There is a strand of SF, I guess 50’s to 70’s, when a certain misogyny, a male randiness, undercut many of the swashbuckling adventures. The narrator would frequently be salivating over boobs and buttocks and the preferability of a rational and scientific world not based on ‘antisex’ religion, where men can be free to screw whenever and however they want – the ‘whatever’ seems to be strictly limited to buxom females. Heinlein of course would be the prime example, but even superior authors like Robert Silverberg and Frederik Pohl produced work that toys with the pornographic. (And yes, that was an intended snide remark re Heinlein, who I feel sits comfortably with Ayn Rand, Orson Scott Card and other fundamentalists on SF’s rack of shame).
On reading andrew j. offutt’s Messenger From Zhuvastou I was struck by the realization that this SF-of-the-gonads is a particular historical phenomenon no longer possible since feminist analysis exposed it’s narrative strategy. In fact, it is almost impossible to read these works with the light fun and sexy voice originally intended. Yes, in real life we do still encounter men who harbor these notions about women (for example, women like being slapped around a bit), but seeing it in black and white on paper now makes us uncomfortable.
Luckily I found a method of reading Zhuvastou that enabled me to still enjoy some of the fun rambunctiousness a (male heterosexual excessively testosterone driven) reader in 1973 would have experienced: Read it in the voice of Germaine Greer. Somehow the realization that, with her well-developed sense of humor, Greer would probably have laughed at some of the passages with abandon, enabled me to curb the feeling of offense. The other possible reading strategy I applied was less successful - it did not really work to replace the references to bosoms with pecs, and bottoms with shafts. While it turned some of the scenes into delightfully steaming gay fantasies, it also made me realize how ‘male’ my homosexual sensitivity actually is.