Abstract
Restrictions on reproductive health education in Florida have resulted in misinformation and taboos that could be addressed through parallels in science fiction. As Paweł Frelik, University of Warsaw Professor of American Studies, reminds us, science fiction is a “cultural discourse,” in which “fantastic figures such as aliens, clones, and cyborgs are allegories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, able-bodiedness, and other dimensions of individual subjectivity.” Octavia Butler’s short story “Bloodchild” (1995) will be used in this activity to discuss reproductive rights with students in the wake of so many legal challenges to those same rights. Butler, inspired by her own fears of the Peruvian botfly, imagines humans marooned on a foreign planet who find their males being injected by female T’lic, large sentient insects, with parasitic larvae that eat their way out of the body upon reaching maturity. The story reveals how the T’lic have feigned empathy by protecting and nurturing human families, grooming the young hosts from birth to accept this process, and generously cutting the larvae out of the body to preserve the life of the host. The teaching activity has students critique the methods of the T’lic before engaging in discussions of our own cultural values and policies regarding reproductive rights.
Recommended Citation
Lear, Ashley
(2024)
"“My Pregnant Man Story”: “Bloodchild” as a Means of Discussing Reproductive Rights,"
Feminist Pedagogy: Vol. 5:
Iss.
3, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/feministpedagogy/vol5/iss3/3
Included in
American Literature Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Women's Studies Commons