Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 10:02:34 +0200 From: Crystal Warren Subject: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Sorry for the late start to the discussion group. I got snowed under by work - felt a bit like I was pullling a sledge across a glacier. I hope everyone has enjoyed reading The Left Hand of Darkness and I look forward to the discussion. There is a vast amount of information on Ursula Le Guin available, in print and on the net. A few of the useful sites include: www.ursulakleguin.com - the official Ursual Le Guin site www.arcadiabooks.org/leguin - includes links to many other Le Guin resources and of course - www.feministsf.org/femsf/authors/leguin The Left Hand of Darkness is one of my favourite books. It is also one that I recommend to friends who say that they do not read science fiction. In most cases they have enjoyed it or at least found it thought provoking, and have then been more prepared to look at the range of interesting science fiction/fantasy out there. So perhaps the first question to open discussion should be - did you like the book? If so, why? If not, why not? Here are some more specific questions or comments to get the initial discussion going: What do you think about the portrayal of the Gethenians? Do they come across as gender neutral? Le Guin has been criticised for the use of language, especially the use of he/him to refer to the Gethenians. An interesting article to look at (I could not find it on the web, perhaps someone else will have a reference) is Le Guin's own article "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" which appeared in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places 1989, Grove Press. In this she acknowledges that the language she used shaped the story she told. Any comments? Genly Ai seems to have quite a negative view of women. Do you agree? Does this story lead you to rethink your own views or assumptions about gender difference - indeed about difference in general? Genly Ai's narrative is interspersed with anthropological reports, myths etc. How does this impact on the story? There is another discussion thread developing about religion and spirituality; aspects of society often neglected in science fiction/fantasy. Do you think the religions of the Gethenians are signifigant? What are the implications of the different religions of Handara and Yomesh on the two societies shown? Despite all the anthropological reports, Le Guin does not often show the Gethenians in a domestic setting. Yet the hearth and family seem very important in determining the society - at one point Estraven comments that Karhide is not a country but a family feud. Any comments on the role of family, thinking of how childrearing would be different to in a more dualistic society is just one thought. There is also the contrast of the commensals. How important is the climate / environment in the story. There could be any number of other starting points. So perhaps I should leave it here and let everyone else add their comments. Crystal Warren ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 11:26:37 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At 10:02 AM 5/4/2004 +0200, Crystal Warren wrote: >What do you think about the portrayal of the Gethenians? Do they come across >as gender neutral? Not really. They themselves seem ambiguous, or even contemptuous, about their own female phase, especially when "abnormally prolonged, and, despite the theoretical androgyny inherent in such a culture and physiology, we find "male" violence against "females," rape, and prostitution. This hardly strikes me as gender neutral. Despite their reported mistrust of Genly AI, who is "perversely" male all the time, they themselves have split their society into "male" and "female" with their religious and political arrangements. >Le Guin has been criticised for the use of language, especially the use of >he/him to refer to the Gethenians. An interesting article to look at (I >could not find it on the web, perhaps someone else will have a reference) is >Le Guin's own article "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" which appeared in Dancing >at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places 1989, Grove >Press. In this she acknowledges that the language she used shaped the story >she told. Any comments? I think we're unlikely to find this on the Web since it's still being collected and generates income. >Genly Ai seems to have quite a negative view of women. Do you agree? Yes and, more than that, his reaction to his attraction to a Gethenian "woman" has more than a little bit of "homosexual panic" in it, despite his failure to recognize that element. It seems to me less of an exploration of "gender" than it does an exercise in Freudian polymorphously perverse sexuality and the manner in which the protagonist's id almost overcomes, temporarily, his superego, is tempted to engage purely pleasure-seeking sexuality with no possibility of his partner's pregnancy or danger of fatherhood and consequent responsibility. The fact that this temptation is *never* faced squarely is the weakest part of the book, I think. Homosexuality is so firmly repressed in this future society that Genly Ai never thinks about the implications inherent in the fact that he comes to love a "man." At the end of the story, the superego is restored to control and his exploration of his sexuality is comfortably repressed. But in the meantime, Genly Ai is very contemptuous of women, seeing his host (hostess?) as "womanish" when he (she?) fusses over dinner preparations. But didn't he really mean, "faggoty?" There is similar quasi-homosexual exploration in The Dispossessed, in which the protagonist forcibly assaults a woman and ejaculates on her dress, then vomits all over a party platter of delicacies. The woman seems strangely unperturbed by this, although she is irritated because she will have to change her dress. He doesn't enjoy heterosexual sex, and considers it a mere biological function, less "manly" somehow than masturbation. So is he a closet queen? Or is this Freudian castration anxiety? In the Left Hand of Darkness, there is also a Roshamon-like juxtaposition of differing viewpoints, in which the process of repression is disclosed. And LeGuin herself has said that "gender" is used as a metaphor in the book; ti seems clear that the metaphor hides the issue of how the larger society, the "Ekumen (Ecumenical?)," reacts to a planet inhabited by queers. >Does this story lead you to rethink your own views or assumptions about >gender difference - indeed about difference in general? > >Genly Ai's narrative is interspersed with anthropological reports, myths >etc. How does this impact on the story? She does this all the time. It comes, I suppose, from growing up in the Kroeber household. It actually becomes tiresome, with the most dreary being her "after the end of the world as we know it" books set in future California. >There is another discussion thread developing about religion and >spirituality; aspects of society often neglected in science fiction/fantasy. > Do you think the religions of the Gethenians are signifigant? What are the >implications of the different religions of Handara and Yomesh on the two >societies shown? This is Father Knows Best gender roles writ large, with gender role elevated to the status of international politics. So "Men" are from Mars, whilst "Women" are from Venus. So what else is new? Yin without Yang, Yang scornful for Yinish considerations, feh. >Despite all the anthropological reports, Le Guin does not often show the >Gethenians in a domestic setting. Yet the hearth and family seem very >important in determining the society - at one point Estraven comments that >Karhide is not a country but a family feud. Any comments on the role of >family, thinking of how childrearing would be different to in a more >dualistic society is just one thought. There is also the contrast of the >commensals. > >How important is the climate / environment in the story. As metaphor, barrenness? Since the Gethenians are coded as queers, their fecundity must needs be false, with their true state of infertility exteriorized as a wintry planet. >There could be any number of other starting points. So perhaps I should >leave it here and let everyone else add their comments. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 11:50:25 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU The interesting point about this article is not that there *is* a link but that the question is considered. If homosexuality is *assumed* to be a sickness, looking for the etilogy is a first step on the way to a cure. Left-handedness has a long history of being associated with being queer in other ways. ======================= http://www.narth.com/docs/lefthand.html Is There a Link Between Left-Handedness and Homosexuality? N. E. Whitehead, Ph.D. whiteh@paradise.net.nz This year, three Canadian scientists published a study which found some connection between left-handedness and homosexuality (1). Analyzing a number of studies, their paper concludes that male homosexuals are about one third (31%) more likely than heterosexuals to be left-handed (2), while lesbians are almost twice as likely (91%) to be left-handed as heterosexual women. The authors say that their findings support the notion that sexual orientation in some men and women has an early neurodevelopmental basis. They trace this to "disruptive events causing developmental instability." These events may modify sexual differentiation of the brain, they say, "perhaps through hormonal or immunological mechanisms." The authors point out that left-handedness has been associated with a wide range of indicators of reduced fitness, from the standpoint of natural (Darwinian) selection. Left-handed people, the authors say, have a smaller number of offspring, higher number of spontaneous abortions, lower birth weight, higher number of serious accidents, higher rates of serious disorders, and a shorter life span. Left-handedness has similarly been linked to neural tube defects, autism, stuttering, and schizophrenia. The authors conclude by discussing possible biological reasons for the link between left-handedness and homosexuality. Their preferred explanation is that both left-handedness and homosexuality result from "biological developmental errors." In a related development, two recent studies reported in Archives of General Psychiatry found significantly higher levels of pathology in the gay population than among heterosexuals. One of several possible explanations, said researcher J.M. Bailey in a published commentary that accompanied the article, is that since evolution naturally selects for heterosexuality, "homosexuality may represent developmental error" (3). How Significant is the Latest Study? I would conclude that there is possibly some link between left-handedness and homosexuality, but not a highly significant one. The fact remains that most left-handed persons are not homosexual, and most homosexual people are not left-handed. The Canadian scientists' paper is a meta-analysis, which has become an increasingly popular way of combining data from multiple studies to overcome the problems of slightly different approaches, and to pinpoint small effects which individual studies have not enough power to detect. There are many potential traps in meta-analyses. The paper in question has avoided most of them--as one would expect, given the prominence and expertise of its best-known authors, Ray Blanchard and Kenneth Zucker. One concern, however, is that the paper was published in a social-science rather than a medical journal. Psychological Bulletin was certainly a correct choice for reaching the authors' target audience (psychotherapists working with gay and lesbian clients), but it is quite doubtful the paper got a rigorous refereeing, since the number of specialists required to properly analyze the paper would likely exceed the number of informed referees usually assigned to a paper by the editorial staff of a journal. The study is severely technical; it uses odds ratios (statistics from the field of epidemiology), and refers to fetal masculinization (endocrinology), the Major Histocompatibility Complex (immunology), and fluctuating asymmetry (developmental biology). The main caution, however, must be about the significance of the findings. Neither the authors nor I can quantify its error, because it was done using a meta-analysis. A known epidemiological rule of thumb for individual surveys states that, in a test-population, a prevalence of twice that in the control group is intriguing but inconclusive, and a prevalence of three is probably significant. This means that if this were an individual survey, the result of 31% above normal would be insignificant, and that of 91% above normal (about twice the control group) would be considered intriguing, but not decisive. This rule-of-thumb applies to individual surveys, but it is unknown if the rule should apply in the same manner to a meta-analysis. Using their results, it is possible to derive a number, which shows the extent of any link there may be between homosexuality and left-handedness. Here's how it's done. Given that 2.7% of adult Western males are homosexuals and 1.7% of adult Western women female homosexuals (both figures including bisexuals, and defined as activity in the last 12 months [4]) we can calculate by standard methods that only 3.9% of left-handed males are homosexual, and only 3.3% of left-handed females are lesbian (5). In other words, the overwhelming majority of those who are left-handed, do not become homosexual. The strength of any underlying factor producing both is weak. Something unusual appears to happen to a small number of left-handed people, and their sexual-orientation development is atypical. Conversely, however, and very importantly, most homosexual people are not left-handed. The latest study is intriguing. Nevertheless, the main routes to homosexuality would not likely be through the route that has caused some people to be left-handed. References Lalumière, M.L.; Blanchard, R.; Zucker, K.L. (2000): "Sexual orientation and handedness in Men and Women: a meta-analysis." Psychological Bulletin 126, 575-592. Although for conciseness the term "left-handed" is used in this article, the original definition in the paper is "all those who are not exclusively right-handed." Bailey, J.M., "Commentary: Homosexuality and Mental Illness," Archives of General Psychiatry, October 1999, vol. 56, no. 10, 876-880. Whitehead, N.E.; Whitehead, B.K. (1999): My Genes Made Me Do It! Huntington House, Layfayette, Louisiana. 233 pages. The calculation is quite easy and useful to put in perspective other alleged links. F1 = 0.0277 * R1 (for men) and F2 = 0.0173 * R2, where F1 and F2, the results, give the fraction of left-handers who are homosexual (men and women respectively), and R1 is the ratio of the percentage of left-handed homosexual men to the percentage of left-handed heterosexual men. R2 is similar but for women. The numerical factors are the ratio of homosexuals to non-homosexuals in a population, thus it is 2.7/97.3 for males and 1.7/98.3 for females. Other figures could be substituted if you think them more accurate. The formulae apply similarly to other biological factors that are alleged to link with homosexuality; only R1 and R2 change. Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 11:56:38 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Note fifth paragraph ===================== http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/berdache.html Berdache Until the 1990s, the word berdache was used in English-language anthropological and ethnographical literature to describe a widely divergent set of social statuses found in many Native American tribal cultures, but which have been largely incomprehensible to Eurocentric observers, who have attempted to describe berdachism as a combination of homosexuality and transvestism. In recent years, Native Americans and the people who study them have proposed the term two-spirit as a more appropriate label. Berdache is not a Native American term. According to linguist Claude Courouve, the word derives from the Persian bardaj; via European contact with the Muslim world, the word spread by the early sixteenth century to Italian as bardasso, to Spanish as bardaxa or bardaje, and to French as bardache. Berdache is a relatively recent Anglophonic corruption of this term, which was defined in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French dictionaries as "a young man who is shamefully abused" or "a young man or boy who serves as another's succubus, permitting sodomy to be committed on him." Early Spanish and French explorers and colonizers in North America applied these terms as a means of making sense of the relationships, anatomical sex, sexual behavior, and social gender role of those individuals they encountered who fell outside their own conceptual frameworks. Berdachism was well known to anthropologists of North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but discussion of it was most often relegated to footnotes in general texts. Famed anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, a student of Franz Boas and founding figure in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, did extensive ethnographic fieldwork on berdachism among California tribes. This work reportedly informed The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), a popular science fiction novel set on a world with a complex gender system in which individuals change sex over the course of their life span, which was written by Kroeber's daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin. Interest in berdachism among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender scholars began with the publication, in Jonathan N. Katz's Gay American History (1976), of several ethnographic descriptions discovered in archival source materials. Over the past several decades, a large body of literature on the phenomenon has been produced by Charles Callender and Lee Kochems, Walter Williams, Will Roscoe, Beatrice Medicine, Evelyn Blackwood, Sabine Lang, and others. Contemporary investigators of two-spirit traditions have documented their existence in 150 tribes for males, and roughly half that number for females. According to Will Roscoe, key