Butler similarly reveals compulsory heterosexuality as a consequence of hierarchical behavior that has more to do with the social construction of
sexual norms than with biological imperatives. Many same-sex sexual rela-tionships between the Ina and their human symbionts exist in the novel, though human-human and Ina-Ina relationships are exclusively heterosex-ual. While the same-sex relationships are an accepted part of human–Ina communities, humans express that they would prefer to be in opposite-sex partnerships with the Ina, and the Ina diminish the seriousness of same-sex human–Ina relationships. Only Shori, who cannot recall socialization that would normalize one type of sexuality and demonize the other, gives equal preference and seriousness to her opposite- and same-sex relationships.
Human-human relationships in Fledgling are not only exclusively het-erosexual, but they also tend to be heteronormative, ending in marriage and children. However, humans enter same-sex partnerships with the Ina. These relationships are sexual, yet they are always located in an environment of heterosexual identification. When Wright and Shori question men and women about their same-sex human–Ina relationships, they are met with agreement from the symbionts that they would prefer opposite-sex couplings.
Joel Harrison states that he did not want a male Ina partner because “there’s too much sexual feeling involved” (158–59), and Brook asserts that she would have initially chosen a male to replace Iosif as her Ina partner (163). In addi-tion, Joel’s father, Martin, notes that although he is paired with a male Ina, he married a human woman shortly after he decided to stay in the Ina com-munity (204). Even Theodora, who seems to be the human character most immediately associated with lesbian identification — she surprises Shori with a passionate kiss during one of their early encounters — expresses regret that Shori is not the “tall, handsome, fully grown white man” of vampire lore (38, 91). Although humans engage in same-sex sexual behavior, Butler care-fully foregrounds heterosexual identifications. Readers must wonder: is But-ler positing biological heterosexuality for her characters? Or are those characters who prefer a wider range of sexuality couching their desires in the socially mandated norm of heterosexuality?
Like humans, the Ina express a desire for and promote the significance of opposite-sex couplings. For the Ina, sexual identity is intertwined with the ability to reproduce. The Ina recognize same-sex human–Ina partner-ships as a part of their sexual identity, but they seem to consider same-sex relationships with humans purely in terms of sexual pleasure (and food), not serious adult sexuality. For example, Iosif tells Shori that she can “play sex-ually” with her symbionts but that she is too young to mate with other Ina (80). This differentiation between sex as recreation and sex as procreation
operates on a hierarchy in the Ina community, and with the positioning of reproduction over playing comes a ranking of heterosexual behavior over homosexual or lesbian relationships.
The socially constructed hierarchy in Fledgling uses the biological imper-ative of reproduction as an explanation for compulsory heterosexuality in human-human and Ina-Ina relationships. Although no humans or Ina save Shori exhibit same-sex desire within their own species, the absence of this behavior may have more to do with the construction of sexuality in human and Ina communities than with the biological absence of same-sex desire.7 The difficulty in distinguishing between biologically and socially constructed sexual preferences in the novel is that such a simple, either-or system is incompatible with discussions of sexuality. According to Fausto-Sterling, situating sexual desire in binary frameworks — biology versus choice, mas-culine versus feminine, heterosexual versus homosexual, “normal” versus
“mutant”— is part of the problem in trying to understand sexual identity and desire (“Frameworks of Desire” 49). Specifically, Fausto-Sterling suggests that normalizing heterosexuality or presenting homosexuality as aberrant simplifies a system of attraction and desire that is far more complicated than a binary system allows. In Shori, the absence of a socially constructed binary consciousness that views heterosexuality as normal and lesbianism and homo-sexuality as mutant enables her to be more open than other characters in the novel about her sexual preferences. Shori is not unusual for having same-sex relationships with human women; nevertheless, she is the only Ina noted to engage in a public display of lesbian sexuality with her symbiont (204).
Moreover, while humans in Fledgling feel the need to qualify or justify their same-sex relationships with the Ina, as is evidenced above, Shori does not understand that these relationships are considered unusual until she hears others question their validity (203–4).
Shori’s openness to same-sex sexuality extends to Ina-Ina relationships as well. She spends as much time (if not more) describing female Ina than describing male, and she decides that Zoë Fotopoulos is “the most beauti-ful Ina” (294), with no distinction between male and female. Shori also reveals that she is sexually attracted to Ina females. She says of Joan and Margaret Braithwaite, two Ina sisters, “There was something undeniably feminine and interestingly seductive about them, even to me. Was it their scents?” (210). While Shori qualifies her feelings by saying “even to me,” her earlier comments about not recognizing same-sex sexuality as aberrant indi-cate that her anxiety about being a female who is attracted to other females
comes out of socially constructed (rather than biologically determined) norms of sexuality. Moreover, Shori’s attraction stems from a scent, which in the Ina world (as in the animal world) functions as an evolutionary way to attract mates. Certainly, Shori’s interest in the Braithwaite sisters does not necessi-tate a lesbian identity. Yet if Shori is not compelled to comply with the human and Ina demand for compulsory heterosexuality, is this because het-erosexual desire is not biologically determined in Fledgling? Or does biology in fact support a more open sexuality than either Ina or humans allow?