I had the same thoughts about the issues with pronouns when I read it, but reconciled it as the use of 'he' pronouns show how Genli views the Gethen with a 'Terran' perspective and struggles with the idea of a society where everyone is 'ambisexual'. I feel it could be interpreted as a commentary of the way many people, even decades after the book was written, can't accept a different way to view gender.
I agree, that’s how I interpreted the choice too, and I think it adds to Genly’s portrayal. It does fall through a little though as the chapters written from Estraven’s perspective also use male pronouns
The pronouns are a problem. But LeGuin was not blissfully unaware in her writing of the masculine preconception involved. Indeed, at several places, she takes a stiletto to Genly's masculinization of the Gethenians, the first (and best known one) being the sentence "The King was pregnant".
There's a short-story Le Guin wrote a couple of decades later called "Coming of Age in Karhide" that fixes a few of the issues readers or Le Guin herself had with LHOD. A) It's JUST about Gethenians, so no Terran perspective and you get to see more family life*, B) it doesn't use pronouns at all except for characters in kemmer, and C) it makes clear that one is not necessarily STRAIGHT while in kemmer (it may be the reproductive phase, but the MC at least is clearly bi). And it ends with the sentence: "The old days or the new times, somer or kemmer, love is love". I don't know how easy it is to find that story by itself, but it is the collection "The Birthday of the World" which includes a LOT of stories with some degree of queerness. *She said one of the things that annoyed her and made her wish she'd made a different pronoun choice in LHOD was that people kept seeing the characters as men because they were "he" and doing "man things" like politics and trecking through the wilderness.
It's been a long time since I last read this book, but I remember being impressed by the idea the Genly Ai was dropped onto the planet with nothing - no tools, and no support, and completely alone, to make him as non-threatening as possible. The offer he brought was simply an offer. I loved that.
I always felt that Ursula K. Le Guin was an anthropological and philosophical writer of science fiction and fantasy and the anthropological approach shines through in this novel.
Adding to my TBR since I read Wizard of Earthsea countless times as a kid. And your review plus the comments here are so fascinating. I love stuff that makes me think in new ways. Thanks as always. ❤
i have this on my bookshelf but have not yet read it. it sounds awesome ! I will pick it up next after the one I'm reading . Thanks Willow , as always your enthusiasm and eloquence have influenced me
I have a quote from this book tattooed, Le Guin is one of my favourite authors of all time and I am convinced I will cry once I finished all of her works. I highly recommend watching the documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin if you haven't. The more I learn about her, the more she fascinates me.
Truth is a matter of the Imagination, from the first sentence of the novel. Not really original I guess bi¡ut it really resonates with me!@@WillowTalksBooks
Thank you so much for your wonderful explanation of the book . I was going to give up as I only read four chapters and found it hard to get into but I'm going to persevere and carry on with the story. Sci fi is not usually what I read but I wanted to explore other genre and expand my knowledge. Thank you again for sharing your passion .
i love the description of this book already not sure if these are spoilers but im definitely uper intrigued to read this, thank you willow for always bringing us good books reviews youre the only one i trust for book recomendations
I read The Left Hand of Darkness in high school and it completely changed the way I view the world. As a young cis girl in the early 00's, I was discovering feminism for the first time, but this book is what really made me understand that gender itself is a social construct. It was powerful stuff in my formative years. I always love to see other folks coming to it for the first time, or revisiting it, and I'm glad it holds up so well. I really need to re-read it.
I love this book so much!!! Le Guin actually did come up with her own pronouns for the Gethenians later on, though I can't find them anywhere. Interestingly, the he/him pronouns being extended to Estraven because Genly is translating their diary is so telling. Despite all he's learned on Gethen, he cannot untangle himself from Terran gender norms and almost forcibly pushes them on not only his perspective, but Estraven's too. Although Le Guin regretted her choices with pronouns, viewing it like that feels somewhat bleak, but also as an even more striking criticism of the patriarchy.
Yes!! I love Le Guin, I haven't read Left Hand of Darkness yet but I've been wanting to for a while. I did read the first 4 books of the Earthsea cycle. A Wizard of Earthsea actually made me cry because I thought her prose was so beautiful and the themes really hit home for me. She was an amazing writer and seemed like an overall incredible person.
When you decide to read Left Hand of Darkness I highly recommend pairing it with The Dispossessed. I adore all of LeGuin’s works and believe these are the two finest.
