served or not or when but it seems likely that he did given his age) in the same way that Gene Roddenbury allegedly based a lot of the concepts in Star Trek on his time on a submarine in the navy. Now, if I remember my BDSM history 101 properly, didn't the old guard leather community arise from serving military officers during the 1950's? So there is a link there...

Of course, given the period he lived in it is unlikely that there will be any evidence of his sexuality or preferences for us to find... he certainly (as far as I know) did not 'come out' publically.

Its one of those interesting historic trivia things like the 'Robert E Howard committed suicide because he was gay and couldn't handle it' theories (something is made of this in Robert Silverberg's 'to the land of the living' when Robert Howard and HP Lovecraft meet up with Gilgamesh and Howard is making cow eyes at the muscular sumerian hero...

[TheDeSade]

The King is Dead, Long Live RAH.

I too, have been an almost life long fan of RAH. If you have not read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" then you have missed a lot of really introspective work by RAH. One of the main characters has often been theorized to be autobiographical. The aged professor who works with the three main characters to engineer a revolution is, in my opinion, RAH himself. In reading the book, you get an understanding of RAH and his whole attitude toward government and society. By his own admission he considers himself a "rational anarchist". I suspect that this view extended to his private sexual life as well.

Was he a dominant? I think so. Would he have titled himself as such. I am not so sure. I don't think he did or would admit to participating in BDSM lifestyle actions. His wife, a strong woman in her own right, always supported him in his plans and work. She was a partner more than anything else.

My only regret is that I never got meet the man. I never had the opportunity to hear him speak, visit his home or just listen to him discourse on politics or religion.

I have often wondered if I have it in myself to do the necessary research to derive from all of his books and his non-fiction writings and speeches, a sort of "Guide to Life and Living" .

TDS

PS great thread. Lets keep it going and do some really in depth stuff with his books. I am always up to re-visit the ones I haven't read in years.

[sinderella]

i often thought Lazarus Long was another one of Robert Heinlein's 'alter egos'...here are some quotes from my favorite part of 'Time Enough For Love' - the Notebooks of Lazarus Long...

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.

Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.

Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.

Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.

Courage is the compliment of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

anyway i think all of his characters are fascinating men, no doubt.

[TheDeSade]

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

.

This is perhaps my favorite quote from all the RAH characters. It always appealed to me even as a teenager and I sort of adopted it as my own creedo. To that end I have tried to be the sort of person the RAH describes with this quote. So far, the only one I haven't actually performed is planning an invasion, unless you count being a professional fire fighter and officer.