"Would You Really Rather Die than Bear My Young?": The Construction of Gender, Race, and Species in Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild"

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“…surprise given the fact that both Butler and Tiptree, Jr. are renowned New Wave SF writers with an openly feminist agenda-see Hollinger (2003, 131) and Melzer (2006, 7). More specifically, Elyce Helford (1994) and Veronica Hollinger (1999) have successfully discussed and clearly proved the connection between the two protagonists' gender and their subjection to gender exploitation. As a result, and to avoid unnecessary overlaps with previous scholarship, this paper focuses more generally on the effects of trauma and biopower on the human and on the articulation of forms of resistance to it in the two short stories.…”

“…1 Like those movies that Kelly Hurley classifies as "body horror," 1 It is important to point out at this early stage that the two human bodies that are appropriated in the short stories happen to be subjected to appropriation as a result of their gender. While I am fully aware that the term "human" runs the risk, as it often has, of acting as a blanket concept erasing difference, a careful review of the literature dealing with the two stories confirms that the significance of the two protagonists' gender for the stories' ideological and political implications has been widely discussed and convincingly established by previous scholarship-see Helford (1994), Hicks (1996), Hollinger (1999), Melzer (2006), Stevenson (2007), Thibodeau (2012) and Lillvis (2014). These critics have focused on Butler's reversal of traditional gender roles and criticism of patriarchal oppression in "Bloodchild," and on Tiptree, Jr.'s critical attitude towards gendered power structures and the performance of femininity in "The Girl Who Was Plugged In."…”