The masculine was used as "gender neutral" when I was a kid and I'm not that old. It might have just been so ingrained in society that it didn't even occur to her to use something else until it was pointed out. We all get habituated to language use to the point that the implications get lost until we are moved in some way to look at it closer. It's awesome that she took that criticism to heart and really thought about it. Also I always think about how planets in scfi are the "ice" planet or the "water" planet. But Earth isn't like that, it has multiple climates, so why wouldn't other planets? And Earth has many societies and cultures and rulers, so why wouldn't other planets? It always weirds me out.
That is what Ursula herself pointed out in her essay from 73-74 that she too was carried along .In later stories she changed the neopronouns.This marred the early Earthsea books also-a fault rectified with a vengeance by the superb character of Tehanu-part abused child part elfchangeling and part dragon struggling to be be free.A TRUE LEGEND of the human.
What a great surprise! I'm reading it at the moment! I'm not sure if the book has the map of the world (reading it on Kindle) but I recommend searching for it ❤ Will come back to this when I'm finished 📌
I love UKLG's writing, but one of the benefits of reading an author who wrote for decades is the ability to follow their progress. The Wizard of Earthsea series was astounding, in that when I read the 4th book in the series, Tehanu, it was apparent that UKLG had grown and changed tremendously in the 18 years since the publication of the 3rd book in the series. The first three books are IMO not fabulous, but Tehanu is breathtaking, as are books five and six!
@@gamewrit0058 Hi Willow - my apologies, I thought I responded to this several days ago. You could read both 5 and 6 completely independent of all the others in the series. And they're wonderful! To really make sense of and understand the significance of the growth that Tehanu experiences, reading the first four in order is necessary. But the first three are short! We love short fiction!
UKLeGuin is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this is one of my favorites of hers. It's long overdue for a reread for me (it's been decades! 😱) I own some of her books of essays - in one, The Language of the Night, she presents two essays in conversation with each other, printed in two columns -"Is Gender Necessary" from 1976, in which defended her use of 'he' in the novel, and "Redux", from 1988, in which in the second column she responds to and refutes, point by point, many of her own arguments from 1976, and lays out how her thinking had grown and changed over that time (to thinking it would have been better to use gender-neutral pronouns, and why her opinions changed). I think it can be read that Genly is the one presenting 'he' as the neutral, as he is a man and, like the patriarchy for ages, sees the male as the default (which I very much agree it is not). It's at least a reading that helps not getting as annoyed with its use, as the book is so much worth reading.
Another aside LeGuin made was thanking her male readers for willingly embracing the terms of the gedanken ((thought experiment).It was an honour and a pleasure Ursula.Later stories worth reading set on Winter are "Coming Of Age In Karhide" and any of the stories in A Fishermsn Of The Inland Sea or Four Ways To Forgiveness
Ive been wanting to read this book for a while, but I still dont own it. I want to read "The Birthday of the World" first since it will be my first approximation to Ursula K Le Guin and I love starting my relationship with authors by reading short stories when available. Why? I dont know. Guess I adore short stories and feel like it's a perfect gateway to the style of each author.
I first read LHOD 22 years ago. I have thought about it frequently since then but reading it now I realized how little I actually remembered about it and understood it. I am now acutely aware of how sheltered and naive I was when I read it at 23. I had not yet heard the term non-binary and being raised in a religious household, “man” and “he” being gender neutral is part of the orthodoxy (how else can the blame be shifted to the female when the Bible is almost exclusively in the masculine?). As I read this time, I wondered what if Leguin had chosen to write LHOD differently (or chosen to revise it later) but she left Genly’s narration the same and only changed the pronouns in Estraven’s narration. What if they used feminine pronouns as the neutral? or they/them? or created different pronouns when they are neutral, and masculine and feminine pronouns when they are in kemmer? How would such a change transform the story and what it reveals to the reader about gender and our biases around male/female, masculine/feminine?
Thank you for sharing your love for this work. I am excited to get to it. In my language we don't have a neutral pronoun like they. We have a masculine and a feminine even for plural. The sad part is if we would be talking about a group of 99 women with 1 man present in the group, we would use the masculin for they.
Loved seeing this video and discovering your channel even if I'ma month late! Le Guin really is one of the best at thoughtful worldbuilding. You focused on gender here, but she also builds in complex reasons for the way the societies on Gethen developed. It isn't reduced down to "without patriarchy, there is no war." Climate is also a siginifcant factor and even in these conditions, war is becoming a possibility at the time Genly visits. This is what puts her above and beyond most speculative fiction writers. Gethen feels so real, so possible, because nothing is simple.
