Link: http://thefeministwire.com/2014/11/slavery-haunting-legacy-sterilization-abuse-california-state-prisons/

Within Butler’s Wild Seed, Doro takes his people into slavery and portrays himself as a god-like figure to them. Similarly to a slave master, Doro is willing to kill anyone who defies his commands and punish them in whatever means “necessary”.  On the Feminist Wire, I came across Khanmalek’s article “Slavery: the Haunting Legacy of Sterilization Abuse in California State Prisons” which discussed how 150 female California state prisoners were sterilized without their consent between the years of 2006 and 2010. It’s completely baffling to come across this type of incident that occurred not too long ago. And, what was the CDCR’s excuse? Khanmalek reveals within her article that their justification was that it would cut down welfare costs. Of course, none of these woman gave their consent whatsoever to have this procedure done. Furthermore, this article also brings up 19^th century surgeon J. Marion Sims who was referred to as the “Father of Gynecology” and his involvement in carrying out experimental surgeries on enslaved African American woman without their consent.

These incidents are extremely similar to how Doro rules over his people without their consent by coercing them into following his every command. He blatantly forces his people to follow his breeding program in order to produce new offspring with special abilities. Both these incidents in California and the 19^th century are very similar to Doro having his own motives for taking advantage of people who were within his control. How were they able to take advantage? Because, these victims did not have the ability to NOT give their consent. In Wild Seed, Despite Anyanwu’s immense refusal to mate with Doro’s son Issac, Doro did not care whatsoever and coerced her into performing this action that she considered to be a complete abomination. Doro’s sole desire is to breed a new type of special individuals at whatever cost. Consent or no consent.

I want to return to a part of last week’s discussions where the groups were asked to “judge” the characters of Wild Seed, and then offer “push-backs” on those judgments. From what I took of it, the majority of time was spent on the character Doro, who for many reasons occupies the position most closely associated with the “antagonist” in the novel, (although that categorization too is up for debate). Nevertheless, one thing that guided this exercise was the remark given by Butler herself in an interview (paraphrased in class by Dr. McCoy) in which she insists that she never writes Manichean good guys vs. bad guys narratives only to be seen in black and white. Rather, Butler argues that all characters represented in her works should be able to defend their respective positionality. In the case of Doro, who was initially negatively judged (for his vanity, deviance, and murderous behavior among other things), the responses and push-backs to such negative characterizations mostly pertained to his inability to avoid killing. It was argued that Doro’s existence is predicated on a primal act of violence, namely murder, and with what began as a traumatic event of parricide has since been for Doro the countless repetition of inescapable killings that span millennia.

Continue reading Doro, Fungible Bodies, and Performance in Wild Seed →

Rajanie Kumar, a guest contributor at the Feminist Wire, describes how “whiteness” truly affects the present day black community. Whiteness is defined as a “terror in the psyches of black individuals and the black community.” Kumar’s historical example of black slaves not having the honor to look their white master in the eye resembles whiteness because of the black perception of whites as an invisible being but all knowing.

In Octavia Butlers Wild Seed, Doro encapsulates whiteness. Doro, a spirit who takes host of the body he most recently kills, is what Kumar is noting in her article, White Terror: Spirituality, Ancestral Memory and the Politics of Remembering. Doro as a spirit is similar to Kumar’s interpretation of whiteness as an invisible being, but also all knowing. Doro used his senses to find Anyanwu in Wheatley after she ran away from him for centuries (184).  Continue reading The Whiteness of Doro →

In class on Wednesday we judged characters in Octavia Butler’s novel, Wild Seed for being immoral, inhumane, coercive, hypocritical, stubborn, self-righteous, and generally exhibiting extremely disturbing behavior. In reading Mark Bittman’s recent column in The New York Times entitled “What is the purpose of society?” I immediately began drawing comparisons between the characters we were judging in Butler’s fiction and Americans in terms of how they live in and interact with their respective living environments. Bittman puts forth this argument in his article: Continue reading The Purpose of Society →

