I'm interested in writing about how Bloodchild makes us feel uncomfortable through the way she describes sex and pregnancy. It makes me want to understand how exactly she accomplishes this, and more importantly why she did things like change the context of things or use role reversals to achieve this. One way to consider this is that she does it to show how absurd what we think of as normal is.
The world of Bloodchild is pretty similar to our
universe, following the same rules. However, the story takes place on an alien
world with aliens, the Tlic. The Tlic are aliens that reproduce by having the
female Tlic impregnate animals, inserting their eggs so they can grow into
grubs and feed off their flesh. When humans come from Earth, it leads to the female
Tlic putting their children inside of humans, mostly men. This leads to a role
reversal and causes the pregnancy to be de-familiarized. In addition, the way
the grubs are taken out of the host in a painful way makes the birth seem
strange, and gives an uncomfortable feeling. This is interesting because what
is being described in a way to make the reader feel uncomfortable, is actually
pretty normal and very similar to regular human reproduction, yet it makes it
seem strange and unfamiliar despite being the same as something that really is
familiar and seen as normal.
I’m not sure why the author would try to de-familiarize childbirth
and pregnancy, and make it seem strange and uncomfortable. It seems like a
pretty weird thing to do, normally stories don’t do that sort of thing. Maybe
she is trying to say something about how crazy the stuff we normally forget
about and think of as normal actually is. I’m not sure how that could be proven
though, while there is evidence that it can make human reproduction seem very
strange, I’m not sure how I can tell that it was the authors intent. The author
makes the normal seem crazy.
First, the role reversal between men and women in this
world shakes up our expectations even though it doesn’t really change much, it’s
just the woman placing her children in the man instead of the other way around.
Also it is described as having little grubs living and feeding off of the
parent’s body, which could make people uncomfortable and weird them out, but
that is basically normal human pregnancy and we accept that as normal. The
process of taking the grubs out is described as a really painful experience,
but again that is normal just described to be weird.