I felt the same way. A lot of the old/great sci fi masterpieces always have these archaic perspectives you have to look past when reading them now. Stranger in a strange land was hugely transgressive in terms of gender and sex when it came out, but yet it’s treatment of women is extremely misogynistic to a modern eye. The Mote In Gods Eye is another incredible sci fi novel (probably the greatest first contact story I’ve read) with gender being the driving force behind the central concept, where the protagonists have some unfortunate behaviors or characteristics. It’s worth sticking it out when the story around those issues is so amazing though, and LHoD is a story incredibly ahead of it’s time. Great setting, fascinating ideas, even if the protagonist is a bit of a doorknob.
I had it on my shelf but haven't read it yet. It sounds great, especially now knowing about her regret over the pronouns. That would've bothered me to but now it'll bother me a whole lot less, knowing she grew to understand. That's all you can ask of someone, being willing to learn and grow.
At the time it was a very contentious issue whether the use of the general he/him, man/men (postman, mankind) really did represent humanity. Ms. hadn’t even been invented yet. In the US women couldn’t get a credit card or buy a car without a man’s signature, and homosexuality was still considered a mental illness and one could be forcibly committed to a psych ward. Rape crisis centers were a brand new idea. And I’m not sure how involved in political feminism LeGuin was at the time. N.O.W. was founded in 1966. We were still trying to get she/her, womyn, wimmin into liberal’s language, forget general society. So I think in its historical context, while the usage of pronouns is a missed opportunity, I’m not particularly chuffed by it. Left Hand of Darkness is one of the first books I read after I came out in the 70’s that even suggested the fluidity of gender. At the time, I didn’t even notice the pronouns, because EVERYTHING was freakin’ he/him, man/men. Marge Piercy’s ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ wasn’t published until 1976. Maybe that would satisfy your wish for pronoun play.
Great Review! I'd like to respectfully disagree with your hangup about the nerrator's use of the gendered pronoun 'he' when referring to Gethenians. There is a portion in the novel when Genly acknowledges that there is no gendered term on Gethen, and failing one, he elects to use 'he' because in the Terran language it has less connotation than 'she' evoking the feminine. She later regretted her choice. But I think this is explained by Ai in novel - that lacking a term for an ambisexual being, he's elected to use the term 'he' with gatheneans, as it is a neutral term as opposed to 'she' which evokes a feminine. This is a flawed rationale in the 21st century, but speaks to the flawed rationale of our patriarchal psyche, where we often instinctually default to 'he' when gender is not known. The best example is mentioned by Genly himself, when he says that God is often referred to as a 'he'. How could the ostensible creator of the universe have a gender? Still, this question doesn't prevent people from often perceiving God as a he. I think it adds an extra layer of depth to the work - the protagonist is at a loss for what to call Gatheneans, and so defers to 'he' which he perceives as more neutral - this in an of itself betrays an inability for bisexual societies to conceive of such a world - it sort of adds to to the point le Guin was making, regardless of how intentional or unintentional it was at the time of writing.
You mentioning "he" being used as the default and neutral pronoun makes me think of how monotheistic religions use masculine pronoun for whatever being they pray to, such as Christians referring to God as "He." Anyway, I just placed a hold for this book with the library. Tbh I felt so dumb when I first read this despite liking the writing. But I'm sure I'll appreciate it more this time. :) btw you're looking super pretty 😻
Sold! This one has been on my to-read list for a while and I finally got a copy a few weeks ago. This video jumps it up to my next read. I am especially interested in the pronoun game because of a quartet of books by 'Tully Zetford' which I read recently. Copyright early 1970's the very traditional male hero has as a best friend a 'hermaphrodite' character which we gather is socially pretty mainstream. They use the pronoun Zee and it has made me a bit curious about pronouns in old, classic sci-fi.
Well... I have actually tried reading this book (around 45 per cent of it) and just couldn´t get invested in. Sure the ideas are interesting but maybe the plot or charecters didn´t grow on me. Should I try again or does anyone know other books by L Guin that I can try? I prefer standalone books tough...
