To be honest, the idea of people living on a planet and not
having any defined gender does in fact, intrigue me. My only confusion from the
book itself is the fact that we are told they have no gender, but are given
characteristics that shape the way we see them. We are told they are
"genderless" and yet the characters are referred to as being boy or
girl. The use of the words "he" or "his" is what I'm
referring to. In every case Estraven is depicted as "he" did this, or
"he" said that. Am I missing something, does the author not know how
to describe a person without using gender referencing? Technically speaking
shouldn't we be referring to all of the characters who are genderless as
"it" until they pick a gender? Or simply calling them by their name.
Repetitive, but not as misleading as tacking on gender specific words. I guess
what I’m saying here is,if you’re going to create a book where everyone is
genderless, shouldn’t you fully describe them as being without a gender? Now
every time I read anything about Estraven I completely think he’s a guy, I
envision him as being a guy, I’m even referring to him as a guy. Its so hard to
wrap my brain around the idea of a gender neutral state, when everyone seems to
have a sexual orientation regardless.
That was what I felt was one of the things holding me back from fully embracing the idea of no real gender is the fact that everyone in the book is referred to by the gender pronouns he/she and given characteristics that are portrayed and discussed as either masculine or feminine. I don’t remember if we touched on it in class or not, but I believe it was that since the book is written from Genly’s perspective is why we get all the references to giving the different people gender. Because it is so far outside Genly’s understanding to have someone that has no gender, he tries to put them into the categories that he understands of male and female. It was very disconcerting for me for the first part of the book as I was fighting against the feeling of letting the people be either male or female. However as Genly became more accepting of the Genthen way of life and stopped portraying it as an oddity that he was trying to fit into a mold that held true of his world instead of for the Genthens, it became less uncomfortable. I don’t know that I was ever able to let go of wanting everyone to have a gender, but as Genly became more comfortable with it, so did I.
ReplyDeleteI agree -- the pronoun issue is hard to deal with in the book. The trick is to remember that we are indeed seeing things from Genly's point of view (hence the pronouns). As for the lack of neutral pronouns later in the book, it's almost impossible not use pronouns and English has no gender neutral pronouns. Perhaps Le Guin is making us aware of this issue through the lack of fit between pronouns and people on Genthian.
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