The Terran have no say in whether or not to have this process done to them, it is forced upon them. In order to birth Tlic young, a Terran must go through excruciating pain where the Tlic cuts him open and picks around in his guts until they find the “young” which are eating the Terran’s body. This refers to the “birthing” process between Tlic and Terran. It had already eaten its own egg case but apparently had not yet begun to eat its host.” (Butler 15). It was fat and deep red with his blood – both inside and out. T’Gatoi seemed to pay no attention as lengthened and deepened the cut, now and then pausing to lick away blood… I felt as though I were helping her torture him, helping her consume him… She found the first grub. The sound he made, I had never heard such sounds come from anything human. The violence of the childbearing can be seen in the birthing process. This idea is of men picking a woman is ingrained in our society, and Butler is criticizing it.Īs if stealing a child from their mother wasn’t enough, the Terran males that are chosen are forced to bear Tlic young in a violent way. Many shows such as the Bachelor have this idea of men choosing a woman to marry. Butler is making a statement about men in our society. There is a sense of hesitance in Gan’s voice when he says “what she probably saw as her just reward.” He has been told all his life that the Tlic deserve a Terran child, yet he doesn’t quite believe it. This passage talks about the sense of entitlement the Tlic’s have over the Terran. “The preserve was hers by the time she came back to my mother to collect what she probably saw as her just reward… T’Gatoi liked the idea of choosing an infant.” (Butler 8). Terran mothers must give 1 child (preferably male) to a Tlic “mother”. In addition to regulating what the Terran can and cannot do, Tlic have imposed another law upon the Terran. Butler is criticizing this practice in our modern day society. While in today’s day and age it may not be as straightforward, women are still taught these ideals in a subtle way through gender performances in the gender binary. This is similar to how women in our society are told what to do or what not to do, what they can or cannot wear, or what they can or cannot say. These two passages describe some of the restrictions the Tlic have put on Terran life. “Since Terrans were forbidden motorized vehicles except certain farm equipment, I knew this must be Lomas’s Tlic…” (Butler 17). “This wasn’t our only gun… Firearms were illegal in the preserve.” (Butler 12). In this society the Tlic regulate most of Terran daily life. As we continue on in the essay, we will see that Butler is comparing the female Tlic in the alien society to males in our society, and the male Terran in the alien society to females in our society. This sets up a background for which we can see a power struggle between the two races. Additionally, Tlic are mainly interested in male Terran. On this planet, the only Tlic that live to old age are female. In Bloodchild we have a planet where Terran (human) and Tlic (alien worm-like species) exist together. In her science fiction work Bloodchild, Octavia Butler criticizes the power dynamic of the gender binary by creating a world where the power dynamic of men and women are reversed. Octavia Butler aims to challenge that with Bloodchild. That is to say, males have the majority of the power while females are left to scrap over what’s left. With the binary, a certain power dynamic exists. Our modern day society has a very rigid and adhered to gender binary.
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