Love your enthusiasm for Ursula Le Guin. I think we are still learning to read them. I think their best world building is in their novel Always Coming Home, I have read nothing like it before or since. I first read LHoD in the 1970's and did not have a reaction to the use of the "he" pronoun as a neutral pronoun. I am not sure where you sourced the the "haunted and bedeviled" quote but Le Guin did write an article "Is Gender Necessary?" in 1976 and Redux the article in in 1988. Here is a quote from the article with the Redux in the square brackets "I call Gethenians “he” because I utterly refuse to mangle English by inventing a pronoun for “he/she.” [This “utter refusal” of 1968 restated in 1976 collapsed, utterly, within a couple of years more. I still dislike invented pronouns, but I now dislike them less than the so-called generic pronoun he/him/his, which does in fact exclude women from discourse; and which was an invention of male grammarians, for until the sixteenth century the English generic singular pronoun was they/them/their, as it still is in English and American colloquial speech. It should be restored to the written language, and let the pedants and pundits squeak and gibber in the streets.]" ( theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-is-gender-necessary-redux ). I find it interesting that nearly a third of your review discusses pronouns. Are they that important? For Le Guin writing about a society that had not experienced war was their principled interest and how they structured this society is informed by their perceptions of how men and women do things. "The “female principle” has historically been anarchic; that is, anarchy has historically been identified as female. The domain allotted to women-“the family,” for example-is the area of order without coercion, rule by custom not by force." Le Guin sees Gethen balancing between female principles and male principles "men make the wars and peaces, men make, enforce, and break the laws. On Gethen, the two polarities we perceive through our cultural conditioning as male and female are neither, and are in balance: consensus with authority, decentralizing with centralizing, flexible with rigid, circular with linear, hierarchy with network. But it is not a motionless balance, there being no such thing in life, and at the moment of the novel, it is wobbling perilously." The people of Gethen have no sex, male or female and no gender yet sex/gender are intrinsic to a novel about them. On Gethen there is no rape but I think there is sexual abuse. To deny a Gethenian sex would be an extraordinary painful thing to do to them, yet Genly does this to Estraven in full knowledge of the pain Estraven is experiencing. Discussing LHoD I feel words fail us just as they fail Le Guin. The Gethens do not see themselves as androgynous or ambisexual they just see themselves. They just see people and for me that is the important message of the book. Le Guin returns to Gethen in 1995 in a short story "Coming Of Age In Karhide" you can read it here: shortstoryproject.com/stories/coming-of-age-in-karhide/ (I will let you discover the pronouns she uses) As a person on a gender journey I feel words fail me all the time. I am not "across" gender or "beyond" gender or "on the other side of" gender. My journey has been a beautiful and awesome journey of self discovery and I have not transition to or from anywhere. There is just me. I understand that some people have a need to see me as "trans", but I am not "trans" and they also need to see that I have "transitioned" but I have not transitioned. I look for people who do not need these words as they will see me, a person. I think LHoD is a difficult read not because of the pronouns but of the tragic love story. Genly is unable to return Estraven love for them. Genly cannot step past his gender perceptions and see Estraven, the person. I wonder is this why so many people on gender journeys cannot see past Le Guin's use of pronouns as the essence of the book is far to painful? Our fear is that people cannot see us to love us. I hope this is changing. It was true for me when I read this novel in the 1970's.
Oh and if you are interested on Ursula Le Guin's thoughts on LHoD their literary trust has released seven videos of them discussing the novel in 1997. Here is the link to the first one: th-cam.com/video/uhmC-XoL1xs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=plfFQxP7sog_RMeg
wait omg i think you might really like the books in the watchfull city not sure if you have read it already its with nonbinary characters and very interesting stories and character description its a novella tho
I was really hoping you would talk about "Winter's King" when discussing the pronouns. Within (at least the version I read) all Gethens were given she/her pronouns. There's also "Coming of Age in Karhide", but I found that pronoun system a bit confusing (especially with a character who becomes 'he' once they have aged beyond kemmer entirely). It's also rather serendipitous that you were rereading this book around the same time I discovered it for the first time. The universe can be lovely like that.
A comment for the evil algorithym >:D But anyway, even with its many flaws I still find LHoD to be very important for me as a non-binary person. True it forces a gendered language on a group that doesn't have the concept of gender binary, but it still acknowledges that gender is not a stable or concrete category that it is often imagined as.
This book is low tier trash. Starts decent then nothing happens until 50% where he breaks out of prison. There is nothing influential or thought provoking about it...
I had the same thoughts about the issues with pronouns when I read it, but reconciled it as the use of 'he' pronouns show how Genli views the Gethen with a 'Terran' perspective and struggles with the idea of a society where everyone is 'ambisexual'. I feel it could be interpreted as a commentary of the way many people, even decades after the book was written, can't accept a different way to view gender.
Very well-put!
I agree, that’s how I interpreted the choice too, and I think it adds to Genly’s portrayal. It does fall through a little though as the chapters written from Estraven’s perspective also use male pronouns
As all else LeGuin was CENTURIES ahead of nearly everyone else except Russ,Wolfe etc
The pronouns are a problem. But LeGuin was not blissfully unaware in her writing of the masculine preconception involved. Indeed, at several places, she takes a stiletto to Genly's masculinization of the Gethenians, the first (and best known one) being the sentence "The King was pregnant".
