Bloodchild (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Environmental Awareness

“The animals we once used began killing most of our eggs after implantation long before your ancestors arrived,” T’Gatoi reminds Gan during the story’s climactic scene. This suggests an environmental context for the psychological drama at the center of the story. Butler does not detail the reasons why the earlier host animals began killing Tlic eggs, but it is implicit that the tensions of plot have come about because the Tlic planet’s ecosystem — that is, its ecological community and physical environment considered as a unit — is no longer in balance. “Bloodchild” explores the troubled interdependence between Tlic and human species during what might be understood as an environmental crisis on the Tlic planet. This reflects a sense of environmental crisis here on earth at the time that Butler wrote the story, when there was growing awareness of damage to the earth’s ecosystem. Starting with the energy crisis of the mid-1970s, the direct consequences of human exploitation of the earth’s resources increasingly occupied public consciousness. In 1979 the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant had a near meltdown, contaminating the immediate area with radioactive waste. In 1984 a large hole in the earth’s protective ozone layer was discovered over Antarctica, caused by decades of pollution. In the 1980s many communities began recycling programs and there were visible protests of the development of rain forests and other wilderness areas, reflecting awareness of the relationship between the actions of individuals and the life of the planet.

Multiculturalism

Many of Butler’s other works deal explicitly with racial oppression. In “Bloodchild” Butler refers to this issue only obliquely, when T’Gatoi reminds Gan that “your ancestors, fleeing from their homeworld, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them — they survived because of us.” However, the story may be seen as a metaphor for the conflicted relations between racial and ethnic groups who live in the same society and share common interests, yet who see each other as irreconcilably different. This was the racial climate of 1980s Los Angeles where Butler lived and wrote. In this way, “Bloodchild” may be interpreted as a parable about the sacrifices and satisfactions of living in a multicultural society. Multiculturalism — the recognition and appreciation of cultural differences that exist within a larger society — became a catchword in the 1980s. Many workplaces and schools incorporated the value of multiculturalism into their training and curriculums.

Feminism

Butler has described “Bloodchild” as a story about male pregnancy. Gan’s nurturing role as an egg carrier is also a fearsome one — something Gan realizes fully only when he witnesses the bloody delivery of grubs from Bram Lomas’s body. Butler challenges common ways of thinking about the meaning of pregnancy by placing a male character in this position. The inversion of sex roles that the story dramatizes may be understood as a feminist project. Butler redefines pregnancy as brave and heroic, qualities conventionally considered masculine. Such challenges to conventional thinking make sense in terms of the cultural climate in which Butler wrote. Despite the fact that the 1980s were not a moment of historical feminist solidarity, it was a time when women reaped some of the benefits of the legal and social progress of the feminist movement of the 1970s. It was also a time of backlash against feminism by men and women alike. In the 1980s the men’s movement was born, which was intended to awaken “feminized” men to the masculine and powerful heroes inside of them. Butler, who describes herself as a feminist, may be responding to them with this story of heroic male pregnancy.

Surrogate Parenthood

At the center of “Bloodchild” is the drama of Gan’s uncertainty over whether his role as an incubator to T’Gatoi’s eggs is a matter of honor and sacrifice, or of power and exploitation. Surrogate parenthood — in which a woman agrees to be artificially inseminated and to carry a baby in exchange for monetary compensation — was one among a host of new options in the 1980s opening up to couples unable to conceive. One high profile court case in the 1980s revealed the complicated emotional and social issues surrounding surrogacy. A surrogate mother named Marybeth Whitehead broke her contract and decided to keep the child she had conceived and carried for another couple. Public opinion was sharply divided over whether the birth mother’s connection to her offspring was more important than the father’s. Feminists supported Whitehead, interpreting the contract as a form of exploitation of a working-class woman’s body by a more powerful middle-class man. The father initially won custody of the child but this decision was overturned by a state Supreme Court. While in “Bloodchild” humans have no interest in parenting Tlic offspring, similar issues of power and exploitation are at the forefront.

Compare & Contrast

• 1980s: A chemical test to determine whether life exists on Mars renders inconclusive results.
  1990s: A meteorite from Mars is found in Antarctica that has structural features indicating the existence of microbes, providing evidence of life on Mars.
• 1980s: Developments in space technology make it possible for astronauts to spend more time in space. In 1982 the Soviets set an endurance record of 211 days in space. In 1984 the first untethered space walks are performed using rocket packs.
  1990s: The Soviet Mir space station, where astronauts test long term effects of living in space, experiences technological problems and is phased out. A new space station is an international endeavor.
• 1980s: After the first “test-tube” baby, Louise Brown, was born in England in 1978, clinics are established worldwide for in vitro fertilization as a solution to infertility. Only about 200 test-tube babies have been born. The first successful embryo transfer and the first successful fetal surgery are performed.
  1990s: Infertility is on the rise worldwide. An estimated 4.9 million married couples in the Unites States want to be parents but are unable to conceive. There are over 300 in vitro fertilization clinics in the country. They perform more than forty thousand procedures each year.
• 1980s: Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial becomes one of the most popular films in history. It portrays the special relationship between a sweet, gentle alien and a young boy.
  1990s:The X-Files, a tongue in cheek thriller about a government plot to cover up evidence of an alien invasion, attains cult status. The TV show gains widespread popularity and is made into a major motion picture.