LGBT/Book Review: TWET--Asking For It And, Why Lesbians Are Considered Harmless

 The Wrong End of Time by John Brunner, page 35.
 
Good news! I have recently acquired two more books by John Brunner, Born Under Mars (1967), and The Stardroppers (1972). Now we can find out if his earlier books had the same homophobic/homoerotic fixations as The Wrong End of Time. I would also like to acquire The Atlantic Abomination, another earlier book, because knowing what I know of Mr. Brunner's literary obsessions, the use of that word is rather interesting...

But first, let's get back to the present book. Chapter IV introduces us to another character, Lora Turpin, the love interest for psychic Danty, who is also the daughter of Soviet agent Shecklov's handler in the states.

Lora Turpin had all she could take, and said so to her mother. Her mother, with her usual infuriating white satin calmness--out of a bottle with White Satin on the label--called her a misbegotton moron and suggested that radiation must have affected the ovum from which she was conceived. 

It's not often in this book that Brunner makes jokes, unless the joke is that people are gay, I guess? But the White Satin one I actually found amusing, and not sad that the author can't come out even to himself.
Lora has a big fight with her mother, about why she has to share a bedroom with her brother while the "Canadian" (who is actually the Soviet agent) is staying with them. She storms out and grabs "a hovercar going anywhere."

...and what was more she was forbidden to ride the hoverline, which was why she did it when she was in a bad temper.

I would have guessed that Lora was supposed to be about 15 or 16, but the novel states that she is 18. And I believe her brother is a few years older, the way he is written. She doesn't seem to have a job or go to school, and they have a housekeeper, so she doesn't keep the house. And in this overcrowded world, she still lives with her parents, and they apparently can forbid her from riding the hoverlines. (I wonder what would happen if they tried to punish her, or kick her out. They don't seem to care about doing either, though.) Her grandmother, her mother's mother, also lives with her, but no one of the older generations seems to care much about being involved with either Lora or her brother Peter, except for her grandmother's need to complain about everyone in the family, mostly to her son-in-law, whom she also complains about.
There is also something very disturbing about the way that Lora is written, in the very next paragraph from that quoted above. See if you can spot it:

This time it didn't lead to the anticipated result.  Naturally, because she was very pretty, several men leered at her, but they were all reeky ancients, at least forty, and the only hand that did try stroking her bare waist belonged to a fat mannish woman who got off at the second halt. 

So now we've got our first and only lesbian in this book! But more disturbing is the implication that Lora wanted to be touched by strangers on the hoverline, as long as they weren't "reeky ancients"--as long as they were young enough, and as long as they were men.
The book says she wanted to pick up a boy, since she "hadn't had a boy for over a week." It talks about her wearing a "play top," whatever that is, and her "crotch-zip shorts." (Does the author not know that almost ALL shorts and pants zip in the front, or the "crotch"? Is he trying to imply that they zip around the top of her inseam, so that she can more easily have sex or something? And wouldn't that be dangerous to put the zipper there, even for someone with no dangly bits?)
She had walked out of the house in what she happened to be wearing at the time, but she apparently still dressed in order to be sexually assaulted--in other words, she was "asking for it." It makes me wonder if John Brunner had assaulted anyone, or defended someone who did. It's very sickening.
At the very least, he accidentally implied that she not only wanted attention from young men, but that she wanted to be touched without explicit permission. But how can one accidentally imply that, with the way he phrased it? ("But the only hand that did try stroking her bare waist..." as if she wanted a hand to stroke her bare waist, without asking first!) She is meant to be immature (and of course grows up later because of her male love interest), yet the most pouty and attention-seeking teenager would probably not want to be touched without so much as a "hello."
John Brunner apparently understood feminists, and women in general, about as well as he understood homosexuals.

I also thought it interesting that, while male homosexuals (sometimes actually bisexuals) are portrayed as criminals who would kill you for your clothes (to sell them, apparently), or old perverted televangelists who touch themselves while watching young people make out, or young men who have sex with old perverted televangelists and are implied to have incestuous feelings for their own sisters...lesbians or female bisexuals are portrayed as ultimately harmless.
The "fat mannish woman" strokes Lora's waist, but Lora seems more upset about the "reeky ancients" who leer at her. She doesn't seem interested in the woman at all, but neither does she feel uncomfortable or afraid of her. Lora apparently doesn't even seem to respond, not even to move away. Does she just stand there and let the woman pet her like a cat? That's what it seems to be happening.
She doesn't mind a woman she's not interested in, sexually assaulting her. The woman also gets out of the car very soon, and doesn't even invite Lora to come with her.

Brunner, the author, doesn't mind lesbians, because they are no threat to him. They won't sexually assault him (male homosexuals probably wouldn't either, but he doesn't seem to know that), and most of all, they don't make him experience any scary feelings.
He can tell himself that he's just interested in them because they are two women together, not because they are homosexual like him and he likes the idea of someone like him finding love or sex. 
So he doesn't have to think of himself as homosexual, if he imagines two women together--even if they are interested in each other and not him. (I once met a lesbian woman online who loved to read about male/male romance, but would never want to be with a man, herself, in real life. And I am almost the same way, seeing myself as happier in general with another woman. So reading preference does not automatically translate to real life preferences.)
So he uses women--lesbians or people who are actually bisexual women--in order to hide from his own homosexual feelings. That's why gay women are so harmless, in his mind. And part of why they are so "hot" to so many "heterosexual" men even today.