By David Futrelle
The famously and rather ludicrously prolific science fiction and popular science writer Isaac Asimov — who claimed to have written or edited some 500 books — was born a century ago this month, and the occasion has inspired tributes in a variety of languages.
But there’s an uneasy tone to some of these tributes, because this longtime sci fi hero, who died in 1992, had a dark side hidden in plain sight — he was known not only as a tireless prose machine but also as a man who regularly, and enthusiastically groped women and sometimes tried to force them to kiss him.
Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women by the pussy; Asimov liked to grab and pinch women’s asses. Indeed, as Stephanie Zwan has documented, he was so well-known for this behavior that he was once asked to deliver a speech at a science fiction convention on “The Positive Power of Posterior Pinching.” While Asimov declined, partly because of the hassle of finding women who would consent to appear on stage with him so he could demonstrate his technique on them, he did suggest that he might change his mind “if the posteriors in question were of particularly compelling interest.”
Normally, of course, Asimov didn’t ask permission before pinching, or doing anything else; as he once joked to fellow science fiction luminary Frederick Pohl that, using his particular technique, “you get slapped a lot, but you get laid a lot, too.”
Within the science fiction community Asimov’s behavior was treated (at least by men) as little more than a sort of side effect of his affable personality — like a tendency to make bad puns, which might occasion both groans and laughs. Indeed, it was his reputation as a basically harmless lech that allowed him to get away with routine sexual harassment and assault for decades.
As biographer Alec Nevala-Lee has noted, Asimov’s
reputation as a groper became a running joke among science fiction fans. The writer and editor Judith Merril recalled that Asimov was known in the 1940s as “the man with a hundred hands,” and that he “apparently felt obliged to leer, ogle, pat, and proposition as an act of sociability.” …
It was all framed as nothing but good fun, as were his interactions with women once his success as an author allowed him to proceed with greater impunity. He writes in his memoirs of his custom of “hugging all the young ladies” at his publisher’s office, which was viewed indulgently by such editors as Timothy Seldes of Doubleday, who said, “All you want to do is kiss the girls and make collect calls. You’re welcome to that, Asimov.” In reality, his attentions were often unwanted, and women found excuses to be away from the building whenever he was scheduled to appear.
After his celebrity increased, his behavior at conventions became more egregious, as the editor Edward L. Ferman reminisced of a fan gathering in the late 1950s: “Asimov … instead of shaking my date’s hand, shook her left breast.”
Another Great Man who turns out to have been a massive shit.
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@kupo
It also seems to vary arbitrarily from person to person. I know several commenters have trouble posting links but others have no problem, with no known explanation.
@gijoel
I love the comic, but who’s Ernest?
@QuantumInc
No, I’ve met many, many people who weren’t feminists.
That’s why I’m an ambassador of a government that is in exile.
Where is this place that allows you to get through life without meeting anyone who isn’t a feminist? Cause I’d like to go there!
I disagree.
For example, to some extent, focusing on the horrific actions that Hitler took does provide a very shallow take and an excuse not to take a deeper look into the culture of antisemitism and bigotry that developed in Germany (and in many other European countries) at the time.
However, having a ‘poster child’ of the bad behavior is a good way to raise people’s awareness of shitty things that are being committed. We’re social creatures, and having a ‘bad guy’ sticks more easily in our heads than a discussion of vast, nebulous societal patterns. Saying that a government is starting to resemble Hitler’s is an easy shorthand and a good way to make people sit up and listen. It shouldn’t be the end of the discussion, but it is a good starting point.
On top of that, I think it’s important to showcase examples of bad behavior. Being faced with our “heroes” doing shitting things teaches us that even people who have some good aspects to themselves (they make good art, etc) can take harmful and abusive actions, and that we shouldn’t let admiration of others in our lives get in the way of addressing harmful actions. Being exposed to cases of “normal” people sexually assaulting others teaches us that sexual assault is not something that is committed entirely by monsters lurking in dark alleyways, but by people in our day-to-day lives. The more the myths of sexual assault are erroded, the easier it is to address the rape culture around it.
