Isaac Asimov was a feminist. At least, in his own mind, Isaac Asimov was a feminist. Isaac Asimov was certainly one of the Big Three writers of Science Fiction’s Golden age (along with Robert Heinlein - and I’m not even going to start on that foul hebephile* – and Arthur C. Clarke), and was my favourite author throughout my childhood.
But he was sure as hell not a feminist.
What is weird is that he really, deeply believed himself to be one. He wrote quite a lot about it in the second volume of his autobiography In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978 [Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-15544-1. LCCN 79003685. OCLC 5846307]. And it’s true, he did believe in equality for women. He wrote, for instance, of one occasion when he was on a panel where they tried to define a scientist’s ideal mate, and came up with “A scientist’s wife should…”.
Dr. Asimov complained “What if the scientist had a husband?”
And their shocked faces told him they thought he meant the scientist was gay. As he wrote, well if he was, so what?
But Asimov exclaimed “The scientist could be a woman!”
He was surprised that this happened even though two of the panel (made up of scientists) were women. He shouldn’t have been, but that’s yet another story – I’ll get to that one in a later post, it’s tricky one.
But anyway, he really thought we was a feminist. And yet he routinely sexually assaulted women. He described as “Suave” what I, all other feminists, 99.9% of women in general, and even most men, for non-deity’s sake, would describe as “sexual assault”. Asimov was infamous for groping women’s bums, for grabbing, embracing, and kissing them (on the lips) without consent, and a shitload of other stuff that would, I'm very happy to say, get him arrested today (maybe).
And yet, he really believed he was a feminist. I suppose that’s denial. His daughter Robyn survived him. I don’t know if she’s still alive, but I hope so. Isaac really loved his daughter. I’d love to ask her about this.
He’s still the great author he was. He remains, I think, the only author ever to publish books that span every major category of the Dewey Decimal Classification except for 100, philosophy and psychology (although Asimov did write several essays about psychology, and forewords for the books The Humanist Way and In Pursuit of Truth, which were classified in the 100s, none of his own books were classified in that category).
But we can never forget, that self-proclaimed “feminist” or not, he treated women like objects.
*OK, one day I’ll cover that [Update: see "Robert Anson Heinlein and Hebephilia"].