There are a lot of interesting oxymoronic concepts in Lilith's Brood. Throughout the series, the Oankali mention that the Human race is full of life and death, horror and beauty. Simultaneously, Lilith notices the subtle ways the Oankali treat the Humans. Their imprisonment isn't actively aggressive, but it's an aggressiveness hidden in kindness. "And they had done it all so softly, without brutality, and with patience and gentleness so corrosive..." (67). Also, when the ooloi and the humans are fighting, Lilith describes it as "gentle chaos."

Blag!

After the brief discussion about genetics in class on Monday, I figured I'd talk about my understanding of the genetics involved and how they would affect Oankali form and society. Although our current understanding of genetics limits our engineering methods to basically linking one gene to a single protein or trait, it's become pretty clear in the last decade that our genome is much more complicated than that--we are exponentially more complex than a fruit fly, for example, but we have less than double the actual number of genes that a fruit fly has.

First off, I really enjoyed reading this book; in my opinion it does a far better job of presenting an alternative view of gender than Left Hand of Darkness did. I don't know that I'd necessarily want our civilization to evolve in this direction gender-wise, but clearly Oankali society functions quite smoothly even with a lack of duality. The message is that this kind of functioning is possible for us. Lilith's Brood is a feminist work in the best sense because it promotes and presents a model of true gender equality.

The Oankali in Lilith's Brood are distinctly alien, in many ways – but the difference which persists longest and is most troublesome is their culture – or apparent lack thereof. The Oankali apparently take the view that biology is everything – that, given the scale of a group of humans throughout a lifetime, the genes they have within them ultimately decide the fate of the entires species. They believe that they can predict the lifestyle of the children their ooloi mix before the children are even born.

...This was meant to be a response to the long thread of comments on the entry titled, "The extension of human masculinity," but it became this:

It's interesting to watch people get so riled up about gender in class. I understand that some people believe it's a social construct and that stereotypes are evil, etc. etc., but I think that this belief in gender and the stereotypes attached to each one is so deeply ingrained, that there's no point in arguing aimlessly about it.

So I'm about two-thirds of the way through "Adulthood Rites" now, and while "Dawn" seemed to focus a bit more on the alien aspect (the Oankali) this second part seems to shift towards the humans, both resister and "trader".

When we were discussing in class whether or not humans deserved what the Oankali were doing to/for?

Not really a criticism of Butler's work, but an observation I've been mulling over for a while...

(This started out as a reply to two separate posts, but got rather long and wandered off a bit on its own argument, so I’m posting it independently, but referencing the posts that inspired parts of it where applicable.)

In reply to CZ and his assertion that the Oankali are definitely alien in his comment to roseblack’s post --I'm not going to argue that there is a direct correlation between every aspect of the Oankali and humans. Lacking my own tentacled ooloi, I'd be a bit hard pressed. I will, however, argue that there are many parallels to be drawn between them and us, particularly pertaining to gender. That is, if I can be trusted to not be apparently inherently manipulative self.

As CZ stated in own blog, the Oankali are not in the moral right they wish to see themselves inhabiting (a self-delusion to which humans themselves are prone).