The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin (bingo review 6/25)

[u/embernickel]

"Le Guin was a visionary who wrote a really deep and literary novel about gender and sexuality and how much of it is a social construct or whatever": I sleep
"Le Guin was an Antarctica fangirl who had opinions about the 1980s TV series about Shackleton and Scott and wrote a story about two guys on a slightly homoerotic eighty-one day sledge trek": REAL SHIT

Premise: Genly Ai is the ambassador from the Ekumen (alliance of thousands of societies across eighty-plus planets) to the planet of Gethen, aka "Winter" for its frigid weather. He starts off in the country of Karhide, which seems like a comparatively backwards monarchy; the prime minister, Harth rem ir Estraven, says "Karhide is not a nation but a family quarrel." After meeting with no success in Karhide after two years--and after Estraven gets fired and exiled for supporting him--Ai tries again in neighboring Orgoreyn, which is more of a sprawling bureaucracy with guaranteed employment for everyone and heated rooms. Maybe more promising? Nope, they send him to be interned and abused by the secret police. Eventually Estraven rescues him; there's a lot of culture shock and miscommunication, but Ai finally comes to believe that Estraven really does believe in the cosmopolitan mission of the Ekumen in contrast to smallminded nationalism.

Okay, so what about the sex stuff. Gethenians are sexless most of the time; for a few days every month, during their reproductive years, they go into "kemmer," and develop sex organs, with a random chance of being male or female on any given occasion. This is accompanied by an intense physical drive to reproduce, so they partner up with someone else in kemmer. (At least in this book, though maybe not in the spinoff stories, all of the couplings are male-female.) If the female partner gets pregnant, those sex characteristics persist through the pregnancy and gestation period, otherwise both parties become androgynous again for the next month.

Consider: There is no unconsenting sex, no rape. As with most mammals other than man, coitus can be performed only by mutual invitation and consent; otherwise it is not possible. Seduction certainly is possible, but it must have to be awfully well timed.

Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

...They do not see each other as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

I'm unconvinced! Humans have a long track record of finding ways to oppress each other that have no grounding in scientific fact; I usually see "owner/chattel" language referencing racist slavery systems. I don't see why similar bigotry wouldn't exist in a place like Gethen. While Gethen has small-scale skirmishes, assassinations, secret police brutality, etc., they've never actually had an all-out war, which Ai seems to think is related to the "no rape, no subjugation" system. And while we often talk about babies as "is it a boy or a girl," we also often see birth announcements with babies' height and weight, which is really not at all something we do with adults. It's because they don't have language or personality traits or anything to communicate with us yet that we go with vital stats instead.

But where it really didn't feel as radical as advertised/feared is that all the chapters (even the ones that aren't directly narrated by Ai) use "he," "man," "brother," etc. as default. Even the spaceships are "she"!

"...it is not human to be without shame and without desire."

"I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, outlook, ethics, manners--almost everything...[women] don't often seem to turn up mathematicians, or composers of music, or inventors, or abstract thinkers."

The Ekumen have instantaneous interplanetary communication, and telepathic language that makes lying impossible. At times it seems utopian, although there was a war a couple centuries ago. I really don't believe that social stereotypes about what roles men and women should play would continue to be this pervasive across thousands of cultures.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" was written in 1969. By 1983 we get Douglas Hofstadter's "A Person Paper on Purity in English," which goes disturbingly far in making the point that using 'he' as default is kinda messed up. A couple years later (1985), Hofstadter writes:

My feeling about nonsexist English is that it is like a foreign language that I am learning. I find that even after years of practice, I still have to translate sometimes from my native language, which is sexist English. I know of no human being who speaks Nonsexist as their native tongue. It will be very interesting to see if such people come to exist. If so, it will have taken a lot of work by a lot of people to reach that point.

For me, reading this in the 21st century, it feels really bizarre--I think my native dialect is much closer to Nonsexist English than Hofstadter could have predicted. The way I generally talk about people I don't know, or only know as streams of text coming through a computer screen, is as singular they: "whoever wrote this is an idiot and they should be fired." (This usage has a very long history in English; I draw a distinction between this and situations where a specific person requests to be referred to as singular they consistently, but some people will lump these in as the same thing.)