There's a short-story Le Guin wrote a couple of decades later called "Coming of Age in Karhide" that fixes a few of the issues readers or Le Guin herself had with LHOD. A) It's JUST about Gethenians, so no Terran perspective and you get to see more family life*, B) it doesn't use pronouns at all except for characters in kemmer, and C) it makes clear that one is not necessarily STRAIGHT while in kemmer (it may be the reproductive phase, but the MC at least is clearly bi). And it ends with the sentence: "The old days or the new times, somer or kemmer, love is love".
I don't know how easy it is to find that story by itself, but it is the collection "The Birthday of the World" which includes a LOT of stories with some degree of queerness.
*She said one of the things that annoyed her and made her wish she'd made a different pronoun choice in LHOD was that people kept seeing the characters as men because they were "he" and doing "man things" like politics and trecking through the wilderness.
Thank you for this recommendation! I will seek out this story as another reflection on this UKLG world!
Just came here to say I really like the way you describe books - you’re making my tbr list so long! 😅
It's been a long time since I last read this book, but I remember being impressed by the idea the Genly Ai was dropped onto the planet with nothing - no tools, and no support, and completely alone, to make him as non-threatening as possible. The offer he brought was simply an offer. I loved that.
I always felt that Ursula K. Le Guin
was an anthropological and philosophical writer
of science fiction and fantasy
and the anthropological approach shines through in this novel.
Adding to my TBR since I read Wizard of Earthsea countless times as a kid. And your review plus the comments here are so fascinating. I love stuff that makes me think in new ways. Thanks as always. ❤
i have this on my bookshelf but have not yet read it. it sounds awesome ! I will pick it up next after the one I'm reading . Thanks Willow , as always your enthusiasm and eloquence have influenced me
I have a quote from this book tattooed, Le Guin is one of my favourite authors of all time and I am convinced I will cry once I finished all of her works. I highly recommend watching the documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin if you haven't. The more I learn about her, the more she fascinates me.
Ooh I’ll definitely check out that documentary! Thank you! What’s the quote on your tattoo? I have a few myself :)
Truth is a matter of the Imagination, from the first sentence of the novel. Not really original I guess bi¡ut it really resonates with me!@@WillowTalksBooks
Thank you so much for your wonderful explanation of the book . I was going to give up as I only read four chapters and found it hard to get into but I'm going to persevere and carry on with the story. Sci fi is not usually what I read but I wanted to explore other genre and expand my knowledge. Thank you again for sharing your passion .
i love the description of this book already not sure if these are spoilers but im definitely uper intrigued to read this, thank you willow for always bringing us good books reviews youre the only one i trust for book recomendations
I read The Left Hand of Darkness in high school and it completely changed the way I view the world. As a young cis girl in the early 00's, I was discovering feminism for the first time, but this book is what really made me understand that gender itself is a social construct. It was powerful stuff in my formative years. I always love to see other folks coming to it for the first time, or revisiting it, and I'm glad it holds up so well. I really need to re-read it.
I love this book so much!!! Le Guin actually did come up with her own pronouns for the Gethenians later on, though I can't find them anywhere. Interestingly, the he/him pronouns being extended to Estraven because Genly is translating their diary is so telling. Despite all he's learned on Gethen, he cannot untangle himself from Terran gender norms and almost forcibly pushes them on not only his perspective, but Estraven's too. Although Le Guin regretted her choices with pronouns, viewing it like that feels somewhat bleak, but also as an even more striking criticism of the patriarchy.
I like this perspective, thank you!
Way ahead of its time. I feel its a book that kids in highschool should be made to read.
This is one of my favourite books of all time and it's a joy to hear you talk about it! You're such a good reviewer ❤
Thank you 🥹
One of my favorite books of all time, it's incredible.
Yes!! I love Le Guin, I haven't read Left Hand of Darkness yet but I've been wanting to for a while. I did read the first 4 books of the Earthsea cycle. A Wizard of Earthsea actually made me cry because I thought her prose was so beautiful and the themes really hit home for me. She was an amazing writer and seemed like an overall incredible person.
When you decide to read Left Hand of Darkness I highly recommend pairing it with The Dispossessed. I adore all of LeGuin’s works and believe these are the two finest.
Loved this review! More videos on LeGuin!
I am a new Le Guinn fan! Loved Left Hand of Darkness, 4 chapters into Earthsea. LOVE.
Thank you for the review!
