(This started out as a reply to two separate posts, but got rather long and wandered off a bit on its own argument, so I’m posting it independently, but referencing the posts that inspired parts of it where applicable.)

In reply to CZ and his assertion that the Oankali are definitely alien in his comment to roseblack’s post --I'm not going to argue that there is a direct correlation between every aspect of the Oankali and humans. Lacking my own tentacled ooloi, I'd be a bit hard pressed. I will, however, argue that there are many parallels to be drawn between them and us, particularly pertaining to gender. That is, if I can be trusted to not be apparently inherently manipulative self.

As CZ stated in own blog, the Oankali are not in the moral right they wish to see themselves inhabiting (a self-delusion to which humans themselves are prone).

As I said before, I think Barbarella rocks. Also, I found it to be suprisingly feminist, considering - well, considering everything. On the surface it's pretty wonderful in its unselfconscious exploitation of Fonda's sexuality, but its underlying concepts are much more subversive.

Although Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is often described as a work of feminist literature there are no heroic, or even admirable female characters. Instead, the cast of female characters serves as an inventory of all the ways a woman can fail in the context of oppression.

Of the many interesting things that Heinlein addresses in Starship Troopers, the thing that captures my attention the most is his discussion of power, both its origins and the ultimate responsibility which comes along with it. As American voters have, over the last fifty years, become less and less engaged in the political discourse and more dissociated from the violence (or threat thereof) from which their political power is derived, Heinlein's views on this have become even more pertinent, not less.

So a couple thoughts on Heinlein. First of all, although I agree with the below comment that alien races can imply racial connotations, I think that in this case Heinlein used the communal properties of an insectoid race to demonstrate the potential power of a communist social structure in a species adapted to it--and to show it's fundamental incompatibility with human drives. Second, I think Heinlein's discussion of the source of political power, though not directly involving race or gender as a major factor, is a potentially useful tool for understanding modern political power relations.