Feminist Science Fiction Fans discussion

Totally agree with you, Juniper. I did not know anything about this book before I started reading it. A few pages in, I was thinking, What the Heck! this is a vampire book!! I thought oh no, It won't be very good. The writing, plot and protaganist are engaging, the story moves along well, but it is basically a simple, sexual power fantasy novel. Ok for me, I would give it 2 stars. I thought the author was a feminist one, but maybe this was her 1st book and she was just exploring the genre.

Kathleen wrote: "Totally agree with you, Juniper. I did not know anything about this book before I started reading it. A few pages in, I was thinking, What the Heck! this is a vampire book!! I thought oh no, It won..."

Actually, this was her last book and I thought it was a very good one dealing with racism in a disguised way.

I thought it was explicitely about race. Certainly there's no doubt the book deals with race. But a book can be about more than one thing.
Within the first few pages, we learn the narrator is a man-eating monster. Sexy vampires are content drawing some blood. The sex too is problematic in an unsexy way. So I wouldn't say this is a simple vampire book or sexual fantasy. There's of course an element of that but Butler doesn't really do simple.
I hope you give her another chance, Kathleen. I didn't think this was Butler's best. She writes violent and occasionally prurient books but there's more to the stories if you can look past that.

I intended to wait for others to answer Juniper's post before answering her point but time has passed and it seems she left the group for some reason so I'm not sure she'll see any of this.
Is anyone convinced by her argument or the argument she linked to ("total control over the love object, if not, possibly, over love itself. i submit that this is the desire/fantasy of those whose sexuality is chronically disempowered")?
Briefly, my concern is that it would make many books featuring a powerful queen or some such feminist. And I don't agree when George Martin for instance claims he writes feminist books when they feature powerful women.

I disagreed with Juniper about it being fantasy. Vampires don't necessarily make it fantasy. I thought the vampirism was approached in a scientific way rather than a magical one. Alma Alexander did something similar with shapeshifters in her Were trilogy. They were viewed in a scientific manner. There were laboratory experiments being done on these shifters.

Re powerful queens being feminist--It depends on their motivations. If they are solely motivated by power hunger than they are no more feminist than powerful kings.

I agree you could have a queenship based on a feminist premise but regular masculine kings needn't be motivated solely by power hunger either. I tend to look at social institutions instead of individual motivations. Like, most historical queens were empowered by patriarchy and participating in it irrespective of their individual character.
In Fledgling, there is a "kind of a matriarchy" (says Brook). But that's based on a kind of a magical priviledge which (so far as I remember) does nothing for most women (hence my analogy to aristocratical priviledge). Still, that's more interesting than garden-variety patriachy or perfect gender equality that seems to have fallen from the sky one day.

The line between fantasy and SF is sometimes not clear. I'm of the opinion that Star Wars is fantasy and that a scientific approach to magic is also on the fantasy side of the line but I guess I'm in the minority (see for instance: http://www.walterjonwilliams.net/2012... ).

I think that a scientific approach means that the world functions by the laws of science, not magic. If there were a world where robots or other technological devices were created, activated and maintained with magical spells, I would consider that fantasy. Furniture doesn't matter to me. The way the world works is what matters.

Yeah, vampires are just furniture and you can have them in SF (see Watts' Blindsight for instance).
But I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "laws" since fantasy worlds too generally function by the main laws of science understood today, except of course for the magical stuff... stuff like Fledgling's Ina.
Maybe I've forgotten something but I recall these creatures as making very little sense in non-supernatural terms. I guess one could imagine the book taking place in an alternative universe where human history and science has lots of puzzling Ina-shaped holes in it but unless there is some support in the text that would be a creation of the reader (nothing wrong with that).
I assume you've read Lilith's brood/Xenogenesis. That series is much more plausible in non-supernatural terms because, while the Oankali are also so extraordinary as to be borderline magical, there happens to be an Oankali-shaped hole in our knowledge of the universe, their motivations for altering our planet are addressed by the text and they have not somehow managed to live hidden among us for the whole of human history.

Interesting that we didn't really discuss the science fiction aspect during the discussion of our definitions of feminist science fiction...
(For me, Fledgling falls under science fiction rather than fantasy because the explanation of the vampiric characteristics is scientific, i.e. different species, narcotic saliva, etc., rather than supernatural, so I agree with Shomeret, though I also agree with Outis in classifying Stars Wars as fantasy due to the presence of the mystical Force... though I guess in the prequels they retconned the Force to be a biological characteristic of a symbiotic relationship between midichlorians and a host, so I maybe should reclassify it in my head? Bleah, tangent, aannnnnyyyyywaaays...)

I am 3/4s through the book, so I didn't read the review that Juniper posted due to spoilers. Just want to give a sign that I am still participating in the group read! I haven't read this as fast as I have Butler's other work because the genre tropes she is playing with in this novel are just not as compelling to me as the genre tropes she subverts in Parable and Lilith's Brood. I agree that, of what I've read, this is my least favorite of her works but I do encourage Kathleen to read others!

Initial, half-formed thoughts:
- the basic premise of vampire-with-the-physical-appearance-of-a-child-in-a-discomforting-sexual-relationship-with-adult-characters reminds me of Let the Right One In
- "No, I mean... having Wright and Joel as well as Brooke, Celia, and Theodora. It scares me. I need them. I care about them more than I thought I could care about anyone. But having them scares me." -- Shori, p. 205. I quite like the way Butler examines the complexities of a relationship with an imbalanced power dynamic. It's interesting that even though the Ina are nominally matriarchal, portraying what is somewhat a feminist power fantasy, it is written to be much more emotionally mature than your average teen male power fantasy. There is an acknowledgement that the master role requires subjects just as much as subjects "need" a master. The power comes with an outright cost (taking it even further than the classic "with power comes great responsibility"). Does this perspective challenge or reinforce women's traditional roles as mothers?
- on the subject of power fantasies, I have to say that, from a racial perspective, this is a pretty horrifically tragic one. The only way that Shori, who appears to be a young black girl, can get strangers to care about the fact that racists are killing all of her family and burning down their homes is by distributing an incredibly addictive narcotic to make them care? Dark.
- I'm curious, what do y'all think Butler's intention was, having Shori appear to be a small child?

I think that one of Butler's themes in this novel is ageism. It shows all the limitations in Shori's life because she appears to be a child. I got that impression very strongly when I was reading it.

Dan, my understanding of Butler's worldview is that she (like many North Americans born in the same era) thought people are essentially sociopaths or lynch mobs in waiting. Alexa stated that she saw "hints of Ayn Rand in Butler". So her characters behaving more or less like humans beings seems to require some kind of biological modification like a drug.
As far as I'm concerned, the non-villainous characters are simply saner in this book than in most of her work. So I'm slow to read emotional maturity, analogies to motherhood or any gender angle in there (which is of course not to say such weren't intended).

SF versus fantasy is at best only indirectly political so the stakes are lower than with feminism. There are no anti-SF trolling posses potentially requiring deletions and bans.

I suppose it's possible Butler went through a hard time as a child and that this book as well as her general cynicism and some of her other stories reflect that.
But there's a simpler reason for making Shori a child: it makes the story, the relationships and so forth less vanilla and more interesting. Obviously it wasn't a novel idea (see Interview with the Vampire) but neither was narrator amnesia.

