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.
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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.
The narrator allows her human experience to guide her understanding of the Gethenians sexuality. The beginning of the chapter starts with the narrator explaining how the biology of the Gethenians worked. This part is clinical as it is just an observation about how Gethenians work on a scientifically level. The judgment seems to come in when she explains her social observations. As she can only explain things in terms of her own human understanding of the world. She defines the Gethenians by how they are not like humans, creating an “other”. Such as her pointing out that she could not understand what it would be like to not be sexually motivated for 4/5 of their time. The author is a woman who sees that children are a burden and that men are truly free due to them never having to bear and take care of children. Clearly stating that “Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else.” This leads to the author observering that there is no separation of roles as every Gethernaians have the ability to be submissive and dominant. Which are concepts she defines in human terms. I believe she also sees them as lesser beings than humans since they go through the somer-kermer cycle, “… degrading, a return to the estrous cycle of the lower mammals, a subjection of human beings to the mechanical imperative of rut.” She infantilizes them by suggesting their biology is primitive and equates them to being adolescents. She also finds it difficult that Gethernaians don’t engage in war, which she equates with their lack of sex drive and the cold weather. It is a combination of these things that points to that the author is a subjective narrator. I find her lack of understanding as to why the Gerthnaians don’t engage in war as the most telling point. she sees them as less sophisticated than humans, but it confuses her as to why they don’t fall into violence the way that humans do. So she seeks an answer outside of their biology as to why they don’t engage in mass “othering”. It could be something about their biology outside of sex or their society that prevents them from war, yet she ponders if it is the weather.
I don’t really think this is the best way to go about it as I feel like she will never understand the Gethnaians this way. Although I can’t think of another way for her to approach them, as she can only understand things from her human perspective. She knows she is human because other things are non-human.
From the start of this chapter, the narrator seems to try and explain the society that she visits, in which the science behind sexual genetics in males and females are foreign and unfamiliar to those not living in the Gethen society. Through this chapter, the narrator seems to make it clear that she is not judging any part of the Gethen society, inputting “social observations” and “consider” before many of his/her sentences within the chapter. In a way, it seems through reading the text as if it was just observations and history of what was witnessed with not much subjective thoughts included.
There are, however, particular sections of the text that bring about the kind of ways in which the narrator thought about this society and the way she understands herself and those around her. The narrator says on page 93, “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 its continuity, is without sex” (p. 93). Through this quote, it is clear that the narrator typically viewed the society she lived in as one that was sex-driven, however, given that 21 out of the 26-28 days that people in this society live in are in “somer”, one’s life in Gethen is vastly different in the narrator’s eyes than her own. Furthermore, in addition to this, identity seems to play a big role in the society that the narrator lives in. However, in Gethen, since there are no “men” or “women”, people’s identity are not associated with their gender. The narrator says on page 94, “When you meet a Gethenian, you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does… while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectations of the patterned or possible interactions between persons of the same or the opposite sex” (p. 94). It is clear from the text that the narrator sees Gethen as a genderless society, which is something that the narrator finds difficult to accept since everything seems to be associated with gender in the society that she lives in, starting from birth. The narrator further goes on to say that, “A man wants his virility regarded, a women wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation” (p. 95). In other words, the narrator does appreciate that the society she lives in has the gender norms and identity that are associated with having a gender.
The narrator does deploy good strategies to cope and understand the people “alien” to her. By comparing the society that she lives in to the society that the “other” lives in shown above, the narrator comes up with conclusions and an analysis of what it would be like to be in the “other” person’s shoes.
The narrator hypothesizing the nature of this experiment reveals the most to me specifically with “the experimenters wished to see whether human beings lacking continuous sexual potentiality would remain intelligent and capable of culture.” That sentence squarely places sex as the creator and driving force of civilization from the narrator’s viewpoint and is quite a controversial claim or belief to hold. Maybe all scientific inventions are a circuitous way to get laid? Benjamin Franklin would certainly agree so, and Petrarch and Shakespeare wrote so much for only unrequited love. This foundational view of our narrator shows exactly why she is struggling to see these androgynous humans for what they are, and this focusing on the experimenters and not the subjects as someone she can understand is our narrator attempting to rationalize her observations. She cannot understand these Gethenians, but maybe she can understand their creators. I like her strategy of understanding since it is exactly what I was doing as I was reading (asking why they were created).