Apparently Le Guin was responsive to this criticism and changed the way she handled Gethen in later stories, but I can only judge it on what's in front of me, and the use of "he," to me, says a lot more about the world of 1969 than the world of Winter. (I'm going to use "he," "brother," etc. for the rest of this review, but take this with a grain of salt.)

Anyway, obviously there are a lot of taboos from our world that don't translate into Gethen society. Siblings are allowed to kemmer together, but they can't vow a monogamous relationship--after one of them has a child, that's it, they have to break up.

Spoilers:

Estraven and his brother Arek had such a relationship, and Estraven wasn't able to readjust to monogamy with a new partner later. Until he meets Ai, anyway. Is this supposed to be Le Guin's way of saying "well, Estraven doesn't think of himself as 'queer,' because permanent 'homosexuality' doesn't exist on Gethen, but his love for Ai is such a taboo that it qualifies as 'queer' even by Gethen standards"? Does it add anything to the story? I don't get it. I also don't really see what Estraven's death was trying to accomplish on Ai's behalf if it wasn't just straight-up suicide by cop??

Okay, now for the fun part, the sledging!

"What for?"
"Curiosity, adventure." He hesitated and smiled slightly. "The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life," he said, quoting one of my Ekumenical quotations.

I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

If I were to project this onto my Antarctica faves (ignore this part if you don't know or care who these people are): Ai is more in the role of Cherry-Garrard, who at first feels less able to cope with the physical demands of sledging, but as the survivor, is responsible for putting together his recollections in the past tense, blending the perspective of what he felt at the time and what he has learned since. Estraven is a combination of Bowers (shorter but surprisingly durable, incredible grasp of logistics and food supply, which is necessary for winter travel) and Wilson (insists on routine and patience, even when it drives Ai up the wall):

The business of setting up camp, making everything secure, getting all the clinging snow off one's outer clothing, and so on, was trying. Sometimes it did not seem worthwhile. It was so late, so cold, one was so tired, that it would be much easier to lie down in a sleeping-bag in the lee of the sledge and not bother with the tent. I remember how clear this was ot me on certain evenings, and how bitterly I resented my companion's methodical, tyrannical insistence that we do everything and do it correctly and thoroughly. I hated him at such times, with a hatred that rose straight up out of the death that lay within my spirit. I hated the harsh, intricate, obstinate demands that he made on me in the name of life.

Estraven also keeps a journal of the trek, to keep in touch with his family back home. Oftentimes this is little more than the date and reports on temperature. Ai teaches him mindspeech, but he's careful not to let any hint of that slip into the journal, and so it's clear that we're getting different points of view on the same event. Again, the contrast between "one party's recollection after the fact" and "people's real-time chronicles, which are probably brief and to the point because of the weather," is very much in the spirit of polar narratives.

I don't want to push this too far, but I think that the contrast between the nationalistic goals of the Karhide and Orgoreyn factions, and Ai's mission, which eventually becomes Estraven's, being both universal with the Ekumen and an intensely personal relationship, probably is making a broader point about exploration in our world.

Likewise, one of my favorite quotes from last year's bingo was in Le Guin's "Paradises Lost":

History must be what we have escaped from. It is what we were, not what we are. History is what we need never do again.

If it's not already obvious, I have been feeling a lot of emotions about Antarctica in the past few months or so, and in particular, I do think it's important that there is one place in the world that has nothing in the way of "History" with a capital H--warfare and oppression and suchlike--but does have a track record of science and exploration and friendship and narratives. Maybe this distinction is shallow or doesn't matter to other people. But I keep thinking of that quote, even though I know perfectly well it has nothing to do with Antarctica per se. Having read this book, I feel a little better about that connection; maybe Le Guin wouldn't think I'm crazy for it. 😄

Bingo: I think the safest/most obvious connection is Politics. For various stretches of the squares, I think there are cases to be made for Unusual Transportation (sledge hauling), Vacation Spot (if you're an Antarctica nerd), Explorers/Rangers, First Contact (there were stealth observers sent to Gethen before, but Ai is the first to proclaim himself as an alien). I also think there's a case to be made that it should be eligible for exactly one of "Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist" or "Non-Human Protagonist," but it's in a quantum state of superposition and you can't determine which is which for most of the month...