I've finally finished and I strongly agree that this is fantasy and not SF. Although Butler has given it a SF facade, it doesn't have any more depth to it than Star Wars.

I think for something to be SF it needs to either be interested in the science it uses or the consequence of the science it uses. Fledgling has some interest in the consequence of genetic engineering, but very little, it's more interested in GE as a metaphor for miscegnation.

Someone mentioned Peter Watts further up the page and I think his vampires are a really good example of vampires done from a SF perspective. Here's a short piece about his vampires which manages to consider how vampires might evolve, how their biology might work, as well as being a very funny satire on corporate behaviour.

http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/Va...

Regarding representations of sex and racism. I had real trouble with this because the book included both human/vampire hybrids as a metaphor for racism, and also actual racism in the form of prejudice against black skin.
In the same way there was actual sexual intercourse between vampires and people, but also erotic feeding which can be interpreted as a metaphor for sex.
But it frustrated me because it doesn't really seem to work for vampires feeding on people to be a metaphor for sex if they're also actually having sex. In this case, the issues of sex are represented by... well, the sex.

Regarding feminism and representation of women

Although Brooke calls the Ina 'a kind of matriarchy' they aren't in any real sense. Matriarchy is when women rule over men. The Ina are more like egalitarian separatists. Men and women live separately and rule themselves. Although the women have the stronger venom, they don't seem to have used this to gain the advantage in any way.

The relationship between Ina and symbiots was much more troublesome. It reminded me of nothing more than classical patriarchy. The patriarch is in total control of his household, which consists of wives, concubines and others who all belong to him. Their lives are entirely in his hands. The Ina is in total control of their symbiots (they literally can't disobey an order!), and the symbiots organise their lives and household around the vampire.

This is a grossly unequal relationship. At various points the Ina say to each other things like: 'They don't realise how much we need them' or 'we love them so much we could never hurt them'. This seems weak. We know from history, from the relatioships between men and women, or masters and slaves, that it is entirely possible for someone to be kind and loving to their dependents - that doesn't change the fact that it's a fundamentally injust social setup.

It's basically the lowest possible level of feminism to imagine the same old tired hierarchical power relations, but put a woman at the top of them instead of a man. Better than nothing, I guess.

This comes down to the way you read Butler I guess. I agree the book might only feminist in the light of a particular interpretation (and I'm not sympathethic to an interpretation which would limit female desire in such a way that one can claim a book discussed it while another doesn't).
The way I see it, Butler was an essentialist yank who wrote mostly about domination. As far as I can tell, she figured government is oppressive by nature. So yeah, unequal relationships inspired by history are going to be portrayed.
But I don't think the point was to put a few powerful women on top and declare victory. Else why would she also have written about the same type of relationships in other books, except with powerful men on top or aliens on top?
To the extent that Bulter is saying something about how it might be like to have women on top, in order to discern it I think you'd have to compare what goes on in this book to what goes on in her other books. And in that context, what goes on in Fledgling isn't all that bad: people really do care about each other as well as about some legalistic principles and as a result government isn't an unmitigated disaster.

Outis wrote: "Butler was an essentialist yank who wrote mostly about domination. As far as I can tell, she figured government is oppressive by nature. So yeah, unequal relationships inspired by history are going to be portrayed."

Hmm, I don't think I can make a judgement of Butler's worldview from one book. But certainly this opinion is inline with some of her short stories I've read. In her vampires/aliens she's created monsters who not only oppress humans, but need them to survive. The exploitation here is inevitable if the exploiters are going to survive.
I'm definitely not opposed to the portrayal of unequal relationships, but I dislike them being whitewashed as ok, so long as people are nice about it.

Outis wrote: "To the extent that Bulter is saying something about how it might be like to have women on top, in order to discern it I think you'd have to compare what goes on in this book to what goes on in her other books."

Well, I haven't read any of her other novels, just some of her short stories. So I don't think that I can reasonably compare them.

I strongly oppose the idea that any book can only be understood in relation to other books by the same author (unless they're a series). Each book has to stand on its own. If Fledgling isn't as bleak as some of Butler's other work that's fine. It doesn't change my opinion of Fledgling itself: it presents nasty and hierarchical relationships as inevitable because of the nature of the Ina, and also as acceptable because the people involved are basically kind and consenting. I find this an unfeminist and unpleasant world-view.

Far be it for me to claim that essentialism is pleasant or feminist.
But I don't think the book is meant to suggest slavery is OK or acceptable, just that there is no alternative to domination. In order to have a meaningful conversation about what's acceptable, people first need to agree about what they can or can't possibly change.
The difference between Thatcher and Butler is that the latter made up a fantasy world peopled with imaginary characters while the former insisted that we lived in hers. To the extent that Butler is saying something about the real world, I figure she's saying that the way we're dependent on each other causes our relationships to have an unequal and often unpleasant aspect.

As far as I'm concerned, Fledgling does stand on its own as entertainement (and possibly as a book about North American racism though I'm hardly qualified to opine about that).
I'm not saying you need to have read other books to understand it. But if you want to take a guess at the author's intent in putting women on top (hardly the most important part of the book!), then yes: I think her other books are relevant.

Outis wrote: "But I don't think the book is meant to suggest slavery is OK or acceptable, just that there is no alternative to domination. In order to have a meaningful conversation about what's acceptable, people first need to agree about what they can or can't possibly change."

In a world where there is no alternative to domination then you must accept domination as much as you must accept gravity. If rejection is impossible then acceptance is the only option. I think that's why I feel that the book is saying slavery is acceptable.

From a moral perspective, it means that we can't really hold the Ina to account for their exploitation of humans because they just can't help themselves. I'm not sure that I appreciate books where the world-building is set up to give such relationships a free pass.

This is part of the reason why the lack of SF is a missed opportunity. We're limited in how much we can speculate about what's possible because the story never goes into the details of genetic engineering. We know that the Ina are trying to engineer themselves stronger and capable of tolerating light. There's no suggestion of attempting to engineer symbiots who can feed the Ina without becoming addicted or servile. Is it impossible? Or do the Ina just not want to? Or do they care so little about freedom for their symbiots that they didn't even think of it? The book doesn't even come close to touching on these issues.

Outis wrote: "To the extent that Butler is saying something about the real world, I figure she's saying that the way we're dependent on each other causes our relationships to have an unequal and often unpleasant aspect."

Yes, I would agree. But isn't it profounding unfeminist to begin with the premise that unpleasant and unequal relationships are inevitable?

Outis wrote: "I'm not saying you need to have read other books to understand it. But if you want to take a guess at the author's intent in putting women on top (hardly the most important part of the book!), then yes: I think her other books are relevant. "

Oh ok, I see where you're going with that. I'm much more of the author is dead school of interpretation. Forget the author; let the story speak for itself.

I was so disappointed by this book. Butler very often returns to very similar stories - powerful beings with control over others in a relationship that attempts to be mutualistic but is built on an essential lack of consent, and how those dynamics play out - and this is by far her weakest version of it, mostly because she doesn't develop those resulting dynamics. There just is this inherently unequal relationship and there's some discussion of why it's less-unequal than it seems, but there are no consequences of the inequality or imbalance.

