A review by ketutar
Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

4.0

I love Octavia's stories.

The only problem I have - I have now read two books, Wild Seed, and Kindred - is the... expectation of women to submit. That women's job is to pacify, to appease men to get the smallest amount of consideration and respect. :-( This has been very strong in both books, and I hate it.
I mean, both Rufus and Doro are manchildren with too much power and too little compassion, and both Dana and Anyanwu are strong, intelligent, powerful women, who get forced into submission and placating the men with the power. Both need to give up their power to be able to survive. That's so f-d up!

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
- Autistic Abby