This is an author I've never read anything by (not purposely) and I really need to change that! Her work sounds awesome. ❤
The masculine was used as "gender neutral" when I was a kid and I'm not that old. It might have just been so ingrained in society that it didn't even occur to her to use something else until it was pointed out. We all get habituated to language use to the point that the implications get lost until we are moved in some way to look at it closer. It's awesome that she took that criticism to heart and really thought about it.
Also I always think about how planets in scfi are the "ice" planet or the "water" planet. But Earth isn't like that, it has multiple climates, so why wouldn't other planets? And Earth has many societies and cultures and rulers, so why wouldn't other planets? It always weirds me out.
That is what Ursula herself pointed out in her essay from 73-74 that she too was carried along .In later stories she changed the neopronouns.This marred the early Earthsea books also-a fault rectified with a vengeance by the superb character of Tehanu-part abused child part elfchangeling and part dragon struggling to be be free.A TRUE LEGEND of the human.
What a great surprise! I'm reading it at the moment! I'm not sure if the book has the map of the world (reading it on Kindle) but I recommend searching for it ❤ Will come back to this when I'm finished 📌
I love UKLG's writing, but one of the benefits of reading an author who wrote for decades is the ability to follow their progress. The Wizard of Earthsea series was astounding, in that when I read the 4th book in the series, Tehanu, it was apparent that UKLG had grown and changed tremendously in the 18 years since the publication of the 3rd book in the series. The first three books are IMO not fabulous, but Tehanu is breathtaking, as are books five and six!
Cool! How important is it to read the Earthsea series in order, if at all?
@@gamewrit0058 Hi Willow - my apologies, I thought I responded to this several days ago. You could read both 5 and 6 completely independent of all the others in the series. And they're wonderful! To really make sense of and understand the significance of the growth that Tehanu experiences, reading the first four in order is necessary. But the first three are short! We love short fiction!
UKLeGuin is one of my all-time favorite writers, and this is one of my favorites of hers. It's long overdue for a reread for me (it's been decades! 😱)
I own some of her books of essays - in one, The Language of the Night, she presents two essays in conversation with each other, printed in two columns -"Is Gender Necessary" from 1976, in which defended her use of 'he' in the novel, and "Redux", from 1988, in which in the second column she responds to and refutes, point by point, many of her own arguments from 1976, and lays out how her thinking had grown and changed over that time (to thinking it would have been better to use gender-neutral pronouns, and why her opinions changed).
I think it can be read that Genly is the one presenting 'he' as the neutral, as he is a man and, like the patriarchy for ages, sees the male as the default (which I very much agree it is not). It's at least a reading that helps not getting as annoyed with its use, as the book is so much worth reading.
Reread and be re inspired.
Another aside LeGuin made was thanking her male readers for willingly embracing the terms of the gedanken ((thought experiment).It was an honour and a pleasure Ursula.Later stories worth reading set on Winter are "Coming Of Age In Karhide" and any of the stories in A Fishermsn Of The Inland Sea or Four Ways To Forgiveness
Ive been wanting to read this book for a while, but I still dont own it. I want to read "The Birthday of the World" first since it will be my first approximation to Ursula K Le Guin and I love starting my relationship with authors by reading short stories when available. Why? I dont know. Guess I adore short stories and feel like it's a perfect gateway to the style of each author.
I first read LHOD 22 years ago. I have thought about it frequently since then but reading it now I realized how little I actually remembered about it and understood it. I am now acutely aware of how sheltered and naive I was when I read it at 23. I had not yet heard the term non-binary and being raised in a religious household, “man” and “he” being gender neutral is part of the orthodoxy (how else can the blame be shifted to the female when the Bible is almost exclusively in the masculine?). As I read this time, I wondered what if Leguin had chosen to write LHOD differently (or chosen to revise it later) but she left Genly’s narration the same and only changed the pronouns in Estraven’s narration. What if they used feminine pronouns as the neutral? or they/them? or created different pronouns when they are neutral, and masculine and feminine pronouns when they are in kemmer? How would such a change transform the story and what it reveals to the reader about gender and our biases around male/female, masculine/feminine?
Thank you for sharing your love for this work. I am excited to get to it. In my language we don't have a neutral pronoun like they. We have a masculine and a feminine even for plural. The sad part is if we would be talking about a group of 99 women with 1 man present in the group, we would use the masculin for they.
Oh my goodness! Wow! And yet languages like Mandarin and Finnish only have one pronoun for everyone. Fascinating!