In her other stories, there are always consequences for all parties involved, and that's what makes her writing compelling. This very much read to me as the beginning of a story that wasn't finished, maybe even a draft.

I think she may have been better served here if she had abandoned her typical relationship dynamic and gone for something a little different. I agree with Nick's comment that having both sex AND the metaphor for sex doesn't add much (although maybe drinking blood becomes more about caring and sustenance than lust?). What Butler was doing with race was very interesting, and I think that the story felt a little confused or aimless with all of the other Butler-esque trappings. Like I said, she's done similar stories before with much better success, and maybe attacking a different kind of power dynamic would've worked better here.

For those who think this shows promise or would like to see something more SF and more feminist, I strongly recommend the Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis trilogy (it goes by different names depending on when the editions were published).

Lisa wrote: "I think she may have been better served here if she had abandoned her typical relationship dynamic and gone for something a little different."

I was thinking when I read the book that I would have been very interested to read a completely different book where the assassinations never happened. Instead we get the story of Shori and her sisters deciding on which set of brothers to mate with. And all their mothers trying to match-make and put forward candidates.
I'm pretty sad that in a book where usually the females live in female-only households and live, work and raise kids together, we had Shori with hardly any female friends and supporters at all for the whole book. Even among her symbiots the men were more important, or more accessible, to her.

One other thing that I didn't understand.

Amnesia. How does it work? I was under the impression that you remember facts, but not personal history. Shori remembered cars, fridges, helicopters etc, but forgot her name and her past. So far, so much normal amnesia.

But she also forgot everything about being Ina? Huh?
Did anybody ever get amnesia and forget their nationality and everything to do with their own culture?

Once that hit me, I really felt the amnesia as a clunky plot device. Especially as Shori reminds everyone she's lost her memory on nearly every page.

Amnesia worked the same way in Nine Princes. There's another book of Bulter's which has elements found in Nine Princes (but not the speed-of-plot amnesia).
Nick wrote: "Outis wrote: "In a world where there is no alternative to domination then you must accept domination as much as you must accept gravity. If rejection is impossible then acceptance is the only option. I think that's why I feel that the book is saying slavery is acceptable.
I was trying to distinguish between domination and its subset, slavery.

Nick wrote: "From a moral perspective, it means that we can't really hold the Ina to account for their exploitation of humans because they just can't help themselves. I'm not sure that I appreciate books where the world-building is set up to give such relationships a free pass.
There are many moral perspectives. Unlike Butler, I don't believe in "free will" and so "can't help themselves" is a non-starter and there is therefore no free pass.
Sure, the main character is a victim herself and hardly in a position to enact any kind of ideal within the timespan of the story but I think it's obvious the Ina as a group could over the years have done much, much better. Butler might not see it that way but her politics need not shape my reading of her books.

Nick wrote: "Outis wrote: "But isn't it profounding unfeminist to begin with the premise that unpleasant and unequal relationships are inevitable?"
I don't think so. I guess there are feminisms which are antithetical to the notion that unequality is inevitable. But unfeminist in general?
What would be unfeminist would be a defeatist attitude: "since unequality is inevitable, there's nothing we can do." Butler at a minimum seemed to be taking the premise of that outlook seriously.
As for myself, I look at the history of feminism and see essentialists who didn't talk about equality or even argued against it but still believed righting wrongs was worth getting into a fight. Any why not? Outside of feminism, social change has generally not been premised on belief in equality either.


Lisa wrote: "For those who think this shows promise or would like to see something more SF and more feminist, I strongly recommend the Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis trilogy (it goes by different names depending on when the editions were published).."
Yeah, that trilogy is much more interesting and would fit the group's topic much better as well. I figured most everyone had read it long ago (certainly very few new readers spoke up when it was chosen for a group read here)... but apparently that's not the case.

Outis wrote: "The main character is a victim herself and hardly in a position to enact any kind of ideal within the timespan of the story but I think it's obvious the Ina as a group could over the years have done much, much better."
Exactly! I wish there had been a lot more exploration of that in the story.

Outis wrote: "What would be unfeminist would be a defeatist attitude: "since unequality is inevitable, there's nothing we can do.""
Yes, that's a better, more precise way of posing it and it wasn't an attitude that I liked in the book.

Outis wrote: "Outside of feminism, social change has generally not been premised on belief in equality either."
Ha, well, we're straying a bit from the book by this point. Social change is a broad term, but I think a great deal of it - especially class struggle - is based on opposition to inequality.

Opposition to inequality, yes... but to what end? Typically it's to support a different faction of the ruling class or to replace it with another priviledged class. At best, the majority is supposed to get a better deal and equality is something some hope the next generation might see. All-out idealists are rarely very influential.
Off-topic indeed. But then, the thread is well over a month old so I don't think this is standing in the way of much topical discussion.

I think the phrase 'social change' here is so broad as to be useless.

I thought we were talking in regards to feminism and other social movements like civil rights, class struggle etc. If we mean literally any change that is social, well, yeah, there is also factional struggle within the ruling class, but if we're being that broad then most social change is just individual families and people rising and falling along with their luck, technological change, climate change, religious change etc.

So to try to bring it back to the book, I think we got diverted onto 'social change' when discussing whether or not Fledgling can be read as feminist, un-feminist or anti-feminist.
Outis wrote: "As for myself, I look at the history of feminism and see essentialists who didn't talk about equality or even argued against it but still believed righting wrongs was worth getting into a fight. Any why not? Outside of feminism, social change has generally not been premised on belief in equality either."
So how does that relate to the book? Do you see a strand of anti-equality feminist being explored here or an essentialist position?

I was following your lead and talking about class struggle specifically. In my considered opinion, it rarely is about equality.
Equality between men and women on the other hand would in my opinion be a more practical goal than the abolition of class.

Part of the reason I'm talking about this is that I suspect it's going to inform the way we read The Power.
While (some) women are also magically more powerful in Fledgling, I assume the issue of how ideals and identity politics relate to struggles for political power is going to be to be more relevant to the next group read.

Sticking to Fledgling though, I was arguing that its portrayal of unequal relationships as unavoidable doesn't make it unfeminist. I do see the book (and Butler's work more generally) as essentialist but I was saying essentialism isn't necessarily unfeminist.
I think the issue is: do you see the portrayal of women as being magically more powerful as feminist in any way? If you do, then I don't see how the essentialism or the way the relationships are portrayed would take away from that.
Personally, that's not how I think about feminism in fiction and I don't see any strand of feminism being explored by the book. The way I see it, the book can be read in a feminist way, especially in comparison to some of Butler's other books. But I wouldn't call the actual text feminist.

In case I've not made my position clear (and this is going to be relevant to The Power as well), I'm claiming that counterfactuals can be used for any purpose and that a portrayal of stark inequality doesn't necessarily make fantasy lean one way or the other when it comes to struggles against inequality in the real world.

As I said in another thread, I didn't see this book as relevant to the group because it isn't feminist. The main reason why I admire this book is because it's such an unusual vampire novel, but that's not a discussion for a group devoted to feminism.

