Secondary Source

My main secondary source as of now seems to be "The Afterlife of Slavery and the Problem of Reproductive Freedom"  While I plan on reading and hopefully incorporating "Conversations with Octavia Butler," "Alien Construction: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought," and "Strange matings : science fiction, feminism, African American voices, and Octavia E. Butler," and maybe others, Weinbaum's article is very pertinent to my argument.  It first makes the claim that although others suggest there is a growing need to reevaluate cultural norms due to changing situations, Octavia Butler's works bring about serious discussion on contemporary reproductive issues and ideas.  Furthermore, Weinbaums states,

"Through contextualization of Butler’s fiction within a discussion of reproductive politics, it becomes possible to recognize in Butler’s work not only a prescient assessment of the reproductive landscape that was beginning to emerge as Butler wrote in the 1970s and 1980s, but also, and as importantly, a proleptic critique of what has now become a well- established cultural dominant in the new millennium. For Butler’s fiction addresses our time as much as its own"

This is very much a crucial aspect of my entire thesis as well as a key idea in studying science fiction: while these dystopian societies are purely imagination and bear no outward resemblance to today's world, they can stay raise questions about what we take to be fact.
Also, this article takes the same stance as I do regarding the view of the method Tlic reproduction as surrogacy and slavery, despite both the supposed "symbiotic" nature of the relationship between the Tlics and the Terrans and Butler's own claim that Bloodchild is a love story, not about slavery.  The source says that slavery is simply harder to decipher as the lines become blurred since now there is no race or group but the entire human race.  Surrogacy is the norm.  Another very important aspect to my own thesis surfaces when Weibaum says, "The upshot is that even though Tlic ideology prevents humans from recognizing themselves as racialized and feminized slaves, readers readily perceive the human surrogates’ real  relationship to the imaginary conditions under which they labor."  This is big time because I'm arguing that Butler forces the reader to see another society where man has been made into simply a machine, a means to creating more Tlics, and thus she raises questions about whether or not certain groups in today's time are similarly valued.
Overall, this article is very good in terms of showing how the relationship between the Tlics and Terrans is not symbiotic and thus questions how symbiotic relationships in our own society, namely between man and woman, but from what I can see it does not say much on today's time period but rather compares the world of Bloodchild to surrogacy and slavery in general, which is, as the article does make clear, a more historical issue, not a present one.  Still, it is very helpful to my argument.