Loved seeing this video and discovering your channel even if I'ma month late! Le Guin really is one of the best at thoughtful worldbuilding. You focused on gender here, but she also builds in complex reasons for the way the societies on Gethen developed. It isn't reduced down to "without patriarchy, there is no war." Climate is also a siginifcant factor and even in these conditions, war is becoming a possibility at the time Genly visits. This is what puts her above and beyond most speculative fiction writers. Gethen feels so real, so possible, because nothing is simple.
I felt the same way. A lot of the old/great sci fi masterpieces always have these archaic perspectives you have to look past when reading them now. Stranger in a strange land was hugely transgressive in terms of gender and sex when it came out, but yet it’s treatment of women is extremely misogynistic to a modern eye. The Mote In Gods Eye is another incredible sci fi novel (probably the greatest first contact story I’ve read) with gender being the driving force behind the central concept, where the protagonists have some unfortunate behaviors or characteristics. It’s worth sticking it out when the story around those issues is so amazing though, and LHoD is a story incredibly ahead of it’s time. Great setting, fascinating ideas, even if the protagonist is a bit of a doorknob.
I had it on my shelf but haven't read it yet. It sounds great, especially now knowing about her regret over the pronouns. That would've bothered me to but now it'll bother me a whole lot less, knowing she grew to understand. That's all you can ask of someone, being willing to learn and grow.
At the time it was a very contentious issue whether the use of the general he/him, man/men (postman, mankind) really did represent humanity. Ms. hadn’t even been invented yet. In the US women couldn’t get a credit card or buy a car without a man’s signature, and homosexuality was still considered a mental illness and one could be forcibly committed to a psych ward. Rape crisis centers were a brand new idea. And I’m not sure how involved in political feminism LeGuin was at the time. N.O.W. was founded in 1966. We were still trying to get she/her, womyn, wimmin into liberal’s language, forget general society. So I think in its historical context, while the usage of pronouns is a missed opportunity, I’m not particularly chuffed by it.
Left Hand of Darkness is one of the first books I read after I came out in the 70’s that even suggested the fluidity of gender. At the time, I didn’t even notice the pronouns, because EVERYTHING was freakin’ he/him, man/men. Marge Piercy’s ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ wasn’t published until 1976. Maybe that would satisfy your wish for pronoun play.
Great Review!
I'd like to respectfully disagree with your hangup about the nerrator's use of the gendered pronoun 'he' when referring to Gethenians.
There is a portion in the novel when Genly acknowledges that there is no gendered term on Gethen, and failing one, he elects to use 'he' because in the Terran language it has less connotation than 'she' evoking the feminine.
She later regretted her choice. But I think this is explained by Ai in novel - that lacking a term for an ambisexual being, he's elected to use the term 'he' with gatheneans, as it is a neutral term as opposed to 'she' which evokes a feminine.
This is a flawed rationale in the 21st century, but speaks to the flawed rationale of our patriarchal psyche, where we often instinctually default to 'he' when gender is not known. The best example is mentioned by Genly himself, when he says that God is often referred to as a 'he'.
How could the ostensible creator of the universe have a gender? Still, this question doesn't prevent people from often perceiving God as a he.
I think it adds an extra layer of depth to the work - the protagonist is at a loss for what to call Gatheneans, and so defers to 'he' which he perceives as more neutral - this in an of itself betrays an inability for bisexual societies to conceive of such a world - it sort of adds to to the point le Guin was making, regardless of how intentional or unintentional it was at the time of writing.
You mentioning "he" being used as the default and neutral pronoun makes me think of how monotheistic religions use masculine pronoun for whatever being they pray to, such as Christians referring to God as "He."
Anyway, I just placed a hold for this book with the library. Tbh I felt so dumb when I first read this despite liking the writing. But I'm sure I'll appreciate it more this time. :) btw you're looking super pretty 😻
Yeah I often think about the gendering of God as male and how cringe it is lol
Sold! This one has been on my to-read list for a while and I finally got a copy a few weeks ago. This video jumps it up to my next read.
I am especially interested in the pronoun game because of a quartet of books by 'Tully Zetford' which I read recently. Copyright early 1970's the very traditional male hero has as a best friend a 'hermaphrodite' character which we gather is socially pretty mainstream. They use the pronoun Zee and it has made me a bit curious about pronouns in old, classic sci-fi.
Well... I have actually tried reading this book (around 45 per cent of it) and just couldn´t get invested in. Sure the ideas are interesting but maybe the plot or charecters didn´t grow on me. Should I try again or does anyone know other books by L Guin that I can try? I prefer standalone books tough...