I also liked The Golden as an unusual vampire book by the way, though it's unusual in a rather different way. ;-)
And for what that's worth, I've never thought of this group as devoted to feminism. The founder of our group also used to run another which definitely is: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... (it occasionally reads SF)

Outis wrote: "I was following your lead and talking about class struggle specifically. In my considered opinion, it rarely is about equality.
Equality between men and women on the other hand would in my opinion be a more practical goal than the abolition of class."
Haha, this is just getting more confusing! I thought I was following your lead when you said: Outside of feminism, social change has generally not been premised on belief in equality either.
You mentioned 'social change' and I thought you meant 'class struggle' but then you said 'Typically it's to support a different faction of the ruling class or to replace it with another priviledged class.' which is not class struggle (i.e struggle between classes), it's just an ordinary power grab, aristos against other aristos (or whatever the name of the current top class). If your point is that revolutions and idealist progessive movements never attain their high goals then I agree with you. Equality, like brotherhood, liberty, truth, justice, fairness, and other ideals is an aim and can't ever be perfectly realised.

Outis wrote: "I was arguing that its portrayal of unequal relationships as unavoidable doesn't make it unfeminist."
Right, so you said: "What would be unfeminist would be a defeatist attitude: "since unequality is inevitable, there's nothing we can do."
And I said: Yes, that's a better, more precise way of posing it and it wasn't an attitude that I liked in the book.
Sorry for being not being clear enough in my earlier attempts to express why the book seemed unfeminist to me. This is what I meant earlier when I was talking about the inequality appearing as accepable or ok (i.e inevitable and nothing can be done to change it).
The main example that I used to support the idea that Fledgling is defeatist (and sorely lacking in SF) was that nobody ever considered exploring a way to genetically engineer free symbionts, even though they were genetically engineering their own freedom from sunlight.

Outis wrote: "I think the issue is: do you see the portrayal of women as being magically more powerful as feminist in any way?"
No, not necessarily. It would depend on how that would be explored in a book.
Specifically with regard to Fledgling: no, because although the book mentions in passing that the female Ina have stronger poison that the male Ina, this doesn't get explored much in the story.

Outis wrote: " The way I see it, the book can be read in a feminist way"
Right, so what is your feminist reading of this book?
You also mention essentialism a lot in relation to this book. Do you think it's saying something interesting on that front?
Outis wrote: " But I wouldn't call the actual text feminist."
Same! I guess if your position is 'not feminist' but also 'not unfeminist', you feel that mostly it's just not referencing feminism at all?

Outis wrote: " I'm claiming that counterfactuals can be used for any purpose and that a portrayal of stark inequality doesn't necessarily make fantasy lean one way or the other when it comes to struggles against inequality in the real world."
Agreed! It all comes down to the way that the book presents that state of affairs. It can be anywhere on the scale from utopia to dystopia.

Shomeret wrote: "The main reason why I admire this book is because it's such an unusual vampire novel, but that's not a discussion for a group devoted to feminism."

Eh, we're discussing the book, so you might as well go for it.

I liked the idea of vampires mating with other vampires and giving each other a bite that fixed them in the relationship. I wish there had been more exploration of that in the book (sigh, if only Butler had lived long enough for a sequel. That's where all the good stuff would have been).

Nick wrote: "If your point is that revolutions and idealist progessive movements never attain their high goals then I agree with you."
Sorry if the following brings about even more confusion but no, not really: my point is that for revolutionaries or reformers to have had these high goals as actual goals (as opposed to ideological cover) in the first place has historically been quite rare.
In fact, some revolutions and reforms surpassed their orginal goals. I can't help but notice that you listed the motto of the French and Haitian republics as the first three of these high goals. As you may know, it is a product of the excitement of the French revolution which was in turn premised upon rather more practical notions such as 'no taxation without representation' or 'the rule of law'. What you call power grabs can breed ideals just as well as ideals can breed sordid politics.

To come back to fiction... because I do not recongnize high ideals as the one starting point of progressive politics (will that do as a vague-but-not-THAT-vague alternative to 'social change'?), I'm not all that bothered by Butler's defeatism or her essentialism. Which brings me to:

Nick wrote: "Right, so what is your feminist reading of this book?
You also mention essentialism a lot in relation to this book. Do you think it's saying something interesting on that front?"
Forgive me as I rehash my previous posts and reanimate the author yet again but, in the context of some of her other books, I found the passing mention of 'matriarchy' rather striking. She wrote about patriarchies as well as something different than either patriarchy and matriarchy yet still gendered. Some gory details are quite memorable I think.
It's not that I'm reading novel ideas or any deep philosophy into Fledgling but I figure it was intended as a portrayal of a less worse world, if not a better one. And I can see how this improvement (relative to the author's habitual bleakness) might be due to supposedly feminine civilizing traits.
Now because Butler is a bit of an essentialist, men need to be suppressed (and therefore feminized) somehow if these traits are to prevail.
Hardly utopian to be sure but I think the notion that things could be a bit better if only men were kept in check is a step above comprehensive defeatism. Start there and the next thing you know, one of the things that might change for the better is this notion according to which the problem with men is that they aren't women.

Nick wrote: "I liked the idea of vampires mating with other vampires and giving each other a bite that fixed them in the relationship."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire...
(easier to find than literary antecedents since it's been a long, long time since I read old-fashioned vampire books)

Outis wrote: " my point is that for revolutionaries or reformers to have had these high goals as actual goals (as opposed to ideological cover) in the first place has historically been quite rare.
Now we've shifted from whether revolutions have high goals to whether revolutionaries do. Certainly, one can point to prominent leaders in any revolution who were opportunists and others who were pragmatists. It's possible to both hold ideals and be realistic about what can actually be implemented.
However, something like the French Revolution could never have been possible without the Enlightenment philosophy that preceeded it, and the support of vast numbers of people who believed its ideals.
Outis wrote: "it is a product of the excitement of the French revolution which was in turn premised upon rather more practical notions such as 'no taxation without representation' or 'the rule of law'.
Practical notions and ideals are not mutally exclusive and any good revolution is going to have both. Practical notions like 'no taxation without representation' depend on idealistic notions about rights and justice.

Outis wrote: "Forgive me as I rehash my previous posts and reanimate the author yet again...'
Apologies if I've made you repeat yourself! I was interested in your opinion of Fledgling rather than Butler. It's interesting that you want to read it in relation to her other work though. Do you think that Fledgling doesn't stand alone very well?

Outis wrote: "Now because Butler is a bit of an essentialist, men need to be suppressed (and therefore feminized) somehow if these traits are to prevail. Hardly utopian to be sure but I think the notion that things could be a bit better if only men were kept in check is a step above comprehensive defeatism. '
That's really interesting, I didn't see anything like that in Fledgling. Can you say a bit more about it?
It seemed to me like the biggest difference was between Ina and humans, not men and women. The big court case was about GE/miscegnation. The Silks were evil because they were racists not because they were men. And of course, Katherine was a woman, as were some of the court members who supported the Silks. It seemed to me that in Fledgling the evil is fairly evenly spread between men and women.

