Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Frank Herbert speaking at UCLA April 17, 1985

From the archives of the UCLA Communications Studies Department. Digitized 2015.

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The gay/lesbian question hits a nerve, and I'm not entirely sure Frank's answer makes sense to me yet. He spoke of the homosexual tendency being a thing latent inherently to adolescence, and that this often dissipates, and that if this impulse isn't handled with care it can create 'aberrant' gays, of which an example is the Baron.

This is several claims at once, and to date we surely don't have confirmation of any of this, although not a contradiction either. To be fair, I think we still know very little about this, and likely won't for some time until it isn't taboo to speak of such things in most universities. I'll be keeping my eyes and ears open over the years to see whether we come to learn things to confirm/disprove Frank's idea on this particular topic. I would have preferred he give a slightly more direct answer to the questioner, specifically about why the only example of a homosexual person in the Dune books is of the aberrant variety.

georgiedenbro wrote:...specifically about why the only example of a homosexual person in the Dune books is of the aberrant variety.

There were lesbian Fish Speakers, too.

Freakzilla wrote:

georgiedenbro wrote:...specifically about why the only example of a homosexual person in the Dune books is of the aberrant variety.

There were lesbian Fish Speakers, too.

Yes, but when Duncan objects Moneo tries to calm him down by saying that it's only a normal phase and that drawing attention to it makes things worse. That plays into what Frank was saying, but it's not clear to me that those Fish Speakers "were" lesbians, as opposed to only going through a transitional phase that young people go through.