Sunday, February 4, 2018
assuming gender
Genly comes from a world where gender role is a thing. Men dominance is typical from the planet Genly comes from. It's normal to feel attracted to someone based on physical feature including their beauty, style, race, and gender. However now Genly is in a gender-less planet. His struggle is adjusting to this culture. As we know, they do not have any gender that will distinguish their identity. To be with someone is as easy as to just vow "kemmering". This system of marriage eliminates all forms of sexual discrimination, even better it seems like they have solved that flaw that is found on our planet earth. It leads a Gethenian to be capable of taking on both roles as a woman and/or as a man. Despite Genly's years of research about the Gethenian culture, his attitude towards gender is wired to automatically label a person as a male or female on the first encounter.
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Throughout the whole book Genly struggles with the fact that the people of Gethen are gender-less beings. Coming from a planet where gender exists, he cannot help but identify them as he/she depending on their actions or physical features. He is also sometimes sexist especially when it comes to identifying some characters in the book as ¨women¨ or effeminate. Genly´s role in the book for this typical reason of gender norms and roles gives us insight on how the lack of presence of gender does not really matter in the eyes of Gethenians, as they see each other as equals. Going more into depth it vitalizes the author´s purpose to emphasize that everyone in society has an opportunity/role/responsibility as equal as the other person regardless of their gender.
ReplyDeleteThese are one of the topics that I find very interesting in the novel. Genly of course seems like, or at least tries to be very macho and that affects the way he views this strange planet. He is not alone. From a young way we are taught the differences for girls and boys. Girls are pink and boys are blue. Now, however, things are a bit different, we are encouraged to be who we want to be but the distinction between male and female are still present in our minds and it confuses us as well when we read and try to imagine who is speaking; a man or woman.
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