 During his early period, Heinlein's writing for younger readers needed to take account of both editorial perceptions of sexuality in his novels, and potential perceptions among the buying public; as critic William H. Patterson has put it, his dilemma was "to sort out what was really objectionable from what was only excessive over-sensitivity to imaginary librarians".By his middle period, sexual freedom and the elimination of sexual jealousy became a major theme; for instance, in "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961), the progressively minded but sexually conservative reporter, Ben Caxton, acts as a dramatic foil for the less parochial characters, Jubal Harshaw and Valentine Michael Smith (Mike).Another of the main characters, Jill, is homophobic, and says that "nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped it's partly her own fault."