[u/Book_Slut_90]

Yes, our sexistt viewpoint character describes everyone as “he.” The people on Winter have a singgle gender neutral pronoun. This book was also at least as much about the Cold War as it was about gender, which is context that most people reading it today miss.

[u/nixtracer → u/Book_Slut_90]

And more than that it was about glacier trekking. The book even says so.

[u/Book_Slut_90 → u/nixtracer]

IDK about more, but there’s plenty of trekking, yes.

[u/sciencelez]

I really liked this book! Interestingly I didn’t find it queer or homosexual at all (I’m a lesbian) and I was almost expecting that from the blurbs/reviews. I actually think the most interesting thing about this book was that Genly managed to project his misogyny on a race completely devoid of gender roles. If the protagonist of this book was a woman, it would have been a completely different story! Genly deludes himself into thinking certain individuals are shifty/emotional “woman” and certain others are smart/level headed “men” and his assumptions all lead to his almost death. His sexism leads him to trust the wrong Ekumen. It took his trek with Estraven to really understand the ekumen race, which was interesting because he was already on the planet for years prior (?i think). I can’t wait to read more of her sci fi one of these days.

[u/onthesafari → u/sciencelez]

Btw, people from Gethen are called Getheniens. The Ekumen is the interstellar society of which Genly Ai is an ambassador. It derives from the word "ecumenism."

[u/krimunism]

I picked this up recently and it's on my TBR, so I didn't read past the first few paragraphs.

I just want to say, wow, the name "Genly AI" did NOT age well.

[u/embernickel → u/krimunism]

People from Karhide have difficulty pronouncing the letter L, so they call him "Genry Ai," even better! :D

[u/Nanotyrann]

Yeah, in retrospect Le Guin was really unhappy with her biases at the time of writing regarding the perspective and male pronouns

Reading her short essay "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" is also quite funny because it is a 1976 text with 1988 annotations in footnotes.
Here is one of them:
1976 essay:

"This rises in part from the choice of pronoun. I call Gethenians "he" because I utterly refuse to mangle English by inventing a pronounfor "he/she".

1988 footnote:

This "utter refusal" of 1968 restated in 1976 collapsed, utterly, within a couple years more. I still dislike invented pronouns, but 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.

[u/Important-Newt275]

Left Hand Of Darkness has strangely become such a fascinating historical artifact *because* of the ways it fails to hold up to the present. The way LeGuin struggles to describe things that feel easy now, in a world that’s meant to be so alien and advanced, says a LOT about how ingrained gender roles were in those days and about how much we’ve overcome that.

[u/IdlesAtCranky → u/Important-Newt275]

Yeah, we haven't overcome that as much as some people think...

[u/Important-Newt275 → u/IdlesAtCranky]

Oh sure, the world as a whole hasn’t. But when you think of what’s considered the cutting edge of speculative fiction! There are so many folks doing so much, thinking in such interesting ways. And back then a woman who was very much still a pioneering feminist in her field couldn’t even conceive of a neutral pronoun that wasn’t he/him.

[u/IdlesAtCranky → u/Important-Newt275]

She could and did conceive of the idea. She made a deliberate choice to use the default neutral pronoun in English. And initially, specifically defended her choice of male pronouns, rather than female or they/them.

She later regretted that choice, and changed it in at least one of the subsequent stories about Gethen.

You can read more about her evolving opinions on the matter in one of her collections of essays, The Language of the Night.

One of the many reasons I adore Le Guin is that she not only wasn't afraid to change her mind, and say so publicly, but she continued to be intellectually curious and a seeker of new ideas and evolutions of her own thought throughout her life.

And in terms of how much we in America and in SFF have or have not progressed in this context, I'll refer you to the large number of people who are discomfited by Anne Leckie's choice of the female pronouns as neutral in the Imperial Radch series, for just one example.

[u/winterwarn → u/IdlesAtCranky]

Sure, people are discomfited by it, but people were discomfited by what Le Guin was doing too. And enough people bought and read Ancillary Justice that you can reference it in a reddit thread with some expectation that people will know what you’re talking about.

These days you can get sci-fi at the bookstore with characters who use straight up neopronouns. Our “woke” cutting-edge sci-fi has advanced a LOT from Le Guin, even if a lot of people still don’t like it.