features of these traditions include economic specializations (handcrafts and domestic work for males; warfare, hunting, and leadership roles for females); supernatural sanction (in the form of authorization through dreams and visions for adopting the atypical role); and gender variation (relative to normative expectations for males and females in a given society). Same-sex erotic behavior is no longer considered a definitive marker of two-spirit status, although homosexuality (defined here as sexual relations involving two individuals of the same anatomical sex, regardless of their social gender) is common. Historically, two-spirit people typically have been well integrated into the life of their tribes, and have often held revered and honored positions within them. Because of homophobia in the dominant cultures of North America, some aspects of two-spirit traditions have been suppressed or lost. Members of native cultures are often quite reluctant to discuss two-spirit traditions with outsiders, who they feel may misunderstand them or appropriate them for their own agendas. Susan Stryker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 13:19:55 -0600 From: PAT MATHEWS Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU >From: Lee Anne Phillips >Reply-To: "friendly discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & >utopian literature and other > >http://www.narth.com/docs/lefthand.html > >Is There a Link Between Left-Handedness and Homosexuality? >N. E. Whitehead, Ph.D. whiteh@paradise.net.nz > >This year, three Canadian scientists published a study >which found some connection between left-handedness >and homosexuality (1). (snip statistics) >The authors point out that left-handedness has been >associated with a wide range of indicators of reduced >fitness, from the standpoint of natural (Darwinian) selection. >Left-handed people, the authors say, have a smaller number >of offspring, higher number of spontaneous abortions, lower >birth weight, higher number of serious accidents, higher >rates of serious disorders, and a shorter life span. >Left-handedness has similarly been linked to neural tube >defects, autism, stuttering, and schizophrenia. The authors >conclude by discussing possible biological reasons for the >link between left-handedness and homosexuality. Their >preferred explanation is that both left-handedness and >homosexuality result from "biological developmental errors." Well, it has also been associated with having special talents or just being generally bright. So there, Doc. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 15:30:08 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU > >Genly Ai seems to have quite a negative view of women. Do you agree? > > Yes and, more than that, his reaction to his > attraction to a Gethenian "woman" has more > than a little bit of "homosexual panic" in it, > despite his failure to recognize that element. I agree about the homosexual panic. It also seemed rather odd to me that Genly Ai would be so patriarchal Western male in his attitudes to women and men, when he lives so far in the future in such a supposedly advanced civilization as the Ekumen - one that has progressed beyond war etc. - and is a chosen representative of it. Already, only a few decades after she wrote the story, he looks out of date (one hopes). At least anyone writing today would be much more aware that he is a throwback, or they would have to explain why things regressed. But one of the most interesting things about Le Guin is that she changes her mind, revisits her old stories and does her best to provide a different angle on them. Her 'Coming of Age in Karhide' written in 1995 makes a good attempt at showing how an ordinary fourteen year old Gethenian would feel coming into puberty and kemmer for the first time. Several things stood out for me: one was that the young person feels horrified at having to become a sexual being, an animal, who will have to relate sexually to possibly everyone or anyone. I think this is part of homosexual panic for at least some heterosexuals - the idea that everyone will be fair game for sex, no one is 'safe', anyone might proposition you or erotically ensnare you, you can't consider half the population out of bounds, or perhaps it is that you can't consider anyone 'other': for men, they might have to start treating women as equals, as human beings, as more than sexual beings, once everyone (men included) are potential sexual beings. You might have to integrate sex into its place as part of human life in a different way. I don't know - I am finding the right words hard to find. It would seem to me, in my ignorance as a heterosexual man, that there might be an equivalent heterosexual panic for some homosexuals - a resistance to finding everyone of the opposite sex sexually available. Is this in fact the case? It's the bisexuals who presumably are impervious to this panic, or have discovered that it's pretty much a piece of nonsense anyway, because of course we don't relate sexually to everyone we 'could' relate to, and it isn't so bad if we do. And this is what happens in the story, as Sov Thade, the teenager in question, finds that sex has all kinds of wonders in it, and 'she' (for Sov becomes female for her first kemmer) is reconciled to the whole thing. Another interesting point was that Sov has sex with a 'woman', who becomes a longtime friend, as well as with 'men' that first time. Looks like Le Guin is deliberately approving homosexuality in this story. To make up for past prejudices? But I also find that after reading the story (I only read it yesterday) my mental image of Sov is of a young man. Why is this? Did anyone else feel this? Is it me or the story? I had a lot more to say about the novel itself, but will try and find another time later to say it. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 15:38:46 -0700 From: Yvonne Rathbone Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU davebelden wrote: > Another interesting point was that Sov has sex with a 'woman', who becomes a > longtime friend, as well as with 'men' that first time. Looks like Le Guin > is deliberately approving homosexuality in this story. To make up for past > prejudices? I don't know about prejudices. Le Guin stated in one of her later books that looking back, she thinks the reason she didn't delve more into the issue of homosexuality in LHOD was lack of courage. It's interesting to imagine what the cultures of LHOD, cultures that almost verge on the archetypal for many sci-fi readers, would be like if written by the later, more courageous, Le Guin. -Yvonne ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 21:56:43 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU >> Looks like Le Guin is deliberately approving homosexuality in this >> story. To make up for past prejudices? > > I don't know about prejudices. Le Guin stated in one of her later books > that looking back, she thinks the reason she didn't delve more into the > issue of homosexuality in LHOD was lack of courage. > > It's interesting to imagine what the cultures of LHOD, cultures that almost > verge on the archetypal for many sci-fi readers, would be like if written > by the later, more courageous, Le Guin. > > -Yvonne That's an interesting comment. But the fact is that she is more courageous now and tried to make amends with stories that revisit earlier ground. Does anyone know of any other writer, apart from Le Guin, who goes back to give a different spin on their earlier made-up worlds? I have just read The Other Wind, in which (along with Tehanu and a short story) she shows that the Earthsea of her first Earthsea trilogy is actually a patriarchal period that succeeded an earlier more egalitarian woman-celebrating period, and that is now giving way to a new period in which women's values and worth are reasserted. Her male wizards' stronghold, the school at Roke, in which no woman is allowed, is now found to have been founded largely by women, and is in the new novels broached by a dragon woman who destroys one of the leading wizards, the Summoner, because he is messing with immortality in an unacceptable way. The Other Wind has more strong female than male characters. Does anyone else do this? I think this is one thing that makes Le Guin a great writer - that she can develop in herself, and bring her imaginary worlds with her. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 May 2004 21:01:06 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At 09:56 PM 5/4/2004 -0400, davebelden wrote: >Does anyone know of any other writer, apart from Le Guin, who goes >back to give a different spin on their earlier made-up worlds? It's not *all* that uncommon. Robert Heinlein's Future History was heavily revised in later years, including the character Andrew Jackson "Libby" Libby from "Misfit" and "Methuselah's Children" who is discovered in "Number of the Beast" to have always wanted to be a woman and reincarnated as Elizabeth Andrew Jackson Libby Long. He also appeared (if it can be called that) in "Time Enough for Love" when his frozen body is discovered to be missing from the orbit it was placed in. Stranger in a Strange Land was reissued posthumously (which fits right in with the Heinlein worldview) with expurgations reinserted. This is just one character, but the future history itself expanded far beyond the more or less linear progression first envisioned to include a wide variety of universes that included fictional places like Oz and sexual freedom completely beyond what was acceptable when he started writing. He has one scene, for example, in which one character propositions another and (for complicated reasons) that character asks whether the proposal comes from a man or a woman, to which the first replied, "Does it matter?" and received the answer, "No." Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe was also taken in directions that seemed wildly different from first intentions. Not for the better, some would say, but then most people resist change. I think every such "future history" eventually evolved to suit modern conditions, except possibly those created by and for hacks writers. Tom Swift didn't evolve all that much, even when reincarnated as his own son, but maintained a certain plodding predictability from Tom Swift and His Motorcycle to Tom Swift (Junior): The Alien Probe, only the gadgets really changed. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 10:44:59 +0200 From: Crystal Warren Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Another, later story worth looking at is 'The Shobies' Story" published in 1990 and appearing in "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" in 1994. While not central to the plot, a family of Gethenians are part of the crew of a spaceship. Le Guin has been much more careful with the language used in describing them, phrasing it is such a way that pronouns are not needed. I read this before The Left Hand of Darkness and it had me confused for a bit because I could not tell if they were male or female, who was the mother or father. Crystal ----- Original Message ----- From: "davebelden" To: Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 9:30 PM Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] BDG The Left Hand of Darkness > But one of the most interesting things about Le Guin is that she changes her > mind, revisits her old stories and does her best to provide a different > angle on them. Her 'Coming of Age in Karhide' written in 1995 makes a good > attempt at showing how an ordinary fourteen year old Gethenian would feel > coming into puberty and kemmer for the first time. SNIP > But I also find that after reading the story (I only read it yesterday) my > mental image of Sov is of a young man. Why is this? Did anyone else feel > this? Is it me or the story? > > I had a lot more to say about the novel itself, but will try and find > another time later to say it. > > Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 12:53:43 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Thanks to Lee Anne for explaining a lot about Heinlein I didn't know, not being a fan - I loved Stranger in A Strange Land, though treated its sexual freedom as crazed fantasy (but somewhat delicious fantasy - yes, I'm a straight male), detested Farnham's Freehold (for what I saw as its sexism) and Starship Troopers (for its anticommunism) and never read another word. Living as a socialist with anarchist tendencies in a communal house in England I had not the faintest idea of what US libertarians were about, had no truck with the traditional idea of honor (except in historical novels), and thought anti-communists had it as wrong as communists did (I still do). I don't know if it's age or moving to America for 20 years or working as a craftsman on my own that has changed me more, but I am willing to see more good in capitalism than I once did, and understand libertarians' mistrust of government more now (though I still see it as the citizen's main bulwark against corporate power - as long as the corporations don't take it over as they are doing with Bush, and Kerry not far behind). (By the way, three cheers for Michael Moore this week, and may Disney continue to refuse to distribute his new movie on Bush, it'll get him lots of publicity - but I still fear the movie will be wild with the facts - unnecessary, there are plenty of real facts to do the job, and real facts are harder to dismiss). It's because of these kinds of changes I have gone through - not to mention being brought up as a true believer in God and Anglo-Americanism before my conversion to agnostic socialism - that I delight in Le Guin's apparent changes of mind, as revealed in her reconfiguring of Earthsea, and maybe also of Gethen, in her later stories. Yvonne wrote that Le Guin had said she suffered lack of courage in the LHOD in not going into homosexuality more: i.e. later she had more courage rather than a change of mind. And the comments made here about Heinlein are all about how he couldn't cross taboos earlier in his writing, and did so more later. It looks to me as if Heinlein didn't go through major changes of political or moral views. But I think that Le Guin has done. I don't know much about her personally. But the development of Earthsea in her writing is a development towards a feminist understanding of the world. She simply wouldn't have written the first Earthsea trilogy as she did, with its unconscious assumptions of a male dominated world, if she had had the consciousness she acquired later. Her rewriting of the history and future of Earthsea from Tehanu (the fourth Earthsea novel) on is evidence of that. She has lived through this great wave of feminism starting in the late 60s and early 70s, and it has changed her - isn't that true? I think so, and good for her for changing, and for writing it into her stories: this is something one can't imagine Tolkien doing, or C S Lewis (though marrying a Jewish woman did a lot for him) or, from what I gather, Heinlein. Did Asimov go through any comparable evolution of political/social understanding? I also don't think that Le Guin's later self would have portrayed such anti-woman assumptions in her hero in LHOD, Genly Ai, without making it much more obvious that he is a throwback to patriarchal attitudes, and without having much clearer feminist alternatives or critiques embodied somewhere in the story. She would have had to explain him more, but as it is in LHOD she presents him as someone of unexceptional character, a normal man of the Ekumen. As he was a normal man of America or Europe at that time, he needed no more explanation. He is full of bizarre stuff about effeminacy - 'effeminate intrigue' (page 13 in my 1969 Ace paperback edition), or this on p 169: "The guards ... tended to be stolid, slovenly, heavy, and to my eyes effeminate - not in the sense of delicacy, etc. but in just the opposite sense: a gross, bland fleshiness, a bovinity without point or edge. Among my fellow-prisoners I had also for the first time on Winter a certain feeling of being a man among women, or among eunuchs." Women = eunuchs??? Page 259: "His voice, when he spoke very softly as now, did have much the timbre of a woman's voice, husky and unresonant." A woman's voice is unresonant? I don't see this just as her consciously presenting an unreconstructed male for critique - though it is partly that (e.g. the place where the Gethenian wonders why Genly must not weep - page 218 - which serves as a critique). It's more that this is the way men are, and even the way women are: unresonant, bovine, or else delicate. The Le Guin of Tehanu and The Other Wind (the more feminist Earthsea novels) would have done much more to present women as rounded, non-stereotypical characters, and would have given us female voices or points of view. It's as if Le Guin herself wanted to be a man when she was younger, or didn't like being a woman (and that's fair enough, but it's not where she came to later, I think). One of my main thoughts on rereading LHOD this time (the last being well over 30 years ago) was: a feminist novel without a woman in it? Lee Anne's explanation that it is more an exploration of ideas from the berdache phenomenon is persuasive to me. I don't see it now as a feminist novel - though I did when I first read it, because any novel about gender, and by a woman at that, seemed feminist, and probably was in its effect on readers in the context of its time. It feels much more to me like a novelist yearning after the absence of sex and of gender - but that doesn't have to be feminist: 'why can't a woman... be more like a man?' as Henry Higgins says in My Fair Lady - why can't we just get rid of all this incessant sexuality and gender dualism, and all be calmly Henry Higginsishly male (which is what Gethenians seem like 3/4 of the time) or neutral; and if we have to have sex and gender for reproduction, then let's tuck it away in kemmerhouses, and not let it complicate life. The feminist (or pre-feminist) aspect of this is 'a plague on both your houses' attitude to gender: it isn't working, let's get rid of it. There is more general fed-upness evident in the book. Winter becomes the reason for the society developing slowly. The writer hates the speed of modern industrial development. The Handarra religion is one of wholeness, the opposite to "the cults of dynamic, aggressive, ecology-breaking