@KindaSortaHarmless
Ernest Hemingway I think. I’m not sure what he’s done that puts him in the League of Disappointing Authors, but it was probably his attitude to war. Google isn’t giving me much.
For those following the RWA kerfuffle at home, the president, Daemon Suede, stepped down.
http://www.rwa.org/Online/News/2020/Announcement_from_the_RWA_Board_of_Directors.aspx” rel=”nofollow
“Yes, old men sometimes have reduced inhibitions and can assault people, but many old men somehow manage not to be molesters.”
The same point has been made about “he’s a teenager, they have bad impulse control” defenses of sexual assault: most teenage boys manage to reach adulthood without committing assault.
“Reactionnary can also appeal to the dead person’s legacy to attack feminism as some sort of joyless movement hellbent to destroying all the people you admire and love, a “no fun brigate” and a new form of moral and sexual puritan. ”
They do that anyway. One of the standard counter-attacks to feminist critiques of sexual harassment is “Don’t you realize flirting is fun? Why are you such repressed prudes?”
“Good people don’t seek fame or wealth. They just want to settle down with family and friends.”
Nonsense. I know people who seek wealth simply because it’s easier to make it through life with money and without (the person in question is not a 1 percenter but by most people’s standards she’s rich). And Asimov, as far as I know, didn’t set out seeking either — he got them as a result of his work. Doesn’t make his conduct with women any better.
I’d still recommend Asimov to someone I thought would like him, just as I would Lovecraft. But that’s a personal decision, I have no argument with people who’d reject either man or anyone else for their personal lives.
Sarah Karloff once said the thing she’s proudest of with her dad is that nobody tells stories like this about him. I didn’t quite get it when I heard her speak, but stories like this make me appreciate why that mattered.
@rv97
I’m not even going to say what I think should be done about repressive religions, and especially evangelical christianity given its major (almost exclusive role) in putting and keeping us on the path to global extinction via Global Warming; because it would violate comment policy.
Needless to say I am of the mind to ban it as well, or at the very least pass laws prohibiting Hate Speech so that only the verses that deal with love and tolerance can be printed or preached.
@Diego Duarte
Broadly agreed. I do think that the Innuendo Studios video on “The Ship of Theseus” offers a cautionary point about the abstraction and essentializing that can occur when engaged in public shaming. These are not always wrong to do and can be useful shorthands, but it’s important to consider the fallout when doing so.
@Katamount
Definitelt agree on that, given the propensity and bad faith in which Nazis try to hijack accountability to publicly shame figures that oppose their goals. Also given that people do get it wrong sometimes.
*Stephanie Zvan, not Zwan.
@ Victorious Parasol:
O Embleer Frith yes
@ DMDR
Asimov was a shit but gloating about how he suffered and died from AIDS is icky.
My grandfather introduced me to Asimov’s work. He was older than Asimov, and also a “product of his time”, but he would never have touched a woman without her express permission. He died two years after Asimov, and I’m glad he went not knowing that the writer he admired so much was a lecherous creep.
That being said, @DMDR: Your hope that Asimov died a painful death from AIDS is disgusting. Why wish that on anyone?
The AIDS bullshit (wtAf????) Was posted by @Mr_Devanny, not DMDR.
And yeah, Mr_Devanny, what the hell. I don’t want anyone to die like that, no matter who they are.
Your comment was freaking TERRIBLE.
Uhm, guys, the fellow you want to smack upside the head about the AIDS comment is Mr_Devanny, one post up from DMDR’s post.
Poor dude mentioned in that post, though. Hopefully he found peace on the other side.
And anyone with religious leanings who wants to see what fellow members of their faith are doing about the problems of the world, go over to the Patheos blog group and browse what they say. Assorted progressive Christian, Judaism, Buddhist, and Pagan bloggers (and many more) all discuss the problems and limitations of their faiths, as well as how to apply said faiths in a polarized world.
