Editing Robert A. Heinlein (section)

===Sexuality===
For Heinlein, personal liberation included [[sexual liberation]], and [[free love]] was a major subject of his writing starting in 1939, with ''For Us, the Living''. During his early period, Heinlein's writing for younger readers needed to take account of both editorial perceptions of sexuality in his novels, and potential perceptions among the buying public; as critic William H. Patterson has put it, his dilemma was "to sort out what was really objectionable from what was only excessive over-sensitivity to imaginary librarians".<ref>William H Patterson jnr's ''Introduction'' to ''The Rolling Stones'', Baen: New York, 2009 edition., p. 3.</ref>

By his middle period, sexual freedom and the elimination of sexual jealousy became a major theme; for instance, in ''[[Stranger in a Strange Land]]'' (1961), the progressively minded but sexually conservative reporter, Ben Caxton, acts as a [[foil (literature)|dramatic foil]] for the less parochial characters, [[Jubal Harshaw]] and Valentine Michael Smith (Mike). Another of the main characters, Jill, is homophobic, and says that "nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped it's partly her own fault."<ref name="theguardian.com">{{Cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jan/12/heinlein-hugo-stranger-strange-land |title=Robert Heinlein's softer side |first=Sam |last=Jordison |work=[[The Guardian]] |location=London |agency=Books Blog |date=January 12, 2009 |access-date=July 30, 2014 |archive-date=July 14, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714175725/http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/jan/12/heinlein-hugo-stranger-strange-land |url-status=live }}</ref>

According to Gary Westfahl,

{{blockquote|Heinlein is a problematic case for feminists; on the one hand, his works often feature strong female characters and vigorous statements that women are equal to or even superior to men; but these characters and statements often reflect hopelessly stereotypical attitudes about typical female attributes. It is disconcerting, for example, that in ''Expanded Universe'' Heinlein calls for a society where all lawyers and politicians are women, essentially on the grounds that they possess a mysterious feminine practicality that men cannot duplicate.<ref>Gary Westfahl, "Superladies in Waiting: How the Female Hero Almost Emerges in Science Fiction", ''Foundation'', vol. 58, 1993, pp. 42–62.</ref>}}

In books written as early as 1956, Heinlein dealt with incest and the sexual nature of children. Many of his books including ''[[Time for the Stars]]'', ''[[Glory Road]]'', ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'', and ''[[The Number of the Beast (novel)|The Number of the Beast]]'' dealt explicitly or implicitly with incest, sexual feelings and relations between adults, children, or both.<ref name="The Heinlein Society">{{cite web |url=http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/Parenting.html |title=The Heinlein Society |publisher=The Heinlein Society |access-date=May 16, 2012 |archive-date=July 8, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120708052832/http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/Parenting.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> The treatment of these themes include the romantic relationship and eventual marriage of two characters in ''[[The Door into Summer]]'' who met when one was a 30-year-old engineer and the other was an 11-year-old girl, and who eventually married when time-travel rendered the girl an adult while the engineer aged minimally, or the more overt intra-familial incest in ''[[To Sail Beyond the Sunset]]'' and ''[[Time Enough for Love]]''. Heinlein often posed situations where the nominal purpose of sexual taboos was irrelevant to a particular situation, due to future advances in technology. For example, in ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'' Heinlein describes a brother and sister (Joe and Llita) who were mirror twins, being complementary diploids with entirely disjoint genomes, and thus not at increased risk for unfavorable gene duplication due to [[consanguinity]]. In this instance, Llita and Joe were props used to explore the concept of incest, where the usual objection to incest—heightened risk of genetic defect in their children—was not a consideration.<ref>Bright, Robin. "Self Begetting Ourobouros: The Science Fiction of Robert A. Heinlein". page 167. Harvard</ref> Peers such as [[L. Sprague de Camp]] and [[Damon Knight]] have commented critically on Heinlein's portrayal of incest and pedophilia in a lighthearted and even approving manner.<ref name="The Heinlein Society"/> Diane Parkin-Speer suggests that Heinlein's intent seems more to provoke the reader and to question sexual norms than to promote any particular sexual agenda.<ref>Parkin-Speer, Diane. "Robert A. Heinlein: The Novelist as Preacher". ''Extrapolation'' 20, no. 3 (1979): 214–222.</ref>