The narrator in LeGuin’s “The Question of Sex” might reveal just as much about herself as she does about the subjects of her anthropological inquiry. What does she rely on to anchor her understanding of the universe, herself, and others? How does she try to cope with understanding people alien to her? Do you think she has good or bad strategies for that? Don’t just generalize. Explain how a particular moment in the text helped you come to your understanding of the character.
7 thoughts on “LeGuin–Group 1”
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I think a particular moment in “The Question of Sex” that really helped understand the perspective of the narrator was when they say “What is very hard for us to understand is that, four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all… The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and in its continuity, is without sex.” I found this interesting and a bit humorous because of how the narrator previously reveals that it is easy to comprehend how, for the Gethens, “everything gives way before the recurring torment of and festivity of passion.” Its telling that they can understand a life perpetually dictated by a “torment of… passion” (it seems that the narrator comes from a regular human, non-sci-fi society), but can’t understand how there can be a functioning society completely separate from that.
Another moment that revealed how the narrator bases their ideas on a traditional society built upon a gender binary is when they say that femininity and masculinity do not exist to the Gethenians. Instead of being a man whose “virility” can be “regarded” or a woman whose “femininity” can be “appreciated… One is respected and judged only as a human being.” In response to this, the narrator states, “It is an appalling experience.” Again, it is almost humorous that someone would regard the freedom and equality of being “judged only as a human being” as an appalling thing.
The narrator relies on the typical conceptions of gender and sex in our current world to anchor herself. She tells the story from a scientific perspective of analysis and inquiry of a new species rather than a new person. The Gethians appear to be as different from humans as possible while still being human. I found the section on the preference for monogamous relationships interesting because of particular syntax and use of the word marriage. The narrator explains that the Genthian generally pair up with another being with the most extreme example as the vowing of kemmering, even though the people don’t get married. In her understanding, people commit to one and other “socially and ethically” without doing it legally. Interestingly, you can only vow once and there is no re- marriage after a partner dies or separation. Furthermore, she stresses she does not understand the divorce rules, but how can there be divorce without marriage? A vowing of kemmering sounds like a marriage, actually an even stricter more committed form of marriage, but the narrator won’t label it such because of the lack of legal standing for Genthian. This strategy reveals how her understanding of marriage anchors her in a world like ours. A vowing kemmering sounds like a long term committed relationship without legalling binding the deal, but this seemingly small difference prevents her from saying she and Genthains are the same.
As the passage continue down page 92, the narrator explains another anomaly in the Genthians as they practice certain forms of incest. The rules are explained objectively and blandly without justification for why incest between siblings is fine but cross generational familial sex is wrong. Although the previous strategy of coping by centers one selves in their society works, this current method of distancing oneself from the topic feels like hard science fiction. Everything exists in relation without bringing yourself into the equation, the analysis feels less compelling. Yes we want to see objectivity in science, but that doesn’t mean language and other small indicators from your own cultural background shouldn’t inhabit the page. It’s a story not a research paper. I understand the narrator as an Earthly researcher being as objective as possible, but above all else must help Earth people understand.
As other posters have mentioned, it seems pretty clear that the narrator uses her Hainish background to compare to what she witness of the Gethenians. In the first paragraph though, she seems to say that the Gethenians on this world evolved from a failed colonization experiment far in the past. I could have this wrong but that’s what it seems to say to me. So with that basis, it makes a lot of sense that this narrator is approaching describing these peoples using her background. She regards them as a type of human being. They are not sprung about from the environment they exist in, but evolved to suit it. So she uses measurements of time like “days” and refers to parts of the process as similar to her own species’ sexual processes using words like menstrual cycle, foreplay, gestation, lactation. She still uses words like “male,” “female,” “androgony” to express gender although maybe these beings have no conception of that. In the end she also compares their sexual activities and references cultural experiences from her own background like “rape,” “psycho-sexual relationships” with parents, the “dualism that pervades humanity,” “the burden and privilege” of childbearing. I think that these are certainly effective tactics for her own understanding of these people’s practices as well as to explain to people of her background their practices. I think that objectivity isn’t really possible, even for scientists, so I think that it’s okay for her to bring her own preconceived notions into this description because I don’t believe it is possible not to. She does though, have a colonizer’s tone and mentality. She certainly seems to regard them more as subjects to be observed than beings to be interacted with. Particularly in last paragraph I get a feeling of her looking down on them. She asks “what would a society of eunuch’s achieve?” She calls them “pre-adolescents: not castrate, but latent.” She considers them a kind of failed social experiment rather than a race of beings which certainly feels a little weird. She also pities them for their cold world and says maybe that’s why they have no war. My understanding of this character is certainly that she sees herself as above these people, though fascinated by their way of being.
