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james_davis_nicollIf you were going to nominate one bit of SF from the 1970s as the most egregious example of unself-conscious sexism [1], which story would you pick?
My nominee: Hawksbill Station, a 1978 novel by Robert Silverberg (although it is based on an earlier shorter work). Our hero states at one point that the reason he dates women is because his cleaning won't do itself.
(Of course this being Silverberg, this may be characterization, like the bit in Across a Billion Years where the protagonist goes on at one point about how some of his best friends are androids but they can't really be expected to match the best humans can offer and having state sanctions to encourage equal or at least less unequal than in the past employment of androids is silly. The protagonist is by the most amazing coincidence human).
1: Which is to say, something that was not written in outraged reaction to Women's Lib.
My nominee: Hawksbill Station, a 1978 novel by Robert Silverberg (although it is based on an earlier shorter work). Our hero states at one point that the reason he dates women is because his cleaning won't do itself.
(Of course this being Silverberg, this may be characterization, like the bit in Across a Billion Years where the protagonist goes on at one point about how some of his best friends are androids but they can't really be expected to match the best humans can offer and having state sanctions to encourage equal or at least less unequal than in the past employment of androids is silly. The protagonist is by the most amazing coincidence human).
1: Which is to say, something that was not written in outraged reaction to Women's Lib.