cultures" that see humanity as elevated and divine. This is the context in which Light is described as the Left Hand of Darkness: it means holism, the opposite of dualism, a more Hindu/Buddhist/Taoist approach. Winter limits human arrogance and competition, just as their mostly sexless androgyny limits sexual competition. The Gethenians are "as obsessed with wholeness as we are with dualism". We can be both (like the berdache) instead of either/or. These are all reasonable things to be fed up with. But in Gethen you end up with an almost frozen society, with precious little joy in it. And Genly Ai can't manage to be a real berdache - he is so horrified by Estraven turning female, he can't stand women in general, and he doesn't seem to want sex, not with a man either. I think this is why she wrote the short story about Sov's first kemmer experience, and made it in the end a joyful bisexual experience - she wanted to find some positives in a world that was so full of negatives. Feminism has to have some positives about being female - it can't just be about being fed up with the present dualistic thing that nature and culture have imposed on us. Granted, one of the positives may be that men and women don't have to be so different after all... That's what I think many people like LHOD for - the idea that we could all in a better world be the same. But it seems a cold dry vision to me. Apologies for going on so long. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 18:31:11 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At 12:53 PM 5/6/2004 -0400, davebelden wrote: >I don't know much about her personally. But the development of Earthsea in >her writing is a development towards a feminist understanding of the world. >She simply wouldn't have written the first Earthsea trilogy as she did, with >its unconscious assumptions of a male dominated world, if she had had the >consciousness she acquired later. I'm not at all sure that's true. This was written for and marketed to an essentially juvenile SF/F market, which was at the time publication pretty much thought to be boys. So male protagonists are "safe," since girls tolerate reading about male heroes more easily than boys tolerate reading about girl heroines. I think this is in part due to the fact that males are seen as more "generic" human beings than females are, as you mention below. >Her rewriting of the history and future of >Earthsea from Tehanu (the fourth Earthsea novel) on is evidence of that. She >has lived through this great wave of feminism starting in the late 60s and >early 70s, and it has changed her - isn't that true? I think so, and good >for her for changing, and for writing it into her stories: this is something >one can't imagine Tolkien doing, or C S Lewis (though marrying a Jewish >woman did a lot for him) or, from what I gather, Heinlein. Without minimizing any of the accomplishments or changes of heart these people may, or may not, have been capable of, is it possible that at least some of their "evolution" may be due to the crass development of a viable market. Women and girls emerged as a readership for science fiction and fantasy where they were invisible before. Feminism may have caught up with these writers rather more than they caught up with feminism. If either Tolkien or Lewis had survived to the present day, I don't doubt but that their writings would have at least acknowledged the new milieu. > Did Asimov go >through any comparable evolution of political/social understanding? Well, he died in 1992, so he would have been around. Certainly he might have had something to say about one subject of particular interest to gay men, since he died of AIDS contracted through a transfusion during heart bypass surgery. He was very progressive, so he might well have had something to say about the status of women as well. He had a daughter, and it's been my experience that even the most unrepentant male chauvinists quite often ameliorate their views when vicariously confronted with the obstacles faced by their daughters. So Arkady Darell at 14 is a key figure in Second Foundation, but the majority of his women wouldn't be out of place if seen in a Perry Mason rerun from the Fifties. They provide home-cooked meals and the love of a good woman to the men and that's about all. So does this say much beyond the fact that he was born in 1920? Has anyone read the Forward the Foundation stories who could comment? And completely off the point, did Osama bin Laden model Al Qaeda (The Foundation) after Asimov's secretive organization of meddlers in political history? http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,779530,00.html This is not a serious question... >I also don't think that Le Guin's later self would have portrayed such >anti-woman assumptions in her hero in LHOD, Genly Ai, without making it much >more obvious that he is a throwback to patriarchal attitudes, and without >having much clearer feminist alternatives or critiques embodied somewhere in >the story. She would have had to explain him more, but as it is in LHOD she >presents him as someone of unexceptional character, a normal man of the >Ekumen. As he was a normal man of America or Europe at that time, he needed >no more explanation. He is full of bizarre stuff about effeminacy - >'effeminate intrigue' (page 13 in my 1969 Ace paperback edition), or this on >p 169: "The guards ... tended to be stolid, slovenly, heavy, and to my eyes >effeminate - not in the sense of delicacy, etc. but in just the opposite >sense: a gross, bland fleshiness, a bovinity without point or edge. Among my >fellow-prisoners I had also for the first time on Winter a certain feeling >of being a man among women, or among eunuchs." Women = eunuchs??? Page 259: >"His voice, when he spoke very softly as now, did have much the timbre of a >woman's voice, husky and unresonant." A woman's voice is unresonant? Market? It was written in 1971, before women read SF (as far as anyone knew). Also, a lot of her writing uses psychologicak themes. I've mentioned the way in which Freudian theories seem to influence her work, but Jungian ideas are also prominent in her work. The Earthsea world follows one strain explicitly, the reconciliation with death and darkness found in The Farthest Shore (which is of course that "undiscovered country"). The West has long been the land of death and rebirth in Western ideation, and a natural metaphor since the sun "dies" on that horizon. It's only when Arren (Aaron? First High Priest of Israel) faces his own mortality that the world (the self) is saved. So The Left Hand of Darkness (darkness being feminine -- anima) is Light, the Sun (Son), and masculine. Jung postulates that homosexuality (in the male) is caused by affixing one's sexuality to the inner mother, leading to a fixation on the anima, self-castration, and madness. Well, kemmer is close enough to madness, self-castration is surely fulfilled by pregnancy (the ultimate proof of one's loss of masculinity), and the Wise Woman / Goddess has been elevated to state religion for the Gethenians. But the archetypical male/female anima/animus characteristics are also stereotypes. Perhaps an exploration of anima/animus must needs *use* such stereotyping to hold true to their own archetypes. >I don't see this just as her consciously presenting an unreconstructed male >for critique - though it is partly that (e.g. the place where the Gethenian >wonders why Genly must not weep - page 218 - which serves as a critique). >It's more that this is the way men are, and even the way women are: >unresonant, bovine, or else delicate. The Le Guin of Tehanu and The Other >Wind (the more feminist Earthsea novels) would have done much more to >present women as rounded, non-stereotypical characters, and would have given >us female voices or points of view. It's as if Le Guin herself wanted to be >a man when she was younger, or didn't like being a woman (and that's fair >enough, but it's not where she came to later, I think). I don't think this is a fair criticism. It's a cheap shot to begin with, and akin to the "lesbian" slur. Women are singularly targeted as either "mannish" or "dykeish" when they don't "measure up." Call me politically correct, but it's a comment I feel uncomfortable with when leveled on such scanty evidence. And if Ursula Le Guin, among the most touchy-feely of SF writers, "wants to be a man," what does that make Leigh Brackett? Arnold Schwarzenegger in drag? When a man characterizes men in a negative way, is he therefore wishing that he were a woman? Or is he merely Truman Capote? >These are all reasonable things to be fed up with. But in Gethen you end up >with an almost frozen society, with precious little joy in it. And Genly Ai >can't manage to be a real berdache - he is so horrified by Estraven turning >female, he can't stand women in general, and he doesn't seem to want sex, >not with a man either. I think this is why she wrote the short story about >Sov's first kemmer experience, and made it in the end a joyful bisexual >experience - she wanted to find some positives in a world that was so full >of negatives. The original story was by no means completely filled with negatives, or even of fun. Genly Ai is used as an observer of a completely alien culture. Whether one views that culture as being one of "faggoty" berdaches or of women, Genly Ai is in many ways a dullard, despite his status as an observer, and completely at a loss to understand the complex nuances of the Gethenians' relationships to one another. Might this be a sly commentary by a woman on the general obtuseness of men? What does one make of a spy who looks but does not see? Is he a serious envoy or an elaborated figure of derision? I'm reminded, in the concept of shifgrethor, of Láadan, the woman's language invented by Suzette Haden Elgin, which supposedly encompasses concepts foreign to men, including a very rich vocabulary of relationships and differing viewpoints about as far from English as English is from Tarzan's monosyllabic utterance, "You. Jane." The Gethenians see relationships as being much more than about sex. so here Genly Ai's possible view of them as "queer" breaks down. Genly Ai is himself conflicted. At one moment he sees them as men, and then womanish, as actors or then acted upon. Is this reality? Or is it Genly Ai's preconceptions getting in the way of a reality that might be seen as more feminine? >Feminism has to have some positives about being female - I can't believe you said this. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 18:41:21 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At 12:53 PM 5/6/2004 -0400, davebelden wrote: >"His voice, when he spoke very softly as now, did have much the timbre of a >woman's voice, husky and unresonant." A woman's voice is unresonant? At the time of writing, women were rare in radio because their voices didn't have that certain air of authority and "resonance" that advertisers imagined their audience preferred. One still finds that radio and television announcers tend to hover around the lower registers appropriate to their sex. So, if Genly Ai is perceiving the speaker as "male," that voice wouldn't be what he expected. If he perceives the speaker as female, then the same voice is also uncharacteristic, "husky." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 May 2004 21:00:48 -0500 From: "Michael J. Lowrey" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Quoting Lee Anne Phillips : > >Did Asimov go through any comparable evolution of political/social > >understanding? > > Well, he died in 1992, so he would have been around. > Certainly he might have had something to say about > one subject of particular interest to gay men, since > he died of AIDS contracted through a transfusion during > heart bypass surgery. He was very progressive, so > he might well have had something to say about the > status of women as well. He had a daughter, and it's > been my experience that even the most unrepentant > male chauvinists quite often ameliorate their views > when vicariously confronted with the obstacles faced > by their daughters. Even after the birth of his daughter, he was a notorious serial groper. A number of Northeastern SF fans have recounted unpleasant anecdotes about what Asimov considered permissible in the way of behaviors Wisconsin laws characterize as second-and third-degree sexual assaults, persisting long after most of the rest of society had begun to clean up its act. > Also, a lot of her writing uses psychologicak > themes. I've mentioned the way in which Freudian > theories seem to influence her work, but Jungian > ideas are also prominent in her work. > > The Earthsea world follows one strain explicitly, > the reconciliation with death and darkness > found in The Farthest Shore (which is of course > that "undiscovered country"). The West has > long been the land of death and rebirth in > Western ideation, and a natural metaphor > since the sun "dies" on that horizon. It's only > when Arren (Aaron? First High Priest of Israel) > faces his own mortality that the world (the self) > is saved. > > So The Left Hand of Darkness (darkness being > feminine -- anima) is Light, the Sun (Son), and > masculine. Jung postulates that homosexuality > (in the male) is caused by affixing one's sexuality > to the inner mother, leading to a fixation on the > anima, self-castration, and madness. Well, kemmer > is close enough to madness, self-castration is > surely fulfilled by pregnancy (the ultimate proof > of one's loss of masculinity), and the Wise > Woman / Goddess has been elevated to state > religion for the Gethenians. > > But the archetypical male/female anima/animus > characteristics are also stereotypes. Perhaps > an exploration of anima/animus must needs > *use* such stereotyping to hold true to their > own archetypes. LeGuin is a self-proclaimed Taoist. No need to go to Jung to seek after Yin and Yang here! -- Mike Lowrey ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 12:57:15 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU > >She simply wouldn't have written the first Earthsea trilogy as she did, with > >its unconscious assumptions of a male dominated world, if she had had the > >consciousness she acquired later. > > I'm not at all sure that's true. This was written for > and marketed to an essentially juvenile SF/F market, > which was at the time publication pretty much > thought to be boys. >.... > Without minimizing any of the accomplishments > or changes of heart these people may, or may not, > have been capable of, is it possible that at least > some of their "evolution" may be due to the crass > development of a viable market. Women and girls > emerged as a readership for science fiction and > fantasy where they were invisible before. Feminism > may have caught up with these writers rather more > than they caught up with feminism. If either Tolkien > or Lewis had survived to the present day, I don't > doubt but that their writings would have at least > acknowledged the new milieu. That's very interesting: it puts the commercial considerations very high in these writers' minds. Maybe that's correct - after all they were great commercial successes. But I really can't imagine Tolkien's imagination being quite so at the command of commercial considerations: if he had lived longer and his publisher had said we really need a story about a girl hobbit to appeal to the new market for girls, could he have done it? It's a nice idea. Maybe he could. I would hate to be a cynic on that topic. Would it have worked, could he have written convincing female characterizations? > >It's as if Le Guin herself wanted to be > >a man when she was younger, or didn't like being a woman (and that's fair > >enough, but it's not where she came to later, I think). > > I don't think this is a fair criticism. It's > a cheap shot to begin with, and akin to > the "lesbian" slur. Women are singularly > targeted as either "mannish" or "dykeish" > when they don't "measure up." Call me > politically correct, but it's a comment > I feel uncomfortable with when leveled > on such scanty evidence. I guess it does look like a cheap shot, and I shouldn't have made it like that, certainly not in a way that made you think I was making a generalization about women. I am just feeling after how to describe this undercurrent in her work, which I think was stronger in her earlier work. If I say she looks like she doesn't want to be in a society that is as competitive, industrial, fast changing and destructive of the environment as ours, that doesn't count as a cheap shot, does it? For a start it's a common feeling, and a 'politically correct' one. Maybe making any speculation about a writer's psychology from her written work is unacceptable, but I think we all like to do it. So then there's this similar feeling in much of her work, which I find I resonate with in some ways myself, which is not wanting all this gender business, not wanting to be a gendered person perhaps. Maybe it doesn't come out of her own deep feelings, maybe she has just seen it in others, but I am insensitive enough to speculate that it's felt deeply in some way or other by her. I am currently reading her collection 'The Birthday of the World' (2002), and find in a couple of stories about different worlds this theme again. E.g. "There is an enviable simplicity to many acts in a society which has, in all its daily life, only one gender." (from the Matter of Seggri, where for genetic engineering reasons women vastly outnumber men, who are segregated away). But the story is about ending that segregation, which is clearly taken as a positive outcome, (despite the loss of the 'enviable simplicity' of having a single gender). There is also this from 'Unchosen Love', about a fully bisexual society in which everyone is born as a Morning or an Evening person, and incest is sex between Morning and Evening people: "When I explained our concept of incest to a fellow student on Hain, she said, shocked, "But that means you can't have sex with half the population!" And I in turn said, shocked, "Do you WANT sex with half the population?"" (want is in italics in the text). This story isn't rejecting gender or sex - it's about how to have love as well as great sex in a complicatedly gendered society - which I find more typical of the later Le Guin in finding the positives about sex and gender. This