Nick worte: "It's interesting that you want to read it in relation to her other work though. Do you think that Fledgling doesn't stand alone very well?"
Not really. I mean, it does have issues but that's not the point. It's just that if you take the text at face value, it (as you state) simply seems to be about something else.
If I hadn't read other books of hers first, I might have seen patriarchy in the relationships between the Ina and humans as you did. But in my mind, Butlerian patriarchy was already associated something else (not dissimilar but different).

Nick worte: "That's really interesting, I didn't see anything like that in Fledgling. Can you say a bit more about it? ... It seemed to me that in Fledgling the evil is fairly evenly spread between men and women.
You did see human males as having been feminized in relationship with the Ina, did you not? Now the situation of male Ina seems somewhat similar in relationship to female Ina but I figure the main thing going on with them is that their culture is female-dominated (or so we're told) to begin with.
As best as I can determine, Butler's idea is that there's some kind of genetic original sin that manifests mostly in stereotypically male destructive social behaviors which have to do with dominance.
If women are equally 'evil' in a given situation, that would imply the men have had little opportunity to or incentive for establishing their dominant status by abusing everyone in sight, forming gangs to fight each other and so forth. The knowledge that women will be in charge at the end of the day because magic should take care of that.
But why wouldn't Ina women get involved in such destructive dominance games themselves? I assume this is going to come into play in The Power as well: assuming biological determinism, do females typically display less physical aggression because their ancestors couldn't have as many children as dominant males or simply because male hormones give people an edge in fistfights?


The following might touch the crux of the off-topic matter so I'll stick to that:
Nick worte: "Practical notions like 'no taxation without representation' depend on idealistic notions about rights and justice."
Words such as 'rights' and 'justice' do not mean much outside of context. We were talking about a more specific set of ideals ('Equality, like brotherhood, liberty, truth, justice, fairness').
The rights that matter to the rich or to the poor are different rights and it is no accident that 'taxation without representation' has been the rallying cry of oppressors. The statement is naturally crafted to sound acceptable to anyone but what made it practical in the first phase of the French revolution (as well as in many other situations) is that it advances the interests of those who have benefitted from inequality and as such enjoy a measure of political power which can be readily mobilized.
Once mobs and mutineers started seizing the initiative though, talking about equality made political sense.

I expect The Power is also going to touch on the matter of how idealistic people really are: how many talk up civility, the resolution of disputes through the legal system and other niceties because they fear they would only get hurt in a physical confrontation?

Outis wrote: "Not really. I mean, [...] But in my mind, Butlerian patriarchy was already associated something else (not dissimilar but different)."
Sorry, this whole paragraph is going right over my head. I don't know what you mean by Butlerian patriarchy (unfortunately, google is no help). I'm not sure what the 'something else' is here that you refer to twice (or maybe two different somethings?)

Outis wrote: "You did see human males as having been feminized in relationship with the Ina, did you not?"
I'm not sure that I quite follow your thought process here.
You said: because Butler is a bit of an essentialist, men need to be suppressed (and therefore feminized) somehow if these [feminine civilizing] traits are to prevail.
I said: I didn't see anything like that in Fledgling.
You said: You did see human males as having been feminized in relationship with the Ina, did you not?
I didn't. I said that the Ina/human family structure replicated patriarchal family structures. You said that you didn't see that structure, so I am not sure how it can support you argument? Sorry if I've misunderstood you on that point, maybe you do see the Ina/human relations as patriarchal?

Either way, I don't think that the patriarchal structure of the Ina/human families supports the idea that men need to be suppressed (and therefore feminized) somehow if these [feminine civilizing] traits are to prevail. The humans used are male and female; the Ina are male and female. So there's no specific sex-based oppression either way. There's also no suggestion (that I can see) that Ina are meant to be especially masculine or feminine in comparison to humans. There's no suggestion that humans males are being used in order to civilise them.

Outis wrote: "Now the situation of male Ina seems somewhat similar in relationship to female Ina but I figure the main thing going on with them is that their culture is female-dominated (or so we're told) to begin with."
I'm not sure I see the similarity? The male Ina are not dependent on the female Ina for their lives the way that the humans are on the Ina. The male Ina are not compelled to obey the female Ina the way that humans are.
The closest we get to the culture being female-dominated is one character saying that they're 'kind of a matriarchy' because the females have stronger venom which means the men become infertile except with their mates. This enforced fidelity (and perhaps devotion?) doens't seem to have consequences for the power structure in the Ina (as far as well can see). We know that men and women each govern themselves in separate communties, respect is given according to age, both males and females can serve as judges. So, I can't see that the culture is one where feminsation exert a feminising, civilising effect on men.


Outis wrote: "Words such as 'rights' and 'justice' do not mean much outside of context. We were talking about a more specific set of ideals ('Equality, like brotherhood, liberty, truth, justice, fairness')."
I don't see that 'rights' or 'justice' are any less specific than 'liberty' or 'fairness' (or indeed, justice, which is in both sets!). Although, I agree that all of these words are contextual.
Outis wrote: " it is no accident that 'taxation without representation' has been the rallying cry of oppressors."
Honestly, I had no idea that it was! I tried to google to find out more, but of course there are millions of results for 'no taxation without representation' so it's hopeless. Who used that as a rallying cry and when? The only aristo catch-phrase I'm aware of from before the French revolution is 'Let them eat cake!' Hardly a rallying cry and probably apocryphal, to boot.

Outis wrote: "I expect The Power is also going to touch on the matter of how idealistic people really are."
Yes, me too, I hope it will be interesting!

Looks like I made a mess by not double-checking what I wrote for typos and ambiguity, sorry.
Though I forgot the 'no', I did simply mean 'no taxation without representation'. I think the phrase is best known for having been used by rebels in the present-day USA, some of whom were quite famously hypocritical slavers including a moral philosopher and rapist who argued against the sufferage on the ground that women participating in politics might lead to adultery.
As to France's own learned men, the cake joke is apropos.

And for 'But in my mind, Butlerian patriarchy was already associated something else (not dissimilar but different)', please read: 'But in my mind and in the context of Butler's books, patriarchy was already associated with similar but different social norms.'
So to answer your question, while I do see what you mean when you say that Ina/human relationships are patriarchal, I happen to perceive a distinction. I think we nevertheless agree about the position of human males in the relationship.
What we do seem to disagree about is the position of Ina males. For the reasons described earlier, I do think it is significant that Ina females are more powerful even though they are allowing Ina males considerable independence. But, again, I'm not surprised we see it differently since I'm using other books as a reference for what might constitute an affront to manhood or what powerful men might do in Bulter's stories.

Outis wrote: "I did simply mean 'no taxation without representation'. I think the phrase is best known for having been used by rebels in the present-day USA, some of whom were quite famously hypocritical slavers."
Yes, it is amazing that they could have such cognitive dissonance that they could write We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal at the same time as they owned slaves!


Outis wrote: "please read: 'But in my mind and in the context of Butler's books, patriarchy was already associated with similar but different social norms.'
So to answer your question, while I do see what you mean when you say that Ina/human relationships are patriarchal, I happen to perceive a distinction.."
Hmm, well, if the different norms and the distinction that you see are in the context of Butler's other books then there's not much I can say on that until I've read them!

