Butler really had not met any monsterfuckers at this point in her life, had she?

Coming to this novel after mostly reading Butler's 90s/00s ouvre, it's startling how much more reactionary it is. Driven by cold war nuclear anxieties, Dawn presents a world in which people are xenophobic by nature, men are overwhelmingly violent, and hierarchy is part of humans' genetic code inescapable without alien eugenics. It's a deeply conservative understanding of humanity despite being a reaction against political conservatism, and it's unsettling to read from a writer I think so much of. I'm glad that her politics matured in the decade after this book.