I meant to write this post ages ago but never got around to it. Time to pull a "Lot's wife" and look to the past (so clever). On April 5th, Shruti, Will, and Maia presented Angelyn Mitchell's article "Not Enough of the Past: Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred." Much of the article focused on how sexuality correlates to female empowerment and independence. When Dana is in the antebellum south, rape is a constant threat and sex is wielded as a weapon. When she is in modern day California, sex is an act of pleasure and love, something Dana shares with her husband out of her own free will. For us and for Dana, sex = freedom.
Our class discussion focused mainly on this distinct difference across century lines. We explored possible scenarios where Alice or Rufus were transported to the 1970's, and we speculated on their outlooks on our society, specifically modern sexuality. I have qualms with dealing in such hypothetical terms, but the discussion did get me thinking about the constantly evolving perception we have of sex. What exactly about the antebellum south changed to allow our current perspective to develop?
It's important to remember that Kindred was published in 1979, two decades into the western sexual revolution and only seven years after oral contraception was actually accessible to the entire American public (I'm referring to the 1972 case of Eisenstadt v. Baird, which is nicely summarized here). It can be reasonably assumed that Dana was using some sort of contraception by this time, whereas the same can't be said for women of the 19th century, especially slave women. I don't mean to imply that birth control is a modern invention; to the contrary, contraception has been around for centuries. However, in the 19th century the most common form of birth control was the male condom. George Bernard Shaw even said that the rubber condom was the greatest invention of the 19th century (that's not relevant, it just made me laugh). Until female contraception became as available as male contraception, sex was a power men could wield over women.
I know I said I hate hypothetical situations but I can't help myself right now. What if the slave women on the Weylin plantation had access to birth control? There would still be rape, there would still be suffering, but the vicious breeding cycle implemented by slave owners would end. The women would not be seen as child rearing machines, and perhaps more as real people. That might be too hopeful- maybe they would still be seen as property, but at least on an equal level with slave men. Not that slave men were regarded highly. I feel like I just put both of my feet in my mouth so I'm just going to stop. My point was supposed to be that access to female contraception is the reason sex is viewed so differently in the two settings of Kindred. I kind of got too engrossed in research to actually formulate any coherent thoughts but the history of birth control is simply too fascinating.. They used spermicide in ancient Egypt? Must stop typing.
This is a striking way to frame contemporary debates about birth control and women's reproductive freedom in terms of power and control. Indeed, Alice's fertility (and, by extension, that of all those like her) is indeed used as a means of control in the slave system--and also as a means of enriching the owner's wealth. Her ability or willingness to escape is manipulated by the master's ownership of her children (we see this with Sarah, the cook, and the power Rufus wields over her by retaining only one of her children). I think you're right that this is implicitly one of the ways Butler focuses on the gendered aspects of slavery, from a 1979/second-wave-feminist point of view. In general, it's striking to me how much more she focuses on sex and gender than race per se in this novel (as issues w/ her and Kev have more to do with gender than race).
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