The 'Enlightened' Frenchmen had much the same thing going for a while: 'men are born and remain free and equal before the law' but then passed laws distinguishing between free blacks and slaves.

You didn't miss the distinction itself, relative to real-world patriarchy. Again, I see why you likened humans to wives (I did speak of human males being feminized) but their status is more akin to that of slaves or more precisely to that of a retainer (since they're not born into the status, sold into it by or sentenced to it but instead receive an ongoing benefit for their service).
Technically, retainer is also a patriarchal status (it is more apparent in more specialized titles like 'household knight' or 'bachelor') but that's not what people generally mean when they talk about patriarchy nowadays.

Outis wrote: "The 'Enlightened' Frenchmen had much the same thing going for a while."
Yes, the good thing about ideals is that they do trickle down. You can't going around banging on about equality for long without your subordinates eventually saying, 'Hey, what about us?!' Luckily for us, ideals have been winning over self-interest for last few hundred years.

Outis wrote: "You didn't miss the distinction itself, relative to real-world patriarchy."
Not sure what distinction you're talking about here?

Outis wrote: "I see why you likened humans to wives (I did speak of human males being feminized) but their status is more akin to that of slaves or more precisely to that of a retainer (since they're not born into the status, sold into it by or sentenced to it but instead receive an ongoing benefit for their service)."

I disagree. The primary reason than the human/Ina relationship is a wife/patriarch relationship is because it is a family.

Their position cannot be that of a retainer because a retainer is not considered a family member. Also a retainer is free to leave, but the humans can't leave the Ina (without dying) just as a wife had no right to leave her husband. A retainer could go to another lord, but the humans can't go to another Ina without suffering terribly. Also a retainer was generally paid, or received specific compensation for his service, which ended when the service ended. A wife in a patriarchal marriage, like the humans to the Ina, based her whole life around the patriarch and family. She wasn't paid, and the humans aren't paid by the Ina. It's a communal relationship not a transactional one. So I don't think a retainer/patriarch is a good analogy for a human/Ina relationship.

A slave might be a better analogy. But then, in a patriarchy, a wife was in many ways like a slave. Slaves, wives and humans are all completely dependent on their master/patriarch/Ina to stay alive, and none of them are free to leave. The reason why I think the wife is the best analogy is because the humans and Ina are family; there are meant to be bonds of affection and caring between them, as between husband and wife. There's no hint that Ina could ever sell a human to another Ina like a slave.

Outis wrote: "Technically, retainer is also a patriarchal status (it is more apparent in more specialized titles like 'household knight' or 'bachelor') but that's not what people generally mean when they talk about patriarchy nowadays."
Yes, I should probably have specified which kind of patriarchy I meant when I started talking about it! I hope it's been clear that I meant patriarchy in it's purer form: Old Testament patriarchy rather than Victorian.

Nick wrote: "The primary reason than the human/Ina relationship is a wife/patriarch relationship is because it is a family.
A family which doesn't produce children (the whole point of patriarchy). That is a rather important distinction, and I'm sure you didn't miss it.
It used to be that retainers were part of a communal relationship (often called a household), that there was supposed to be an emotional (though typically not sexual) bond and that leaving wasn't necessarily suffering-free. Also, humans do receive a compensation from the Ina in the form of longevity and such, right?

Nick wrote: "You can't going around banging on about equality for long ..."
The politicians in question didn't go around banging on about equality. If you had done so within their earshot, you'd have been liable to be called an 'anarchist'. Anyone who didn't modify equality with something like 'before the law' was suspect.
Most of the politicians in question stood to benefit from the implementation of their ideals. It's mainly the cake business which brought about their downfall as well as the popularity of a different set of ideals.

Outis wrote: "A family which doesn't produce children (the whole point of patriarchy)."
The parallels are in the structure of the family, not the purpose.

Outis wrote: "Also, humans do receive a compensation from the Ina in the form of longevity and such, right?"
You might as well say that wives receive compensation from their patriarchs. The way that wives are rewarded is not the same as the way that retainers are rewarded. The retainer receives a certain specific amount for a certain specific service. It is a transaction. The wife gives her whole life to her husband, he is the source of everything she has. Just as for the humans the Ina are the source of their longlife and health. There is no point in the book where the Ina are giving 4 weeks of life in return for 1 pint of blood or something similarly transactional.
Being part of a household is not the same as being part of a family.

Outis wrote: "The politicians in question didn't go around banging on about equality."
Starting the declaration of independence with: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal is putting a rather high importance on equality. Modifying with 'before the law' doens't mean that they didn't believe in equality. I am not trying to argue that the founders believed in some kind of pure platonic version of equality untainted by modifiers. I don't even know what that would look like. Eventually any ideal is going to have to be implemented through law and custom and will therefore be circumscribed by reality.

If by 'the politicians in question' you mean the founding fathers, then I have no idea what you mean by 'their downfall', 'the cake business' or 'the popularity of a different set of ideals'.

Let me step back and be clear because I think we may be missing the forest for the trees.

I am not trying to say that every progressive revolution has been a perfect success or ushered in a utopia. I am not trying to say that every revlutionary has been a pure and noble saint, with no thought but the good of the whole.
I am perfectly willing to agree that the important players in world history have been flawed people who often acted in their own interests. I also agree that the interpretation of various high ideals, like the ones mentioned before, 'justice' 'liberty' etc. can be interpreted in different ways by different generations in different civilisations. I also believe that some of these ideals are in tension, liberty vs. equality for example.

However, it is also clear that large social changes, especially in the West over the last 500 years or so, have been motivated and supported by ideals generally known as the Enlightenment. There is a reason why it was 'President Washington of the United States' and not 'King Washington of Washingtonia' and it is because the founders really did believe in the ideals they espoused, even if they only implemented them for white, land-holding men.
The reason the slave trade ended in Britain was because huge numbers of people believed it was wrong and petitioned and voted and acted to end it, at absolutely no benefit to themselves. This was entirely based on ideals.
Women, minorities, African Americans, have all made huge advances in gaining their rights because we live in a society which actually does profess the belief in certain ideals, and eventually it either had to abandon the oppression or abandon the ideals.
No, I'm not saying that we now live in a perfect utopia where women and men are perfect equals. I am saying that huge improvements have been made, which never would have been acheivable if we'd had a different set of ideals.

As far as I can tell, we seem to be having this discussion because you think I've taken the position that all revolutionaries are pure as the driven snow. Meanwhile, you've taken the position that actually everybody is motivated by nothing more than the most base self-interest and their professed ideals are nothing more than a cynical smoke-screen?

Can I be clear that my position lies somewhere in the middle? Depending obviously on the person, most reformers and revolutionaries have actually believed what they said they believed, and have acted to improve the world significantly. And the acceptance of those ideals in society is generally sincere.
None of this is intended to detract from the truth that humans suffer from many biases, and certainly it has taken time for the idea of 'rights for everyone' to actually spread out to everyone.
As for acting in their own self-interest. Everyone does so (one could hardly expect a revolution to arise from crowds of people acting against their self-interest). People do support 'what's good for me' but that doesn't mean they don't also believe that it is 'good for everyone'.

