The Left Hand of Darkness

What a weekend, getting to storm through this. I think the blurb doesn't really do it justice. Yes, this is a book about a planet where people are ambisexual, becoming male or female during each mating cycle. But I think, perhaps primed by Ursula's introduction, that it's much more an exploration about how we view each other and how we interact, not just on a gendered or sexed basis but in our whole beings. I'll pick out a few moments that grabbed me:p75 - “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty”. Gethen is home to a cult/non-religion of the Handdara, who prize ignorance, to “ignore the abstraction, to hold fast to the thing” (p 228). This is shocking in part because of anxieties of the unknown (both my own and our societal); I think we trade on certainty a lot and the Handdarata are pushing a view that says uncertainty is actually the root of all our thought and action. Focus on uncertainty isn't new, but I'd kinda felt that it was mostly limited to recognising that some amount of it must be dealt with healthily, not actually fundamental or desired. The second line, which is referring to Estraven's desire not to accept the concept of nationhood, I take as a commitment to the real, whatever that might be, but also a focus on feeling over ideology, a . Not a philosopher, don't know who's already trodden this path, but it feels scary and also reassuring to consider what it would mean to take your actions, like Estraven, almost entirely from what you feel rather than what you think.p101 - “One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.” It's interesting reading this 1969 text in a day where nonbinary genders are frequently discussed and gender confirmation is an increasingly recognised treatment. Yet despite our critiques of the gender construct, it still resonates to think about how difficult life can be when you don't have your gendered social personae to fall back on. Genly and the Investigators speculate about the effects that ending the binary has had on Gethenian society, from the level of aggression (no war), the greater focus on matters of import (Oscar Wilde: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex”), the elimination of rape, the reduction in binary views about anything at all. But Therem notes that the I-you dualism is the older binary by far, and still very much present on Gethen. Instead, I think that the exploratory discussions of nonbinary gender and sexuality (homosexuality is noticeably missing on Gethen, unfortunately) in present society actually make the same metaphorical point that [b:The Left Hand of Darkness 118028 The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle #4) Ursula K. Le Guin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1519082793s/118028.jpg 817527] is making. For one, they prove that the binary is illusive; in many significant ways and places we were already somewhat androgynous. Taking the next step; it does feel appalling, terrifying, to abandon our gendered crutches. Most can't or don't want to, I certainly can't, at least not completely. But the striking thing about the Gethenians is just how normal they are, how particularly non-alien. They live and love and cry and die, and they show us that humanity is not gender, that being judged only as a human being is something we can actually do.