All of chapter seven discusses gender and basically nothing else. It's like a plotless Michael Bay movie that doesn't end and has a ton of sexual tension between the male and female leads. Except the characters are both male and female? or neither? or both? Or magically only gendered conveniently around the female menstrual cycle (I see what you did there, Le Guin).
Since the Gethenians cycle from somer to kemmer, gender gets thrown around. Every couple of weeks the Gethenians enter kemmer and spice up their love lives by becoming either male or female. Some could be both a mother and a father, and sometimes Gethenians can "vow kemmering" and enter in what we think of as marriage.
This is all relevant because it's so foreign to us outside of Le Guin's world. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin's characters can cross genders, allowing women to be politicians, guards, soldiers, or other traditional male roles. This also opens up opportunities for men to be caregivers, bakers, and yes, even landladies. This swapping of "traditional" gender roles gives the reader a look inside a diverse, unisex community and explains a lot of the confusion Ai experiences during his time on Gethen. He attempts to categorize humans into "male" and "female" roles, even though this is impossible. The Gethenians switch genders more frequently than I brush my hair. Ai constantly tries to sort the people as if they were humans, assigning gendered pronouns to the people outside of kemmer.
The lack of gender also provides a very safe space for the people. It is not only inappropriate for gender discrimination to exist on Gethen, it is impossible. Because there are no such things as "gender roles," there is no way something could be labeled as "manly" or "feminine." There is no gender identity crisis (surprisingly) and there is no concern about having a child with your sibling (weird) or being both a father and/or a mother to various children.
Le Guin uses Ai as an example, showing how people in contemporary society (or the late 60's) view gender roles and gender construction. Ai is an outsider, someone who will never fit in because of his specific views on sexuality and gender. He constantly puts people into boxes and Le Guin begins to come through and show a society where people share roles and function equally and the only real problem is the dude trying to put walls where there shouldn't be any barriers. Although this chapter was pretty boring, it showed the reader a lot about the society, Ai, and Le Guin's feelings about sexuality and its interaction with gender and gender roles.
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ReplyDeleteFor my other English class, we have spent the semester reading the works of Jane Austen and I just completed my final paper for the class. PHEW! But, while I have feminism fresh in my brain, I figure I may as well bring a little of my information to talk about Le Guin since both are concerned with the topic of gender.
ReplyDeleteFor one, there is Simone De Beauvior who inquires about a definition of woman, because we always seem to be confining or limiting woman by describing her. So, it feels like we are getting nowhere; there is no set definition of woman, no way to figure out what woman is. This idea sort of drove me crazy. It's the same question Estraven asks Genly in chapter 16. And we cannot answer and describe males or females without creating differences.
And this brings me to my second source, a historian by the name Karen Offen discusses two oppositional perspectives of feminism: relational and individual. Relational concerns a woman in relation to those around her and embraces her unique purpose as it impacts others. On the other hand, individual focuses on the woman's desires and attempts to free her of the burden of her sexual organs. Offen explains that an appreciation for difference and a recognition for equality is necessary for the feminist movement to accomplish its goals.
So, sure a society without sex seems like it will solve a lot of problems. At the end of the day, these nations are still plagued with the dramas of human nature, not making them much better for their lack of gender.
What I find fascinating about the issue of gender in this text is that they all call each other brother or son. They don't have genders 90% of the time and yet they still call each other by the male pronouns and titles. I know that English is restrictive in it's pronouns and titles to only be gendered (you can be a brother or a sister, a he or a she), but Le Guin had no problems coming up with other words like Kemmering. I feel like she should have created an alternate pronoun to also use to truly push home the idea of genderlessness.
ReplyDeleteI thought the exact same thing. The entire book I wanted to know why Le Guin, so concerned with gender stereotyping and gender roles, made everyone male, or at least male in writing. Although we can assume that we're reading a translation of their language, and since Genly sees everyone as male, at least for a time, it still doesn't make sense why they refer to themselves as men, like Heather said. Yeah, a society without gender could solve a lot of problems but I don't know what good it would do if the people in the society still call each other by one pronoun or the other instead of by both.
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