Nick wrote: "As far as I can tell, we seem to be having this discussion because you think I've taken the position that all revolutionaries are pure as the driven snow. Meanwhile, you've taken the position that actually everybody is motivated by nothing more than the most base self-interest and their professed ideals are nothing more than a cynical smoke-screen?"
Let's not assume either of us is such a fool, please. Obviously the facts lie 'somewhere in the middle'.
In my mind, this discussion was about the contradiction between various versions of ideal equality and actual power imbalances.
And clearly, identity politics is going to figure in this picture besides intellectually-driven ideals and narrow self-interest. People who aren't great philosophers act against their self-interest all the time in politics, and it's not necessarily because they've been duped.

Nick wrote: "If by 'the politicians in question' you mean the founding fathers ..."
Nope. Sorry for the ambiguity. I was talking about cake (as in 'Let them eat cake.') and had quoted a famous French text going on about 'equality before the law'. I was referring to the politicians who crafted that text, voted for it, insisted that it be signed into law and so forth... possibly without even thinking about ensalved Africans within their jurisdiction.
In contrast, the 'founding fathers' were more directly concerned with slavery than politicians in France or England and only talked about equality in a document which isn't actually part of the law. So far as I know, it's Lincoln's civil war which ended up getting equality into the US constitution.

Nick wrote: "Modifying with 'before the law' doens't mean that they didn't believe in equality."
Right, which is why I mentionned their attitude to people who didn't use the modifier and who talked as you did way back about equality and brotherhood in the same breath.
I'm not talking about different generations or different civilizations: people who lived next to each other came to use the word 'equality' in slightly different contexts to mean something quite different.
We still live in that situation: people do not necessarily understand each other when they talk about equality and sometimes they even get the facts of inequality confused as a result.

Nick wrote: "Eventually any ideal is going to have to be implemented through law and custom and will therefore be circumscribed by reality.
Just in case you didn't get the difference, equality before the law in the contemporary context would mean that you get to complain to a court about being paid less than your male colleague, same as he would be entitled to have his complaints heard.
Equality without modifiers would additionally mean either that payroll decisions aren't up to employers anymore or more commonly that there's an effective law about equal pay. And without such a law, your hypothetical complaint would be unlikely to get anywhere (unless perhaps your employer was unprepared for such a challenge).
Equality before the law is most useful to those who make the law, the legal profession, the rich and more generally those who are priviledged enough to afford legal challenges and to be in a position to steer conflictual situations in a way that puts the law on their side.


Nick wrote: "The parallels are in the structure of the family, not the purpose."
It would be good worldbuilding if the purpose shaped the structure.
Since I think more highly of the book than you do, it makes sense that I'm the one who assumes that purpose and structure are aligned. Maybe I'm being too generous.

Outis wrote: "In my mind, this discussion was about the contradiction between various versions of ideal equality and actual power imbalances."
Ha, well now wonder this discussion has been so frustrating, if we have had such different ideas about what it's about!

Outis wrote: "Nope. Sorry for the ambiguity. I was talking about cake (as in 'Let them eat cake.') and had quoted a famous French text going on about 'equality before the law'. I was referring to the politicians who crafted that text,."
Ah, I see about the confusion. So you're refering to the politicians who crafted laws after the French revolution? But then how does the 'cake business' refer to them? Sorry, I can't seem to find the reference in your comments above, which famous French text are you refering to?

Outis wrote: "people do not necessarily understand each other when they talk about equality and sometimes they even get the facts of inequality confused as a result."
Yes, I certainly agree with this!

Outis wrote: "Just in case you didn't get the difference, equality before the law [...] to be in a position to steer conflictual situations in a way that puts the law on their side.."
Equality before the law means that everyone is subject to the same laws. Equality without modifiers would be an impossibility since nobody could even define pure equality let alone implement it.
I certainly agree that in any system where access to the courts costs money, the rich have a significant advantage.
I am not sure where this is going? I say that ideals have to be implemented by custom and law and are circumscribed by reality; you respond by providing some examples of how the ideal of equality might be implemented in law? So you're illustrating my point?

Outis wrote: "It would be good worldbuilding if the purpose shaped the structure.
Since I think more highly of the book than you do, it makes sense that I'm the one who assumes that purpose and structure are aligned."
I haven't said that the purpose and structure are not aligned or that the worldbuilding is bad in that regard. I'm not sure where you got that impression. It is possible to come to the same social structure through two different mechanisms, especially when one of the mechanisms has the advantage of being completely fictional!
In Fledgling the purpose of family structure is to satisfy the feeding and emotional needs of the Ina, and from the human perspective it grants them longlife and satisfies the dependence brought on by the venom. The links between purpose and structure make sense in terms of the rules of the world.

Ah, just to say that I found the quote up in message 37: 'men are born and remain free and equal before the law' and of course it's from the 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen'!

Nick wrote: "Equality before the law means that everyone is subject to the same laws. Equality without modifiers would be an impossibility since nobody could even define pure equality let alone implement it."
I'm not sure what you mean by 'pure' but equal pay laws aren't an impossibility. Their point is to diminish inequality.
Being subject to the same laws doesn't do anything about inequality if said laws aren't designed to diminish inequality but instead serve special interests.
I'm saying there are (at least) two different set of ideals and interests at work here. You on the other hand talk about 'the ideal of equality'. That's of course your priviledge but people might take you to mean that your ideal is the only legitimate one.

Nick wrote: "So you're refering to the politicians who crafted laws after the French revolution? But then how does the 'cake business' refer to them?"
I'm talking about the ones responsible for the Declaration you found and other texts passed into law during the same phase of the revolution. Alternative declarations reflecting different ideals as well as an abolition of slavery would soon follow as different sets of politicians came to proeminence only to be overthrown.
As to the cake joke, some of the chauvinist politicians who mocked the foreign queen back in the day were equally out of touch. While non-existent cakes would not have appeased women clamoring for bread, constitutional reform turned out to perform little better in that regard.


Nick wrote: "It is possible to come to the same social structure through two different mechanisms"
It's possible, but likely there would be differences.
Like: because there are no children, there is no dowry or anything else ideally involving two patriarchs in the human/Ina equivalent to marriage. It's doesn't bring together two families or anything of the sort.
There are other differences following from the fact that Ina are reproducing with other Ina and not with their bonded human. You might say they're not significant but what I do find most significant is that there are so few differences, considering.
Since you think structure is aligned with purpose in a way that makes sense, don't you think the Ina's purpose might have given rise to less stable and more predatory relationships with humans? Patriarchs have uses for their wives requiring stability but in your account of the Ina's purpose, only the emotional needs of the Ina seems to explain the somewhat familial character of the relationship. Would a self-respecting polygamous patriarch let their life be influenced to such an extent by womanly emotions?

Outis wrote: "It's possible, but likely there would be differences."
Yes, and I am not arguing that the Ina/human family structure literally is a patriarchy - I'm arguing that the relationship structure between the Ina and humans resembles that between partiarchs and wives in many ways that I've outlined in my review.