The sentences starting with “Consider:” were the most helpful in understanding the narrator. The investigator understands the universe, herself, and others through patriarchy. This is because patriarchy makes our investigator view the world as one dominated by men, but this is conflicting because in Gethen this idea does not exist. Further, their confusion over the sexual and gender androgyny that exists between the Gethenians stems from their patriarchal understanding of what sexu and gender structure ought to be. Consequently, our investigator has a difficult time trying to understand the Gethenians. What caught my attention when reading this was, “Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves..In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened..” (Pg.94). This struck out to me because the narrator and the character become indistinguishable in that in this examination of a fictional world there is a criticism of the current society that they inhabit. Interestingly, Michel Foulcault would touch upon similar ideas, targeting what genderless sexuality looks like. Later, Judith Butler would come to argue that in our society we regulate and perform gender. This examination of a fictional people who live in a non-patriarchal society helps us explore what a world like that may look like. Though in trying to wrap our heads around it we find ourselves in a similar position as the narrator–that world is confusing, but in large part it is because we find existing out of patriarchy difficult, especially if you’re male. I also find it interesting that this part of the Left Hand of Darkness was written as an anthropological piece rather than a sociological one, it would have been interesting to see how our narrator compares Gethen and Earth concretely.
For the first few purely observational pages, the narrator’s tone is calculating and careful not to impose their personal opinions and culture on this alien cultural discussion. This reads rather scientifically, presenting the facts. A specific moment that emphasizes this is the repetitive “consider” section on page 94, in which the narrator poses multiple differences from our human sexual cycle in objectivity, weighing the positives and negatives associated with each particular change: “Consider: there is no unconsenting sex, no rape”. The narrator does not weigh in whether they believe this is objectively ‘good’ or ‘bad’, which I believe is a proper method of exploring this task.
However, the tone shifts dramatically on page 95 to be judging and opinionated in comparison. Specifically, I’m looking at page 95: “[On Winter] one is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience”. Here, the narrator interrupts their objective observational style and inserts an opinionated denouncement of the experience of being in the culture described in the story. This reminds me a lot of treating those not like us as an ‘other’, sometimes referred to as ‘othering’ these days. The other culture described here is attacked for being not like the norm of the narrator. What’s funny to me is that the narrator presents all of the objective benefits of not having sexual social tendencies play into everyday life and then denounces the biology and the culture for being different than their own. “There must be sexual frustration,” the narrator insists, sounding to me like they are trying to convince themselves that culture without sex in everyday life cannot exist. The narrator assumes that their culture is superior to the one in question, which I find a negative strategy. Instead, learn from it! There seem to be a lot of benefits from this system, though there may be drawbacks!
The genders and sexuality of the Gethenians are extremely different than how it is in our world. The way that they are very gender fluid is both different and alike to the modern world. First, the Gethenians do not really have a gender and they can be both fathers and mothers. Essentially, the Gethenians are neither sex and both sexes at the same time. 80% of the time sexuality is not there In our world, genders are very important for most basic tasks in life like identifications, bathrooms, and sports. Genders play a huge role in friendships and relationships. On the other hand, in recent times there has been more talk about gender fluidity and self-identification with gender. I think one of the main points of the author is to demonstrate how their world functions with a lack of genders. There are less divisions in their society such as strong and weak or submissive an dominant. Additionally, it seems more progressive and there is less conflict. The narrator claimed their society as failed and I think they have a hard time understanding the Gethenian society. The narrator believes that they are not as free as the free male on their own world. Finally, the narrator is puzzled by the fact that parents do not have the same shared responsibilities as humans. Overall, I think LeGuin’s strategy of demonstrating a genderless world works well in this chapter.