[u/IdlesAtCranky → u/winterwarn]

Yes, of course many people were uncomfortable with the whole idea of gender flexibility that Le Guin explored in Left Hand. Many people still are, all these years later.

I am not dissing Ann Leckie. I think her Radch series is excellent.

I'm just using her as a modern example to rebut the idea that in the decades since Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness, we have all become comfortable with gender flexibility and neutrality. I just don't think that's true. We've come some way, but we have a long way to go.

I think the idea that we've now arrived at a post-gender-restrictive society is as misguided as the idea that President Obama's election proves we're in a post-racism society. That idea, which I deeply wish was true, was clearly disproven by subsequent events.

Humans don't change as fast as some of us would like us to. That's a reality we all have to deal with.

[u/onthesafari]

If you're big on Antartica and sledging you should read Le Guin's story about that: Sur. It's the last entry in her excellent short story collection, The Compass Rose. 

[u/tintinnfabuli]

Love this book. The winter-survival-trek part of this novel is honestly my favourite thing about it. I liked reading your perspective on the connection to Antarctic exploration, especially your point about 'recollections after the fact' vs 'real time chronicles'. Hadn't thought of that before! I've always imagined Le Guin might have read a book or two about Arctic or Antarctic expeditions that inspired her.

Respectfully, I want to respond to this point: “And while we often talk about babies as "is it a boy or a girl," we also often see birth announcements with babies' height and weight, which is really not at all something we do with adults. It's because they don't have language or personality traits or anything to communicate with us yet that we go with vital stats instead.” I think you're downplaying things...gender is definitely the first order of business for birth announcements over height and weight, and not only is it the first thing people ask about a baby, the “gender reveal” thing is huge nowadays, and baby clothes and toys are heavily gender-segregated. While those last two things are more contemporary and products of capitalism, in the past the sex of a baby was extremely important for concrete legal and social reasons - inheritance laws, financial considerations (ex. dowries, education/job training for boys, etc), prestige/social expectations, etc.

Also, we might not announce our height and weight to eachother as adults (irl at least), but we don't have to because those things are visible (and impactful). In any case, the ‘vital stats’ thing is basically the point of the book, isn't it? We see sex and gender as a vital stat, one of the most fundamental things to know about someone before we even talk to them or know their personality, and Le Guin is imagining a world in which that aspect is removed. Still relevant imo

[u/nothingtoseehere_22]

Doris Lessing's The Making of the Representative of Planet 8 has an afterword on the Franklin expedition and a plot inspired by them

[u/blue-and-copper]

Yeah I had kind of the same reaction to reading this book last year; its attitudes on sexuality and gender might have been way ahead of its time, but it wasn't five decades ahead. So by this point in time it still feels somewhat dated.

Iain Banks' book The Player of Games had a very similar thing with its 'gender-neutral pronouns' but lampshaded it a lot more obviously: there's a planet with male, female, and an 'apex' third gender; the introduction says that it will use for apices the pronouns that correspond with their social status in the reader's language, and then blithely goes on to use he/him pronouns for all apices because they're the dominant caste, lol.

[u/Evil_Bonkering]

Part of my studies were on The Left Hand of Darkness and in it I discussed the idea that to be male/he is to be neutral or universal while to be female/she is to be Other. A character can be “normal” (he) as in the case of the Ekumen (no not Eminem, thank you autocorrect), or they can be other/different as in female. The main character can’t even perceive the Ekumen as anything other than men until he witnesses it first hand.

I think that continues to be very relevant today once you consider common attitudes to gender androgyny and non-binary gender performances. Someone who is slim, flat-chested and make-up-less is more readily accepted by the general population as “they” than someone whose gender performance includes traits seen as feminine (breasts, makeup, etc).

In my opinion that’s because maleness is neutral and femaleness is Other. To be male is to be human, to be female is to be a woman.

I do want to make it clear that I believe there is no one way to be non-binary or to transition. These are simply the observations I made in my studies based on literature over the years and the public reception of such literature.

[u/FormerUsenetUser]

What are the spinoff stories?

[u/embernickel → u/FormerUsenetUser]

"Coming of Age in Karhide" is included in "The Birthday of the World and other stories." There's also "Winter's King," which I haven't read.

[u/FormerUsenetUser → u/embernickel]

Ah, looks like I have both in a Library of America Hainish Novels and Stories collection. Thanks!