Ever since Genly Ai visited the planet called Winter he’s had a struggle of not truly understanding who the Gethenians are. Natives of the planet Gethen are androgynous creatures who are neither female or male and only have genitalia of a women or a man during their time of “kemmer”, which is a period of time where Gethenians mate and reproduce. This means that during their time out of kemmer they have no gender and have no pronouns that are attached to them. On the other hand, Genly Ai only sees them all as males and identifies all of them as “he” or “him”, the only time he refers to them as women is when he sees them act femininely or when they “talk too much”. Genly’s failure to see Gethenians as they see themselves (genderless) reveals a lot about the world he comes from, it shows how being male is predominantly the gender that everyone is and that being a woman is only associated with weaker features compared to a man. I feel though this kind of thinking is just due to him being ignorant to the planet he is visiting, he has no true understanding of how the world of Gethen works and the people in it. Possibly later on in the book he’ll have a better understanding of the world and come to know and respect the Gethenians as they are.
- Jainah Fajardo
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ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you Jainah, how Genly is ignorant to the Gethenian gender and sex roles. He's so acquired to the ideals and characteristics of the "typical" male and female that he begins to categorize the Gethenians into male and female. He can't help but to view most of the people on Gethen, as males. Though, when Genly sees a Gethenian acting in a "feminine way", he pictures them as a female.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Genly is pretty ignorant when it comes to him understanding the Gethenians sex roles. His reasonings for chategorizing them into certain genders when they act a certain way isn’t a fair way of thinking. However, I think it might be hard traveling to a whole nother world and having to learn all of their costums, especially when the Gethenians way of life is way different than what Genly is familiar with. I’m not trying to excuse his sexist point of view for reasons I mentioned before, but I do feel like it might be hard getting used to with everything else going on.
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