Like many of the books I will be reading for this class, The Left Hand of Darkness is a book that has been on my to-read list for a few years and which has been on one of my bookcases for at least several months. Even if this novel wasn't listed up there with Dune as one of the most notable pieces of science fiction literature or if it hadn't won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, the core conceit of the Gethenians and their ambisexual nature would have intrigued me. I read the first two Earthsea books last summer so I was already somewhat familiar with Le Guin's writing style and storytelling, but as my CA classmate Jordan put it when I mentioned this book, there is the sense that "she knows a secret that God doesn't" with how (at least in regards to the books I have read so far) how frequently internally philosophical in profound ways her novels are.
As Le Guin herself describes in the foreword to my edition, "I'm merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimental manner proper to science fiction [...] I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist's way, which is by inventing elaborately circumstantial lies." And this thought experiment, of a species of humans who are not male or female, but both and neither. As someone who presents as androgynous and who pretty much hates when people or society try to force gender roles on me, the idea of a society that essentially doesn't even have the concept of gender roles is incredibly fascinating to think about and see how Le Guin presents what such a world may be like.
In some ways, aspects of Gethen physiology are inversions of human physiology; while kemmer is in some ways compared to the cycle of heat that most mammals that are not human experience, the fact that it is on a roughly monthly cycle that lines up with the moon brings to mind the menstrual cycle, though rather than being something that comes about due to lack of fertilization, kemmer functions to bring about fertilization. Likewise, that 3-4% of Gethenians are in kemmer permanently, never going into the androgynous phase but permanently showing either male or female sex characteristics. This statistic is actually much larger than the population of transgender people (at least in the United States), which in 2016 was 0.3% of the population according to the Human Rights Campaign. If anything, the percentage of Gethenian "perverts" is more akin to percentage of the population that falls into the overall LGBTQIA+ umbrella, which is 2017 was 4.5% according to Gallup. Another aspect of Gethenian physiology that brought to mind a comparison to the LBGT+ community was the mention of Orgoreyns being known to use hormones to cause one to express preferred sexual characteristics, which brings to mind trans people using hormones to transition. Gethenians using hormones can also be seen as one being cis or alternatively, for lack of a better way to put it, falling into the sex (as again, no gender in this society) binary rather than being, essentially, sexfluid like the majority of Gethenians.
Another aspect of Gethenian society, past simply just their ambisexual nature, is the fact that with gender being non existent and sex being fluid kemmer to kemmer, it the fact that sexuality, in a way, nonexistent, at least in the way we understand it. Sexual attraction is not based on the sex of your partner; as far as I could tell, every Gethen is essentially both pansexual and heterosexual., with attraction occurring independently of the sexual characteristics of the partner (in the fact that the same Gethenian can express male characteristics one cycle and female the next) but also dependent on them due to the characteristics of one always being opposed to the other.. It is briefly mentioned that same sex kemmer pairs may exist but are so uncommon that the Ekumen observers have never seen an example of such, which is also interesting to ponder in a society where sex is even more integrally tied to procreation (rather than anything else) when compared to our society. But overall, in many ways, this Gethenian sexuality is difficult to wrap the mind around, as it differs so much from how relationships and attraction work in our society.
One aspect of how Gethenians are portrayed that did bother me, due to a more personal preference, was the use of masculine pronouns in reference to them even in the secher phase where they are completely androgynous. It is mentioned that Karhidish has (at least) five pronouns: the "human pronoun" used for one in secher (comparable to a gender neutral pronoun), the feminine kemmer pronoun for one currently displaying female sex characteristics, the masculine kemmer pronoun for one currently displaying masculine sex characteristics, the feminine for animals (which animals of Gethen do not have a kemmer cycle like the humans of the planet), and the masculine for animals. So Gethenians use a "third pronoun" when one is androgynous, why does Ai use he/him to describe all of the Gethenians? The Investigator that Chapter 7: The Question of Sex is a report from mentions the reasoning that "he" is "less defined, less specific, than neuter or feminine" which I disagree with. Perhaps what is meant by neuter is "it," in which case not using is understandable. And I do know that the common usage of they/them as a singular, gender neutral pronoun is, overall, a more recent evolution of English. But there are also examples of gender neutral pronouns being used prior to The Left Hand of Darkness: e/em was used as far back as 1890 and ae/aer in 1920. Yes, the vast majority were created after Le Guin wrote and published the book, but some of the most commonly used pronouns by non-binary and gender queer individuals were first used just a handful of years after The Left Hand of Darkness, such as xe/xem in 1973 and ey/em in 1975 (Source). So it is completely feasible that Le Guin could have used an invented pronoun set to refer to the Gethenians because as is, as is mentioned in the book, "the very use of the [masculine] pronoun leads me to continually forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman" which also happens to the reader. Perhaps, given that it was lampshaded, it was purposeful. In short, I both do and do not understand the decision to use masculine pronouns for Gethenians. If written in 2019 rather than 1969, perhaps Le Guin would have chosen to use something like they/them instead.
There's just so much about the Gethenians which is completely alien from our own world and society that I've only touched on a fraction of what Le Guin introduces to the reader. And that's without going into the plot, specific characters, or the continuous themes of nationalism and patriotism that litter the novel. I'm still working to digest and process everything, and put my thoughts into words. But since the ambisexual nature was what first intrigued me, it seemed fitting to focus on what of that I have organized my thoughts around so far. So... yeah there's a lot. Le Guin knows things not even God does.
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