Outis wrote: "Like: because there are no children, there is no dowry or anything else ideally involving two patriarchs in the human/Ina equivalent to marriage. It's doesn't bring together two families or anything of the sort."
Yes, agreed. None of this detracts from my point that Ina/human family structure resembles patriarch/wives family structure. I've already agreed that the purposes are different. The fact that there's no dowry does nothing to change the fact that many humans are dependent on one Ina in an relationship of vastly unequal power and commitment.

Outis wrote: "You might say they're not significant but what I do find most significant is that there are so few differences, considering.."
Could you expand on that? What is it that you find significant about that?

Outis wrote: "Don't you think the Ina's purpose might have given rise to less stable and more predatory relationships with humans?.."
What did you have in mind?

Outis wrote: "Patriarchs have uses for their wives requiring stability but in your account of the Ina's purpose, only the emotional needs of the Ina seems to explain the somewhat familial character of the relationship."
Once again, I'm not saying the Ina literally is a patriarch - I'm saying the relationship between Ina and human are structurally similar to the relationship between patriarchs and wives. The patriach needs multiple wives for maximum breeding and needs their utter fidelity to be sure of his paternity. The Ina needs multiple humans for plentiful feeding and gains their utter fidelity due to the venom.

Briefly, it looks to me like the Ina live as if they had some kind of essentially feminine character. They could use the venom to make humans do their bidding, wear them out and find new ones to play with and learn from but instead, as you say, they use their venom to create something akin to families without a reproductive function. It's actually the humans who benefit most from the family-like structure (compared to a more predatory relationship), as if they were pets the Ina liked caring for. Now in the real world, men often care a great deal for their pets and organize their lives around them to some extent but in an essentialist world, caring is gendered.
I don't know about regular Ina but Shori is able to live as a wild predator which could be a lot of fun but is weighed down by attachments to humans (and pretty frail and uncool ones at that). She's supposed to be a teen so why doesn't she want to be free and to see the world?

Outis wrote: "Briefly, it looks to me like the Ina live as if they had some kind of essentially feminine character."

Hmm, so if I've followed your argument you're saying:
1. There is an essentially feminine character which is caring.
2. Building a family is essentially a caring thing to do.
2. This essentially feminine character is found in the Ina in Fledgling because they build families.

I'm not sure one can view building families as a primarily caring activity. I think for the Ina (just as for an Old Testament patriarch) building a family was necessary for survival and flourishing. So it's a practical exercise as much as a caring one. On top of that, the Ina and the patriarch are both in total control. It's a relationship of dominance and submission. So while I agree with you that most essentialists view caring as gendered; I don't feel that the primary motivation of the Ina in building families is to just have the chance to care. Instead it's to have someone to feed on, to control and to use as a servant.

Nor do I think that the Ina are particuarly caring/feminine in comparison to the humans. The humans care for the Ina on an emotional level and on a practical level. Running their homes and farms, satisfying them emotionally and sexually, obeying their every command, guarding them during the day. Now one could say that the humans are only doing this because the venom compels them. I think that's true, and it's also an anti-essentialist argument. Humans care for Ina because they are compelled by the venom; women care for men because they are compelled by patriarchy. We can't say for sure how much they would really care if they were free.

Outis wrote: "It's actually the humans who benefit most from the family-like structure (compared to a more predatory relationship), as if they were pets the Ina liked caring for."

I'm quite surprised to see 'being treated as a pet' being presented as evidence that humans benefit most! Sure pets benefit more than prey - but that's the wrong comparison. We need to compare humans to Ina when we're asking who benefits most. And I think it's the Ina because they are always in total control of the relationship because of the power of the venom to demand obedience.

I think giving total obedience is a terribly high price. And although that's not too bad for Shori's humans (because she's a good one) I think it must be pretty awful for the symbionts of the Silk's, for example.

Outis wrote: "I don't know about regular Ina but Shori is able to live as a wild predator which could be a lot of fun but is weighed down by attachments to humans (and pretty frail and uncool ones at that). She's supposed to be a teen so why doesn't she want to be free and to see the world?"
There's a conversation between Joan and Shori starting on about page 274 where they discuss the fact that the Ina can't survive without a family of symbionts. There are also mentions in the book of Ina needing to touch symbionts regularly. I don't think that Shori can survive without a symbiont family forever. She managed to do so for a while in desperate circumstances, but as soon as she found Wright she bound him without knowing what she was doing, and almost immediately did the same to Theodora. Seems like it might be instinctual?

As for Shori not wanting to see the world. The extreme circumstances she finds herself in - family dead, assassins coming for her - prevent her from having any normal 'see the world' type plans. Who knows what she might've wanted if things had been different?
I think part of the reason why I found the book so.. creepy... is that the power dynamics, social structure, mating patterns etc. are all presented as completely inevitable.
Shori met the Gordon boys for the first time, had no memory of them as her potential fiances and immediately decided that's fine and wanted get married ASAP. Doesn't seem like the actions of someone who considers any alternatives to the accepted life plan.

Seems like she's someone who's desperate to fit in and prove she's not a freak (and justify the continued existence of her 'race'). I remember her as taking on responsibilities like a magnet.

It shows that you've read the book more recently than I did. I remembered the Ina as being able to switch symbionts, something they could take advantage of (at the expense of the humans who, whether or not that's the 'wrong' comparison, would be worse off if the Ina were more predatory, and would be worse off in greater numbers too). Or maybe the Ina are able to but instinctually unwilling to move on from the relationship?
I think that a teen raised like a territorial patriarch would at a minimum want other symbionts than these and probably to switch (some of) them often too. But then there's the weird amnesia thing going on...

Outis wrote: "I remember her as taking on responsibilities like a magnet."
Yes exactly! To be honest, I'm not sure that I could pinpont her motivations. Characters in this book just seem to do what they do without ever asking themselves why or considering another way.

Outis wrote: "I remembered the Ina as being able to switch symbionts, something they could take advantage of ."
So, if I've understood it correctly, the have a core of about 11 symbionts which are their 'family'. These humans die without regular venom and so will never leave the Ina. The Ina in turn feel very protective of them. But the Ina can also feed on, and mind control, random people which they do regularly for the variety. So the Ina really get the best of both worlds.

You've read Watts. I remember discussing Butler with a former user of the site and telling them her aliens can be read as kind of like the ones in Blindsight: when their motivations seem to make sense, it's likely because you're getting a narrative constructed for human consumption. Their genuine needs aren't supposed to make sense to you because biology.
Her humans however strike me as making about as much sense as human characters generally do in US pop culture.
This creepy failure to consider another way is in any case totally Butler.

Outis wrote: " her aliens can be read as kind of like the ones in Blindsight: when their motivations seem to make sense."
Yes, I really need to read the Xenogensis books, because it sounds like it's covering the same themes, but much better!
For Fledgling, we're inside Shori's head, and there's no sense that she's talking to us rather than just thinking to herself. So I'm not sure it can apply here. Unless I'm being dense and just missing the clues! The more I think about it, the more I agree with reviewers who said that this book feels like a solid first draft. If she'd had time to rework it she might have made it a bit less wooden.

Outis wrote: "Her humans however strike me as making about as much sense as human characters generally do in US pop culture."
Haha, well, I think American writers as the same as any others. Even the most outlandish characters will make sense if the writing is any good. But Sturgeon's law applies everywhere.