LeGuin anchors her understanding of the Gethenian people in her own earthly conceptions of gender and sex. Though the author describes a species which exists and procreates in a manner very different to that of humans, her imagination is unable to stretch beyond the male and female gender dichotomy of earthly beings. The sexual cycle she describes has some similarities to the menstrual cycle of women and even more similarities to the estrous cycle of many animals such as horses and pigs. However, it has some notable differences, namely the fact that the Gethenian people are both sexless and genderless, androgynous as LeGuin describes them, for the majority of their lives. They do eventually enter the sex binary of male and female that is familiar to us. Oce they find their partner in kemmer, hormonal secretion is stimulated and either a male or female hormonal dominance is established in one of the individuals. The aliens in kemmer even develop either male or female genitalia. LeGuin described how the genitals either “gorge or shrink accordingly” which leads me to imagine that these aliens not only take on the human binary of male and female but also have reproductive organs that are incredibly similar or perhaps even the same as humans. It’s interesting that on page 94, Leguin tells readers that one must not cast the Gethenian people into the “role of Man or Woman” while it seems that’s exactly what she does in her writing of this species.
I also thought the section where LeGuin described her social observations to be incredibly interesting as it felt like she was trying to describe something so foreign and otherworldly yet all the rituals and practices were still based in very human rituals and practices. She discusses group kemmering, vowing kemmering, her questions about whether divorce is an allowable practice and even incest. Though things like incest and group sex are taboo in many earthly cultures, they’re existing and wildly understood practices just like marriage and divorce. All of these observations felt like sociology textbooks I have read where an outsider takes their own practices and beliefs and applies them to a group of people unlike themself. Like sociologists, bad sociologists maybe, LeGuin uses her own beliefs and understandings to pass moral judgement on the Gethenian people.
Overall, I found the description of kemmer to be incredibly unique and otherworldly in some ways, but also rather unimaginative in others. It’s interesting that the Gethenian people at once exist in a way completely different from humankind but also procreate in a very human-like way and even participate in very human actions like establishing marriages. I suppose this goes back to the fact that LeGuin’s understanding of these people is grounded in her existing understanding of her own kind. Though I did critique this as unimaginative, I’m also realizing that perhaps even science fiction must contain some elements of the human world. “The Question of Sex” was already a rather difficult chapter to understand with its technical description of a completely made up species. Perhaps grounding the Gethenian people and their sexual rituals in something that readers, and LeGuin herself, already understand makes it a manageable stretch of the imagination, whereas something with no basis in the truths of human existence would have been too difficult for the writer to synthesize and for readers to grasp.
The narrator relies on her own personal experiences growing up in her ‘normal’ patriarchal society to compare and understand the sexual psychology of the Gethens. For example, on pages 93-94 she tells the readers to ‘consider’ the Gethenian society and proceeds to compare it to hers, a society without rape, equal child bearing burden, perpetual gender roles ,etc. I think the comparisons allow her to imagine the aliens peoples and society and judge it as better or worse, and she definitely finds some merits of the Gethenian society. However, I think she makes many generalizations when trying to understand the alien people and society, especially about sexual desires of individuals, etc, and perhaps a more beneficial strategy for her might be to explore the subject on a more personal and individual level. Her personal opinions also influence her conclusions about the Gethenians. For example, she concludes that the harsh environment must be responsible for the lack of fighting between the Gethens, without considering that a society with a baseline for peace rather than violence could exist.
The narrator of LeGuin’s “The Question of Sex” relies on the rigid two-sex patriarchal society in which she grew up to anchor her understanding of the sexual habits of Gethenians. One particular section that exemplifies this is the paragraph at the bottom of page 93 and top of page 94, where she describes how the characteristics of the somer-kemmer cycle allow all Gethenian’s to share the “privileges and burdens” that come with each sex. The narrator finds this to be a highly favorable existence. She pinpoints a particularly prevalent “tie-down” that corresponds with womanhood to be childbearing. In her society, childbearing “tied down” women far more than their male counterparts, which she found to be a disadvantage. By contrast to her society, the Gethenians shared this burden as they neither male nor female forever; therefore anyone could become pregnant during any given cycle. This paragraph reveals that the narrator feels that being female is a disadvantage in the patriarchal society that she grew up in. This makes her look favorably on life on Gethen because she would be freed from the strict characteristics and responsibilities of womanhood and instead get to experience the perceived advantages of being a male.
The narrator of “The Question of Sex” relies on the society she grew up/lives in to supply her understanding of outside things. When she describes observations of the Gethenian society, she always relates it to her own understanding of humanity’s social and physical presence, and assumes that all aspects of their society came from humanity’s curiosity in general. On page 95, the narrator begins to detail what she believes to be the thought process of the humans who “created” the Gethenians. Though I wonder– are the Gethenians products of human intervention, or does the narrator just strive to relate/assume all she sees as belonging to humankind in some way? I like to think its the latter, as her explanation of humankind’s “sexual frustration” for the behavior of the Gethenians seems to me solely based on the need the narrator feels to explain alien life in relation to her own. I don’t think relating her understanding of alien life to her personal views on human psychology can benefit her much. I don’t see room to grow and understand if she keeps herself locked in one corner of a mindset. Instead of creating a bubble that everything has to fit inside of, she could instead attempt to observe without offering explanation that satisfies her look at something different. The narrator’s character projects a sort of ignorance onto the alien society by bubbling it in with human societies, and judges it as something of her own instead of looking at it as something unique and intriguing.