Science Fiction

Yes, the Vorkosigan saga has a lot of problems from feminist and trans perspectives. The thing that always stuck out to me from the first two books was the satirical portrait of Beta Colony, and the obvious implication that Barrayar, with its old-fashioned sexism and class oppression, was nevertheless a more fun place to have an adventure.

I think Ethan of Athos is actually fascinating in terms of a straight writer tackling issues of sexual orientation when you consider that it was published in 1986. That is to say, during a decade of virulent homophobia and at the height of the AIDS crisis in the US.

As you say, it's deeply problematic in lots of ways that haven't lost their currency--associating homosexuality and incest, for one thing. And then there's her decision to create a world in which gay men are a majority and her hero never truly experiences what it's like to be a minority--a decision that lots of privileged writers replicate to this day by magically erasing homophobia or whatever prejudice their oppressed characters would face (I suspect because it's hard for them to imagine their way into that experience). (IMO white writers do this with race A LOT.)

But there are other aspects of the book that were radical for its time--the ending, in which it's implied that two men can live happily ever after, in particular. And a lot of what is problematic in the book--the association of gay men with virulent sexism, for one thing--has specific roots in the politics of the 1980s. It would be interesting to analyze it alongside the works produced by the gay lit movement of that decade; Bujold was trying, but it's immediately apparent that she wasn't reading gay authors representing their own realities like Edmund White and Andrew Holleran.

Getting back to nojojo's point--I think that tradition also continues. Yes, exactly, most white, Western SF writers are too entrenched in their own (unacknowledged or not) racist and colonialist and privileged mindsets. But they also aren't reading the SF being written by people of color, or from non-Western perspectives; they're trapped in their own self-reinforcing headspace, as Bujold was in the 80s (perhaps still is, for all I know), and so you see a similar pattern of problems in even good-faith efforts.