Character tests and author choices

Last week I fought my way through a science fiction novel written by a woman author.  I really wanted to like her work but I couldn't, because of the author choices she'd made. 

A big part of the problem was that one of the main characters is a male prostitute.  He is part of the underclass, a teenager whose mother is killed at the start of the book.  Overnight he has to find a way to earn his living, so guess what he chooses?  He is part of an underclass which has little in the way of privilege, but even so there were many other choices he could have made to earn his living.  

Prostitution in the books of women authors is a particular hate of mine.  And when the present day's ugliness is transferred to the future I hate it even more.  We know it goes on today, but I don't want to see today's evil transferred into the future.  One of the reasons for writing SF is to change things, and hopefully produce a better future.  One of the big reasons for me choosing SF is to challenge the ugly attitudes towards sex that so many people think are okay today.

This author has guaranteed that I won't read any more of her series.  She admits to being a pessimist, and that depressing, down view of life colours her writing.  I find it hard to root for a hero who has no self respect and no real agency, but that is what happens to this boy most of the time.

Even if I were to write about a prostitute I have choices in how I do so.  This is author has chosen to describe in detail the sex the prostitute has with a client.  It's a totally unnecessary scene, as the woman never appears in the book again.  The scene is there purely as tittilation.  It badly backfired with me, leaving me feel queasy and used.  This  ugliness is not what I want to see from a woman writer.

Yes, we write to entertain.  But, especially in SF, we write to challenge and change the world too.  In this book the boy lives in the most fantastic futuristic city, but our present-day ugly attitudes to sex are unchanged.

I choose to write about societies which equally value women, that are better for women than our present sex-abuse filled one.  So it disappoints and depresses me to see a woman author making these narrative choices.  It's a pity, because her work is richly imagined and intriguing. But I can't get past the prostitute character, and she's lost me as a reader for ever.