Monday, January 22, 2018
Wave 1 Post
In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai faces the struggle of how to view the Gethenians. As we know, the Gethenians are without a determined sex until they enter a sort of heat known as kemmer. It isn’t until they find a partner that they are assigned a sex, and once kemmer has ended, they return to their neutral state. Genly comes from a planet in which the gender is assigned at birth, which is how our Earth is as well. Throughout the novel, we see him assign a gender to some of the people he meets. Such as the person in charge of his housing while he stays in Karhide. He considers this Gethenian to be his landlady, and when he asks how many child they have birthed, they answer none. They had actually been the male during kemmer all four times. It is this assigning of gender to certain roles in a society that has made his connections with others somewhat difficult. It is also shown that he has some sexist attitudes, as shown by his assigning of certain roles and comments. Genly’s world is one where there are two genders, and those genders are assigned to certain roles and jobs in that society.
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Genly mentioned that when he meets a Gethenian, he thinks of them first as a man, then as a woman, and then remembers that he has to think of them as they are: neither and both. On his world, men and women have different traits an behaviors, so he is conditioned to assign a gender to Gethenians based on their traits and behaviors even though that is not applicable to them.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of his sexist ideas could be when he was bothered by Estraven, because of the womanly vibes he was getting from him. Genly was "annoyed" by his "sense of effeminate intrigue". I'm still not sure if he was bothered by the idea of talking to a woman, or the fact that Estraven is gender less, but in the moment he saw him as a woman. I may or may not have just confused myself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jacob that I noticed that Genly trys to assign genders to the people of Gethen by certain traits that they posses. For example like the "landlady" he assigned that person as a woman, because they nagged and had a big butt. Those are characteristics that a woman would have in Genly's eyes. It is really interesting how naturally we as humans have characterized certain traits as male and female. Which is something that is simple developed for society and they way people do things.
ReplyDeleteHello Austin, it is true that throughout the novel, Genly has trouble adapting and understanding that the people of Gethen are extremely different from him because of their sexual characteristics. His way to cope is as you said, is assigning people certain genders from the way he sees them. As the comments above mention, he assigns them genders from his preconceived notions of gender characteristics. It seems wrong in a sense that he is assuming their gender, yet this is the way he copes since he is from a society where gender dominates the society customs.
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