I recently skimmed Asimov\u2019s 1969 story \u201cFeminine Intuition,\u201d the second-to-last-written of the Susan Calvin robot stories. (Written about 12 years after the previous one.)<\/p>\r\n
The first three-quarters of the story is full of eye-roll-inducing stuff like this:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\u201c[\u2026] call it \u2018intuitive.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cAn intuitive robot,\u201d someone muttered. \u201cA girl robot?\u201d<\/p>\r\n
A smile made its way about the conference table.<\/p>\r\n
Madarian seized on that. \u201cAll right. A girl robot. Our robots are sexless, of course, and so will this one be, but we always act as though they\u2019re males. We give them male pet names and call them he and him. [\u2026]\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201c[\u2026] One thing the general public believes is that women are not as intelligent as men.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
There was an instant apprehensive look on the face of more than one man at the table and a quick look up and down as though Susan Calvin were still in her accustomed seat.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
A bit later, the first \u201cJane\u201d-model robot is built, with a narrow waist. Two men discuss that design choice:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\u201cDon\u2019t like it. You\u2019ll be bulging her higher up to give the appearance of breasts next, and that\u2019s a rotten idea. If women start getting the notion that robots may look like women, I can tell you exactly the kind of perverse notions they\u2019ll get[\u2026]\u201d<\/p>\r\n
[\u2026] \u201cMaybe you\u2019re right at that. No woman wants to feel replaceable by something with none of her faults.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
When they perfect the Jane series, they get rid of the narrow waist, but the final Jane-5 model \u201cmanaged to possess an air of femininity about herself despite the absence of a single clearly feminine feature. [\u2026] Her arms were held gracefully and somehow the torso managed to give the impression of curving slightly when she turned.\u201d Also, her \u201cvoice was precisely that of a woman; it was a sweet and almost disturbing contralto.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The designer explains why he chose that voice: \u201cI want people to think of her as a woman; to treat her as a woman; to explain<\/em>.\u201d (!!!)<\/p>\r\n
Later, the voice is shown to have been a great idea, as described by the designer, when he takes Jane-5 to a planetology center to learn everything she can about planetology: \u201cevery man in the place stepped back. Scared! [\u2026but] she greeted them routinely. [\u2026] And it came out in this beautiful contralto. [\u2026] One man straightened his tie, and another ran his fingers through his hair. What really got me was that the oldest guy in the place actually checked his fly to make sure it was zipped. [\u2026] All they needed was the voice. She isn\u2019t a robot any more; she\u2019s a girl.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The designer provides further explanation of the voice thing: \u201cListen, men respond to voices. At the most intimate moments, are they looking? It\u2019s the voice in your ear.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\u2026But about 3\/4 of the way through the story, famed robopsychologist Susan Calvin is invited in to solve the story\u2019s central mystery\/puzzle, and she says to some male characters:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\u201cFeminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
And then a bit later:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\u201cIt is a difficult choice sometimes whether to feel revolted at the male sex or merely to dismiss them as contemptible.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nSo I\u2019m not really sure what Asimov was going for here. Calvin, of course, correctly solves this story\u2019s puzzle, as she always does, which might suggest that all the annoyingly sexist stuff in the first 3\/4 of the story was meant to be undermined by Calvin telling the men (and demonstrating) that there\u2019s no such thing as feminine intuition.<\/p>\r\n
And yet\u2026 Susan Calvin and Jane are the only<\/em> on-camera female characters in the story. Jane has only a couple of on-camera lines; mostly she\u2019s described by a man. Calvin doesn\u2019t appear until 3\/4 of the way through. Despite Calvin having been an incredibly respected (and feared) figure at US Robots for decades, apparently the company has no other women employees. There are also apparently no women planetologists.<\/p>\r\n
So even if we give Asimov the benefit of the doubt here and decide that he meant this story to reject all the sexist stuff in the first 3\/4, we\u2019re still left with worldbuilding that results in only one human woman character.<\/p>\r\n
\r\nFor that matter, in this entire book of 31 robot stories (The Complete Robot<\/cite>, an omnibus volume published in 1982), I think there are only 12 on-camera named female characters (distributed among 16 of the stories; the other 15 stories have no female characters):<\/p>\r\n
\r\n
- A girl named Gloria, and Gloria\u2019s obnoxious mother (\u201cRobbie,\u201d 1940)<\/li>\r\n
- A wife named Claire Belmont (\u201cSatisfaction Guaranteed,\u201d 1951)<\/li>\r\n
- A car named Sally and a human woman named Mrs. Hester (\u201cSally,\u201d 1953)<\/li>\r\n
- The abovedescribed female robot, Jane (\u201cFeminine Intuition,\u201d 1969)<\/li>\r\n
- A widow named Avis Lardner (\u201cLight Verse,\u201d 1973)<\/li>\r\n
- Miss, Little Miss, and Congresswoman Li Hsing (\u201cThe Bicentennial Man,\u201d 1976)<\/li>\r\n
- A doctor named Genevieve Renshaw (\u201cThink!\u201d, 1977)<\/li>\r\n
- And of course Susan Calvin (\u201cFeminine Intuition\u201d and nine other stories, 1941-1969). (Calvin also appears briefly as a teenager in \u201cRobbie.\u201d)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n
(Before you ask: yes, there are many more than 12 on-camera named male characters in this book.)<\/p>\r\n
\r\nAddendum:<\/p>\r\n
Imo, Susan Calvin deserves far better than Asimov gave her. (I kind of want to write a detailed rant about his characterization of her, but right now I don\u2019t want to spend enough more time with these stories to type up the relevant bits.)<\/p>\r\n