Up until Adulthood Rites, Lilith’s Brood has been a story of the human race gradually being deprived of its “humanness.” While the Oankali may be friendly imperialists who want to have hot sexy times with the humans – they are still imperialists nonetheless. Imperialism is a force that deprives another being of its agency and culture, it is a parasitic force that takes more than it gives – if it gives anything at all. The Oankali would like to call this parasitic relationship “trade.”
The trade between the Oankali and the humans reminds me of a famous scene in Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian.”
In this movie, the Jews complain, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
“The aqueducts,” One person says.
“The sanitation.” Adds another.
“Medicine, education, public order, irrigation, wine, and public baths. ” Say the rest.
“But aside from that, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
In a similar way, the Oankali literally give the humans a whole new world in their trade. They take the humans from being an endangered race, to rehabilitating their planet, and teach them everything from how to live in the wild, to making tools, and farming. Not only do the Oankali teach the humans these skills, but they improve humanity. They fix the genetics of many human beings so that they can stay young and resist disease. The Oankali even heal many humans and help them resist death. And last but not least, the Oankali can help humans achieve an hour long orgasm.
Yet all these seemingly amazing perks come at a cost.
The humans are deprived of their humanity.
Even in the most intimate bonds of relationships, humans no longer have agency over themselves. They are not permitted to feel an attraction without the facilitation of an ooloi. This is the most apparent in the sex scene between Lilith, Nikanj, and Tino:
He tried to reach out to her across the body of the ooloi, to touch her, touch the warm human flesh, yet she remained too far away to touch…He thought he said her name and repeated it, but he could not hear the sound of his own voice (Butler 302).
In the most basic pleasures of touch and voice, humans are deprived.
An ooloi sex sandwich is all good for Oankali male and female, since they are sister and brother and therefore naturally feel a sexual repulsion to one another. Yet the new brand of intimacy that the Oankali have chemically forced onto the humans perverts the most sacred bond that humans can have.
Later, in Adulthood Rites, Karma strikes. An Oankali is deprived of a similar bond, by human captors. The humans who hold Akin in Phoenix, deprive him from developing the deep, mental bond that he and his sister were supposed to share. The humans cannot understand the extent to how cruely they have cut him off, no more than the Oankali can understand the damage they cause human intimacy. In this sense, humans and Oankali will never truly understand one another.