Great antidote for when the ‘religion is the sole root of all evil; humanity/society would’ve been all rainbows and fluffy critters if religion had never been invented’ vibe gets to be too much to bear.
ETA: ninja’d by Rhuu about who posted the AIDS thing.
Patheos is here: https://www.patheos.com/. Original link not working?
@Rhuu
I think the original comment also violates the comments policy, but I’m not sure.
@Diego Duarte
Sadly I came across someone who thought feminism was antithetical to Judaism while lurking at /r/inceltears’ chat. This is supposed to be a leftist subreddit too, but I guess the chat is a different story.
It’s definitely not the first time someone has pissed me off because of their repressive beliefs. This has applied to mostly the Abrahamic religions so far.
@Grace Thank you for that link, it was a very good read.
I take the point that women authors can be terrible people too. Statistically less likely to be rapists, but there’s no shortage of ways to be a bad human being.
I guess I have the same struggle as most of us right now- how to engage with the world at all without letting the bad completely sap my will to live. All I really feel SAFE doing anymore is hiding in bed with my dog.
@rv97
*deep sigh*
How many times do we need to say this?
Not all people of a religion have the same beliefs. I’m Jewish and I’m a feminist, and I know lots of other Jewish feminists as well. The same is true of any other religion. You’re not accomplishing anything other than pissing people off by repeatedly bashing all religions.
Yeah, there are a ton of good people involved in religion. And as for Judaism specifically, there are megatons of Jewish women who are feminists. In Canada the rates of feminism among Jewish women are higher than the rates among women as a whole.
But this also raises the question, “So what?”
We know that there are anti-feminists. We know that some of them are religious and some aren’t. Cassie Jaye and that faux-Marxist who thinks women should be grateful for sexual harassment are both, so far as I know, non-religious (in the first case) and anti-religious (in the second case) and are among the worst anti-feminists David has written about.
So… what?
Are we supposed to downplay Jewish anti-feminists because there are fewer of them? Are we supposed to counter-attack atheist/agnostic feminists harder because we expect better of them? Are we supposed to pour our feminists efforts into confronting the Christian anti-feminists because in a Christian-majority nation the Christian anti-feminists are a majority of anti-feminists? I mean, is that even weird or unexpected?
Religious people have done bad things, but sexism is sexism. I fight it wherever I find it. Why stop – or start! – with religious anti-feminism?
And I mean that seriously. Because if you look at what David documents every day (and I’m trusting him here, because I wouldn’t be able to read all those terrible threads and cling to even the minimal sanity I have), articulations of sexism correlate much more strongly with articulations of white supremacy than articulations of religion.
So… if we’re going to go on about roots of anti-feminism and terribleness and all that, wouldn’t we be talking about eradicating white people not eradicating religions?
But of course we don’t talk about eradicating white people. In fact, we’re not for white genocide at all! I resent even the implication of anti-whiteness: some of my best body parts belong to a white people!
Eradicating religion doesn’t seem quite the same as eradicating a race, because nowadays we can more easily imagine eradicating religion through means other than murdering adherents, while eradicating a race is still imagined as something that could only be accomplished through mass death.
But this isn’t true for every person. Different people have different memories, and until very recently there was little difference. The Bible itself describes the genocide of people for their religion (“worshippers of Baal”) and right through 1950 I can’t think of an anti-religion movement that wasn’t characterized by murder and threat of murder.
Now, I do certainly oppose credulous epistemologies, and opposing those can have an effect on religion. And I also oppose making law that imposes religious mandates on people not in that religion by coopting the secular government. But I don’t actually oppose anyone going to temple or calling out the sh’ma or celebrating an eid or sermonizing on a sunday.
In short, I oppose theocracy rather than religion.
It’s a pretty easy distinction to make, why not try?
@rv97
You need to stop. I’m gonna have to start wearing a mouth guard because of how much you make me grind my teeth with your comments.
@Crip Dyke
Just want to say that was a great post—you have really been killing it lately!