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Originally Posted by radius
The context of the quote that you seem to be ignoring is that most of Heinlein's protagonists believe that a) you need to be responsible for your own choices and actions, and b) you must take the universe as it is and not as you wish it to be. So in the above quote, the character is saying that behaving a certain way may make it more likely that a rapist may choose you as a target instead of someone else (ie: the world as it is) but this is entirely separate from saying that it is legally or morally your fault if that happens (ie: the world as it should be).
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A lot, unfortunately, is culturally determined.
Consider the curious institution of the duenna in South America. It seems to be changing now, but at one point, Latin American men were taught that they were hot blooded and passionate, and left alone with a nubile young woman, would be unable to resist her charms and would have their way with her. Women were taught that they were feminine, weak, and passive, and would be unable to resist the male's attentions. The culture got around the obvious possible problems by making sure that young unmarried women weren't
left alone with men. They were accompanied by the duenna, an older married female relative or friend, who served as a chaperon. (A Hispanic friend informed me that was mostly an upper class phenomenon, which made sense for various reasons.)
Social controls are always present. The question is where they reside. Our culture assumes men can behave themselves, and that the needed controls will be internal. Latino culture assumed men
couldn't control themselves, and the controls needed to be external.
You can make a case that the Latinos ultimately got it from the Arabs, as Moorish Arabs conquered and dominated a good chunk of Spain, till their advance was finally stopped by the Franks under Charles Martel. The burka of Arab countries stems from the same underlying assumptions - men can't control themselves, and women must avoid giving any provocation.
The issues get thorny indeed. There was an interesting case in WWII, when hundreds of thousands of US GIs were bivouacked in Britain, waiting for the Joint Chiefs to select D-Day and they would invade across the English Channel. High Command got a lot of complaints from one British village about the behavior of the GIs in a nearby encampment. The girls claimed the GIs were "pushy" and "sex crazed". The GIs thought the girls were prudes or whores.
A little investigation revealed what was going on. A GI would take a village girl on a date. They would like each other, and things would go well. He would escort her home, and try to kiss her good night.
In Britain, at the time, the kiss was a specifically
erotic act that did not occur until
much later in the relationship. The boy though he was just saying "That was fun. I like you! Let's get together again!" The girl though she had to either scream and run, or get ready for sex. A step in the mating behavior chain was in a different order in Britain than in the US, and endless confusion resulted. And this was between two peoples with a common language and a common history till and hundred and fity years or so previously.
Now consider the potentials for disaster between more divergent cultures. You can see any number of examples just reading the daily papers. An awful lot of rape cases come from precisely such crossed signals, with behavior being interpreted in ways not intended.
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In the case of Starship Troopers, I don't believe that Heinlein thought that was any kind of ideal basis for society at all. In fact, in the novel itself I think one of the characters says that they stick with it because it works, not because it has any kind of theoretical basis for good government (again, take the universe as you find it...) I don't see any connection to Scientology personally.
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Nor do I. RAH knew Hubbard, and credited him with introducing him to another major story form -- "The man who learned better", but was never involved in Dianetics. (You have to cast your gaze at A.E. Van Vogt for that.)
There has been a lot of powder burned over just what the government in Starship Troopers
was, with one group claiming it was a military dictatorship. I thinks it's a bit more complex than that.
What we do know is that rather before ST there was a major war, but it's not clear either side actually "won". What seems to have occurred is that the stresses destabilized both sides, and the governments collapsed. The returning veterans filled the power vacuum and restored order, with the major issue being that they more or less trusted each other, but no one else. So to have a say in how things were run, you had to be a fellow vet.
The government Johnny Rico lives under is a democracy, but suffrage is not universal. You don't get the franchise because you exist -- you
earn it by successfully completing a term of government service. That service does not have to be military. Indeed, Johnny finds himself in the MI after his other choices are rejected because he isn't qualified. (A personnel officer looks at his school transcript and bluntly asks why he hasn't studied something
useful...)
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Don't forget that there are many other kind of societies in RAH's stories as well. Some are slave-based. Some are quasi-monarchies. There is at least one theocracy. And so on...
How is this any different from, say, Margaret Atwood's work?
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It isn't, really.
_Stranger In A Strange Land_ is not an entirely successful book. It was written over a period of years in about four different attempts, as RAH tried to find a form that fir the story he was trying to tell. What he settled on was essentially Voltaire's Candide. It shares a characteristic with _Starship Troopers_. RAH was brought up in the Midwestern Bible Belt, and one way to read his work is to see it as RAH systematically examining the assumptions he was raised in and saying "does this make sense?" Often, his answer is "No, it doesn't."
His possible alternatives may not make sense either, but he at least asked the questions.
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Dennis