When we were asked in class to discuss our “alarms” in Fledgling, I was relieved to have that discussion, as I found several aspects of the novel extremely problematic and difficult to read. My main issues were with Wright’s relationship with Shori and the question of both parties’ ability to consent to a sexual relationship. Wright’s ability to consent to Shori’s advances is clearly questionable, due to his addiction to and biological dependence on her venom. Although their relationship may seem mutually beneficial, it raises the question of whether he was an active party or whether he was effectively drugged into compliance. Does their relationship consequently constitute rape on Shori’s part? This question alone was perturbing enough, but the addition of the pedophilic undertones in their relationship provoked the additional concern of whether Wright, despite Shori’s mental age, was essentially complicit in statutory rape.

Continue reading Issues of Consent and Pedophilia in Fledgling →

Theodora’s reaction to Shori when she asks her to live with her: pg 91: “You are a vampire”, she said. “Although, according to what I read, you’re supposed to be a tall, handsome, fully grown, white man. Just my luck.”

Her reaction seems to indicate more than a comment on traditional vampire lore. Rather, she seems to comment on their sexual relationship. It is clear and obvious that Shori is attracted to Theodora, and evidently vice versa. I wonder then, if this initial reaction to what Shori is is Theodora stepping back from what she seems to perceive as unexpected. In their sexual relationship, Shori’s dominance over her (something else I would like to talk about later in this post) seems to be typical of the masculine quality of a heterosexual relationship. Her aggressiveness is unexpected, her control over Theodora ‘should’ only come from a man. From Theodora’s comments on her family, it seems that she had lived her life up to that point as heterosexual. She has children, I believe her husband died. However, this is again presumptuous and my assumption reeks of the societal acceptance of heteronormativity as “expected”, rather than the tolerance of all types of sexual and non-sexual relationships (asexuality) that encompass the scope of intimacy. Nevertheless, this reaction to Shori’s advances seems to point towards the atypicality of homosexual relationships. The inclusion that Shori should be a “white man” also points toward her atypicality of her race, another comment on society’s unacceptance of “unexpected” relationships, this time interracial ones. This is despite the growing rights both groups have achieved. Studies like Project Implicit, a Harvard study that tests for implicit racism come to mind when I think about how far we are from full acceptance of race and sexual orientation. Futher, it seems that Butler has indeed used vampirism as a way to talk about the “unexpected”: issues of race, family, birthright, and sexuality, something I thought was missing from the novel. I understood that Shori’s blackness and memory loss were metaphors for talking about complicated issues, but I was so used to writers of vampire lore to use the alien-ness of vampirism as a metaphor for other things that are “foreign” to the majority; in the same way a Black woman would be viewed as “foreign” or “non-human” to prejudiced whites through colonialism and post-colonialism, a Black Ina would also be seen as “foreign” and “non-Ina” to prejudiced vampires.

As observed in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, sometimes the reasons that people stay together are fairly complicated. Sometimes, people stay together for bad reasons. Sometimes, in staying together, people ultimately detriment themselves, but for some reason they remain together all the same. There is a good deal of speculation that surrounds abusive relationships. Too often when people hear of a bad relationship, they wonder why the individual being abused didn’t just leave. Shori’s relationship with her symbionts, while physically beneficial (as she improves their health substantially and the physical act of taking their blood feels good) is emotionally parasitic, though this may not be her intent.

Continue reading Why People Stay Together →

The issue of consent has been at the forefront of my mind since I’ve learned about the parameters of what free will is and what force is. Nashwa Khan in her article “What’s happening in the Mindy project is Not Okay”, she discusses how important consent is but how it is undervalued in the show The Mindy Project. I too like the show and have heard problematic things be said on it. This episode was no different. I had realized that Danny; Mindy’s boyfriend, did not ask to penetrate her in that manner but I did not realize that he never formally apologized for his actions as the episode progressed. I also did not see that the excuses he made were so typical of our society that sometimes leaves men unaccountable for their actions. Continue reading Was Consent Present? →