Category: McCoy 431 Fall 2017

As a college student in particular, I feel like it is so important to understand the concept of consent.  I feel as though I have been put in many situations where my consent is something that I turn to knowing that I have a right to accept or decline a situation.  However, reading Octavia Butler’s, Fledgling, I have found myself struggling to accept the way in which consent works in the world of the Ina.  Keeping Clay’s Ark in mind, I have to remember that the Ina are not human, therefore their needs in terms of consent are different than those of humans.  Knowing that they need to feed off of humans to survive has been something I learned to keep in mind and accept, yet I realize that Octavia Butler is pushing me beyond my limits of what I am comfortable with. Continue reading “Ownership and Consent”

In response to today’s class, there are a few points I would like to make.

I had stated in class that we, as readers, tend to focus more on the humans. Yes, we are human, and yes, we will read things with a human perspective (obviously). However, that doesn’t mean that we cannot try to grasp or understand a different culture or society, whether it’s between other humans or other species. Humans today have trouble doing that in interactions between different parts of the world, for example, the US and Middle East relations – differences in culture, education and understanding. When we look at the Ina culture in Butler’s Fledgling, they share similar aspects of culture that we do: history, language, use of resources, etc.

Furthermore, when we read this book, a big theme is the idea of mutual symbiosis. The idea that there is a mutually dependent relationship between organisms – in this case, humans and Ina. However, we tend to focus on the power structure and the culture that goes into this complex idea. But let’s start with this: culture aside, the biology of the mutual symbiosis makes them NOT equal – there is a tendency to overlap and make the words “mutual” (held in common by two or more parties) and “equal” (a person or thing considered to be the same as another in status or quality) one and the same in this text, when they are not synonyms.

I had also stated in class that humans are independent of the Ina, they exist with or without them. Humans can survive, live and thrive without ever becoming a symbiont. However, the Ina NEED something, or someone, to feed on. They are more dependent because of that need. Humans are born independent, the Ina, dependent. Their relationship is not mutually dependent from the get-go, because Ina are the ones in need of this interaction. A person’s need can place them at a disadvantage, which we do see with the Ina, and Shori’s initial relationships with her symbionts. And Locke would advocate this, seeing as his philosophy is based on being able to take what you need without being greedy, and therefore avoiding a state of war.

Culturally speaking, between the Ina and humans, is a different story: the Ina and symbionts have their own culture. There is an understanding of making informed decisions between the two species. And the Ina do explain the circumstances of a new culture, and lifestyle, to them. Then there’s also the point that symbionts talk to other, possible, soon-to-be symbionts. This occurs between Brooke and Wright. Brooke states, “Iosif told me what would happen if I accepted him, that I would become addicted and need him. That I would have to obey. That if he died, I might die . . . But he told me all that. Then he asked me to come to him anyway, to accept him and stay with him because I could live for maybe two hundred years and be healthy and look and feel young, and because he wanted me and needed me. I wasn’t hooked when he asked. He’d only bitten me a couple of times. I could have walked away – or run like hell” (Butler 161). Continue reading “Need vs. Morals: Where’s the line in symbiotic relationships?”

The question Stephen asked Rone in Clays Ark was “What is the Chemical composition of Love?” I did some research on Oxytocin, otherwise known as the “love” hormone. Oxytocin acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain that regulates social interaction and sexual reproduction. This hormone is released in situations like sexual encounters, breastfeeding, birth, and when we hug or kiss someone we love. When this chemical is released in the brain it allows a person to trust and love another.

When thinking about the chemical composition of the Ina’s saliva that causes attachment and unconditional love of the Human symbionts, it’s easy to assume that oxytocin could have a part in this. The ‘love’ hormone is necessary to human being survival because it bonds not only protection and (in some cases procreation) pairs of people, but also parents and their children. Like human beings use of oxytocin for survival, the vampires need human beings to trust and obey them to survive. Before Wright Continue reading “The ‘Love’ Hormone”

Octavia Butler’s continual theme of challenged consent seems to run through more than just one of her novels. Readers see it again in Fledgling. However, Butler puts a spin on this one – her characters acknowledge the power and influence that have marred the 21^st century understanding of consent.

No mistake, consent is challenged here. We see that right off the bat when Shori first encounters and bites Wright. Her bite has an immediate effect on him, which forces him to do a 180 degree spin from his original position on a no biting policy, in which he responds “Goddammit” (Butler 10) to her biting him, followed by him “jerking his hand away [from her]” (10), clearly illustrating the lack of consent. Looking at this scene, it is quite clear that Shori’s bite is both a surprise, and an unwanted one at that. Promptly soon after, Shori “ducked my head and licked away the blood, licked the wound I had made. He tensed, almost pulling his hand away. Then he stopped, seemed to relax. He let me take his hand between my own” (11). Following that, he tells her “It feels good” (11). He responds “Do I?” to her answer, and then “squeezed past the division between the seats to my side of the car, and put me [Shori] on his lap” (11).

So, there’s a lot going on in this scene – but there are two things to focus on: whether or not this relationship is consensual, and whether it can ever truly be consensual hereafter, and the questioning of the possible taking advantage of someone who may be a minor. This post will focus on the former, and then revisit the latter in another post later on.

Continue reading “An Ethical Relationship”

On Friday, Dr. McCoy pushed us to remember that it isn’t Eli waking up and scratching the original inhabitants of the enclave that set the world up for an epidemic, it’s that people went to Proxi Two and were exposed to the disease in the first place. This seemed to suggest that colonialism, not an individual, is responsible for what ultimately happens to Earth. Once this idea took root in my head, it was hard not to read Clay’s Ark through that lens.

Continue reading “Colonialism in Clay’s Ark”

Jonathan Kalman

In the world of Octavia Butler’s “Clay’s Ark”, those infected by the Proxi Two symbiont have strong sexual urges that cannot be easily restrained. According to Stephen Kaneshiro, a resident of the Clay’s Ark enclave, the symbiont makes you, “like having kids. Makes you need to have them” (Butler, Page 532). As far as the readers are lead to believe, these urges are hardwired, rather than environmentally driven. Converting others is not exactly a want, but it becomes almost a need. Eli, patient zero states, Continue reading “A Better Way?”

Continue reading “The Power of Consent TO Consent”