Tao Te Ching. I like her translation best
Love your enthusiasm for Ursula Le Guin. I think we are still learning to read them. I think their best world building is in their novel Always Coming Home, I have read nothing like it before or since. I first read LHoD in the 1970's and did not have a reaction to the use of the "he" pronoun as a neutral pronoun. I am not sure where you sourced the the "haunted and bedeviled" quote but Le Guin did write an article "Is Gender Necessary?" in 1976 and Redux the article in in 1988. Here is a quote from the article with the Redux in the square brackets "I call Gethenians “he” because I utterly refuse to mangle English by inventing a pronoun for “he/she.” [This “utter refusal” of 1968 restated in 1976 collapsed, utterly, within a couple of years more. I still dislike invented pronouns, but I now dislike them less than the so-called generic pronoun he/him/his, which does in fact exclude women from discourse; and which was an invention of male grammarians, for until the sixteenth century the English generic singular pronoun was they/them/their, as it still is in English and American colloquial speech. It should be restored to the written language, and let the pedants and pundits squeak and gibber in the streets.]" ( theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-is-gender-necessary-redux ).
I find it interesting that nearly a third of your review discusses pronouns. Are they that important? For Le Guin writing about a society that had not experienced war was their principled interest and how they structured this society is informed by their perceptions of how men and women do things. "The “female principle” has historically been anarchic; that is, anarchy has historically been identified as female. The domain allotted to women-“the family,” for example-is the area of order without coercion, rule by custom not by force." Le Guin sees Gethen balancing between female principles and male principles "men make the wars and peaces, men make, enforce, and break the laws. On Gethen, the two polarities we perceive through our cultural conditioning as male and female are neither, and are in balance: consensus with authority, decentralizing with centralizing, flexible with rigid, circular with linear, hierarchy with network. But it is not a motionless balance, there being no such thing in life, and at the moment of the novel, it is wobbling perilously." The people of Gethen have no sex, male or female and no gender yet sex/gender are intrinsic to a novel about them.
On Gethen there is no rape but I think there is sexual abuse. To deny a Gethenian sex would be an extraordinary painful thing to do to them, yet Genly does this to Estraven in full knowledge of the pain Estraven is experiencing.
Discussing LHoD I feel words fail us just as they fail Le Guin. The Gethens do not see themselves as androgynous or ambisexual they just see themselves. They just see people and for me that is the important message of the book.
Le Guin returns to Gethen in 1995 in a short story "Coming Of Age In Karhide" you can read it here: shortstoryproject.com/stories/coming-of-age-in-karhide/ (I will let you discover the pronouns she uses)
As a person on a gender journey I feel words fail me all the time. I am not "across" gender or "beyond" gender or "on the other side of" gender. My journey has been a beautiful and awesome journey of self discovery and I have not transition to or from anywhere. There is just me. I understand that some people have a need to see me as "trans", but I am not "trans" and they also need to see that I have "transitioned" but I have not transitioned. I look for people who do not need these words as they will see me, a person.
I think LHoD is a difficult read not because of the pronouns but of the tragic love story. Genly is unable to return Estraven love for them. Genly cannot step past his gender perceptions and see Estraven, the person.
I wonder is this why so many people on gender journeys cannot see past Le Guin's use of pronouns as the essence of the book is far to painful? Our fear is that people cannot see us to love us. I hope this is changing. It was true for me when I read this novel in the 1970's.
Oh and if you are interested on Ursula Le Guin's thoughts on LHoD their literary trust has released seven videos of them discussing the novel in 1997. Here is the link to the first one: th-cam.com/video/uhmC-XoL1xs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=plfFQxP7sog_RMeg
wait omg i think you might really like the books in the watchfull city not sure if you have read it already its with nonbinary characters and very interesting stories and character description its a novella tho
Thank you for talking about this book and the gender issues.
I was really hoping you would talk about "Winter's King" when discussing the pronouns. Within (at least the version I read) all Gethens were given she/her pronouns. There's also "Coming of Age in Karhide", but I found that pronoun system a bit confusing (especially with a character who becomes 'he' once they have aged beyond kemmer entirely).
It's also rather serendipitous that you were rereading this book around the same time I discovered it for the first time. The universe can be lovely like that.
A comment for the evil algorithym >:D
But anyway, even with its many flaws I still find LHoD to be very important for me as a non-binary person. True it forces a gendered language on a group that doesn't have the concept of gender binary, but it still acknowledges that gender is not a stable or concrete category that it is often imagined as.
This one actually didn't do much for me. Not bad but not great either.
This book is low tier trash.
Starts decent then nothing happens until 50% where he breaks out of prison. There is nothing influential or thought provoking about it...
Just finished this book! I really really enjoyed it. There wasn't too much sci fi stuff in it but it was such a beautiful story.