wariness about having gender at all is a theme that is strong in Le Guin, and one that seems to dominate LHOD, while it is used as a foil in these later stories for writing about why gender and sex are to be welcomed after all. The theme is probably one that resonates for a lot of people, and it doesn't seem to me that negative a thing to say about someone, that they might not want to be gendered or not to have the gender they were born with: it shows they have imagination. I am someone who has characterized men in a negative way in my fiction and have indeed at times wished not to be a man, have dreamed of being a woman, but never so strongly as to imagine trying to be one. I find it much more satisfying myself to try to discover and come to terms with what I am already (not that I have anything against those who want to change gender or play with more radically than I do). I feel that Le Guin early on seemed to write with real feeling about a dislike of gender and maybe even of sex itself, and a separate but maybe related issue is that in her earlier books she seems to have more affinity for men than women: which I find hard to imagine is only because of the requirements of the market. I don't think imaginations of great writers are quite that market-determined. And in her later stories and books, she makes a big point of writing more positively about sex and gender, and she writes about women's strengths, and discovers women's history (in Earthsea) where it was hidden before - just as we are doing in the real world. I can't help speculating that this is because of a growing feminist awareness in her herself, as well as an embracing of sexuality itself. Are these cheap shots? So shoot me - I could say similar things of myself. For me, these are reasons I like Le Guin. Maybe it's all projection. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 13:37:19 -0400 From: Charlotte Babb Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin (davebelden) To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Dave, I enjoyed your reply very much. In a society such as ours where there are many inequities between any two labeled groups, I think it is important for SF authors to take on those issues. Many women do at times wish they were at least androgynous rather than female, as they reject some of the stereotypes for women. It bothers me that my students will use the word "female" instead of saying "women" as if somehow "woman" is an unpleasant word...i.e., they say "men" and "females." As for writing with the "unconscious assumption of a male dominated world" consider what Le Guin (and I and you) grew up with. A change of consciousness, even if it is due to a change in market demographics, must be reflected in the writer's work. Charlotte Babb Need to lighten up your day? Order The Thing in the Tub at http://mystictoad.com Coming Soon: Port Nowhere: Adventure at the Edge of the Galaxy Dave wrote: This wariness about having gender at all is a theme that is strong in Le Guin, and one that seems to dominate LHOD, while it is used as a foil in these later stories for writing about why gender and sex are to be welcomed after all. The theme is probably one that resonates for a lot of people, and it doesn't seem to me that negative a thing to say about someone, that they might not want to be gendered or not to have the gender they were born with: it shows they have imagination. I am someone who has characterized men in a negative way in my fiction and have indeed at times wished not to be a man, have dreamed of being a woman, but never so strongly as to imagine trying to be one. I find it much more satisfying myself to try to discover and come to terms with what I am already (not that I have anything against those who want to change gender or play with more radically than I do). I feel that Le Guin early on seemed to write with real feeling about a dislike of gender and maybe even of sex itself, and a separate but maybe related issue is that in her earlier books she seems to have more affinity for men than women: which I find hard to imagine is only because of the requirements of the market. I don't think imaginations of great writers are quite that market-determined. And in her later stories and books, she makes a big point of writing more positively about sex and gender, and she writes about women's strengths, and discovers women's history (in Earthsea) where it was hidden before - just as we are doing in the real world. I can't help speculating that this is because of a growing feminist awareness in her herself, as well as an embracing of sexuality itself. Are these cheap shots? So shoot me - I could say similar things of myself. For me, these are reasons I like Le Guin. Maybe it's all projection. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 20:04:46 -0500 From: Pamela Taylor Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Hi all, I've been meaning to jump into this discussion for a long time. I really like the LHOD, I've actually read it more than once (which puts it in rare company). And I, also, have had great success in recommending it to people who "don't read sf." I do think it falls down in some places -- like the long ski across the north pole is rather unlikely, and the suicide/death of Theron (sp? My copy seems to have disappeared!) seemed such a betrayal of the character and the easy way out, so LeGuin doesn't have to deal with his/her relationship with Genly. And I didn't think that Genly was at all justified in calling down the ship. Anyway, I read an interview with LeGuin some time ago in which she talked about the difficulty she had coming up with language to convey the neutral gender -- she wasn't satisfied with using a native word to denote he-she, and there isn't any english word to denote that genderless state of being in English, so she sort of felt she had to settle for he (she being definately gendered) but at the same time feeling very much that using "he" made the book too masculine. I don't know if anyone has seen the sci-fi channel movie of the book, but the in the interview she said she had come up with a way to deal with it and was very pleased with the results. I'd be interested to hear if others agree with her assessment, and to know how she solved her dilemna. I do think she makes valid points about our discomfort with people who we cannot easily pigeonhole into genders. Our pigeonholes may have become more broad, but they still remain, and our discomfort with people who are androgynous still remains. I don't think Genly is necessarily homophobic, I got a fairly strong feeling that if the society had been mostly homosexual (which it wasn't, men generally mated with women, in fact, a nuetral naturally became the opposite of the person it was kemmerring with, they just didn't stay men and women) he would have dealt with it more easily. It was the ambiguity that bothered him. LeGuin might have served her purpose better if instead of finding the "womannish" qualities of his associates negative, Genly found them merely surprising or odd, but at least she was trying. I have to admit that I kind of relate to this book like I do to the movie Look Who's Coming to Dinner -- it's dated. > in her earlier books she seems to have more affinity for men than women: > which I find hard to imagine is only because of the requirements of the > market. I just wanted to add that I think a lot of women, particularly intellectual women, have a great affinity for men and "male conversation," and especially intellectual women from earlier generations as that's who they had to associate with whether they had an affinity or not. I know I do. My closest friends are men and always have been, not because I despise women or wish I were a man, but because that is who I relate to best. (which makes me totally confused as to why I was so darned determined that I wanted daughters!) Anyway, I would not be at all surprised if this kind of affinity comes to play in LeGuin's earlier works. I also want to add, that despite that affinity, one can feel pretty harsh about a lot of men and male goings on. Which also comes through in her books. The political power plays carried out by the king and the nobility and the political manuevering and social manipulation of the council was clearly a negative "male" set of behaviors. So affinity doesn't necessarily mean blind acceptance either. Pamela ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 18:28:08 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Heinlein and back to Le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At 08:04 PM 5/8/2004 -0500, Pamela Taylor wrote: >I do think it falls down in some places -- like the long ski across the >north pole is rather unlikely I think it may have been modeled after a similar trip, Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition, which used dogs as well as skis, and was very successful although the trip "across the pole" was folded back on iteself. Scott thought that a ski trip was unlikely as well, but tragically failed. The Norwegians grew up on skis, and had every confidence in their ability to perform the feat. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 14:24:03 +0100 From: Alexis Lothian Subject: [*FSFFU*] The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU *Delurks and is racked with first-time-posting nerves* Um, hi. Is it too late to join in talking about The Left Hand of Darkness? I've been following the discussion of LHD with reference to homosexuality with great interest. I first came across Gethen in "Coming of Age in Karhide" (the first publication, in Greg Bear's anthology _New Legends_ in I think 1996) and fell in love with it; the kemmerhouse seemed like an ideal queer/bisexual utopia. Now I think about it (and I've read the story many times more since the first; I am rather obsessive about Le Guin and have probably read her entire opus three or four times through) I think it is very easy to read Sov as a young man. 'Unmarked' gender still means masculinity even when you are careful about pronouns, apparently. I read LHD for the first time not that long after reading "Coming of Age", and was surprised and disappointed by Genly Ai and the way he sees and codes Gethenian behaviour. Like other people who have commented, I found all the remarks Ai makes about women to be extremely jarring. I have always considered his attitude and the way it is seen as 'normal' to be entirely due to the time the book was written (I'm a third waver, feminist born and raised, myself, and can't make any judgment about men's general attitude in 1969). I like the idea that Le Guin was actually using his incompetence to quietly say something about men's tendency not to pick up on subtle communications. I think there are strong aspects of 'queer panic' on both sides of the intercultural meeting in the novel, that of Genly Ai and that of the Gethenians themselves. If Ai's unfortunate comments about the femininity of the Gethenians in somer (non-sexual) state show his fear of men's 'womanly' or 'faggoty' behaviour, and I think they do, he himself is negatively coded as queer in their terms. By which I mean that the Gethenian somer/kemmer gender system has its own queers in the 'perverts' or 'halfdeads'. Their deviance is biological rather than behavioural ("Coming of Age in Karhide" shows us that there is no real issue of sexual preference in the kemmerhouse) but it's very hard not to see the way they are treated, their marginalisation in Gethenian society, as analogous with the historical treatment of gay people here. Or possibly transfolk or intersexed people would be a better analogy? Anyway, the best the 'halfdeads' can hope for is a place as keeper of a kemmerhouse, or maybe ritiualised frustration as part of a Foreteller group in a Handdara Fastness. Or they can be 'cured' with drugs. King Argaven's horrified reaction to the pictures Ai shows him of the peoples of the Ekumen, from what I can remember (don't have my copy of the book handy) shows his prejudice against the idea of constant kemmer, which presumably comes from his culture's entrenched attitude to 'halfdeads'. I wonder if the treatment of Gethenians in permanent kemmer will change as the world enters more fully into the Ekumen? Maybe lots of them will go to school on Hain, as the repressed men do in "The Matter of Seggri". >wariness about having gender at all is a theme that is strong in Le >Guin, and one that seems to dominate LHOD, while it is used as a foil in >these later stories for writing about why gender and sex are to be welcomed >after all. I think that gender is seen as being a lot more irrefutable in Le Guin's earlier works than it is in the later stories. In LHD, even though the novel is all about a world without gender, in a two-sexed society gender is seen as being an inevitable and deeply important part of anyone's identity: in one of the First Observers' reports it is stated (paraphrasing) that "every man wants his virility regarded, every woman wants her femininity appreciated" and that everything we (single-sexed individuals from a bi-gendered culture) do is an aspect of our masculinity or femininity. The discussion Ai has with Estraven about dualism is based on that premise as well (though Estraven does say that Gethenians are dualists too: "as long as there is _myself_ and _the other_" and Ai responds sagely that "yes, it goes deeper than sex after all..." - I tend to relate this exchange to Le Guin's Taoism). In the later stories, especially the ones set on O, I think Le Guin starts to separate biological sex from cultural gender and to present the latter system as actually quite arbitrary. I see the moieties on O as analogous to gender or sex: an arbitrary distinction that nevertheless controls your life. There are no specific qualities that appear to be associated with Evening or Morning people, and yet the division is universal and utterly accepted. It's not seen as oppressive, despite the sexual taboo - I don't know, is Le Guin pointing out the arbitrariness of the distinctions we make? Is she suggesting that distinctions, dualities or whatever are ok, acceptable and maybe unavoidable as long as they are recognised as arbitrary and one side is not elevated above the other? I'm thinking of race as well as gender now, and I'm reminded of _Four Ways to Forgiveness_ - where the phrase "the construction of gender" is actually used by Havzhiva when he's getting involved with the feminist movement on Yeowe. The problems of binary cultural distinctions are very strongly critiqued there, as both race and gender are shown to be contingent and destructive. Sorry, I seem to have written an enormous amount, very little of which is even about The Left Hand of Darkness. I got carried away. This tends to happen when I get onto the subject of Le Guin. -- Alexis Lothian (student in the University of Sussex's English Literature - Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change MA programme, feminist, Ursula K. Le Guin obsessive) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 14:14:51 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Alexis, As no one else seems to have responded and you wrote you were nervous about delurking, may I just say I for one found this was very interesting and well expressed, and helpful to me personally in understanding the later stories better. I was glad to know that you "think it is very easy to read Sov as a young man," as I did. It had not occurred to me that Le Guin uses the moieties in O as a way to subtly suggest that our own gender categories are arbitrary - that was interesting to me. I am just a writer living in the sticks who is not very au fait with current feminist and gender currents, but it seems to me there are strong strands today (in the more literary, arts worlds??) arguing that gender is just a social construct, while I read stuff in science mags and evolution books about how biologically different male and female are (which doesn't rule out various intermediate possibilities, but does rule out gender being entirely socially constructed). If Le Guin changes her stories as she becomes convinced of new ideas from the changing culture - has she incorporated any of the newly understood biological male/female differences in her work, or is she staying away from all that? The discussion goes on all month by the way, so it's not too late, and even posts after the month is over are worth making: people often don't get time to read the book in time for the beginning of the month and there is sometimes a rush of posts at the end. Also I am wondering if the bar isn't being perceived as a bit too high, if someone who has read all of Le Guin 3 or 4 times feels nervous about saying their say. I think reading it all twice should be enough. ;-) I haven't come anywhere near reading all her stuff once, even though I think she's a major influence on my own writing. For me one of the best aspects of feminism was always the effort to get beyond too competitive an atmosphere, and enable everyone to have their say more easily, from which even (some) men can benefit. I steered clear of the academic world for the most part, partly because it sounds overly competitive - I hope that isn't the case for scholars of feminist lit but maybe it's inevitable. Dave ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 14:44:21 -0500 From: "Michael J. Lowrey" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Quoting davebelden : > but it seems to me there are strong strands > today (in the more literary, arts worlds??) arguing that gender is just a > social construct, while I read stuff in science mags and evolution books > about how biologically different male and female are (which doesn't rule out > various intermediate possibilities, but does rule out gender being entirely > socially constructed). If Le Guin changes her stories as she becomes > convinced of new ideas from the changing culture - has she incorporated any > of the newly understood biological male/female differences in her work, or > is she staying away from all that? I think one thing the social scientists are discovering is that GENDER is a social construct, and *not* the same as biological sex. {{Time to re-read Tiptree winner "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation" by Raphael Carter}} This difference between gender and biosex is one reason why such matters as berdaches and eunuchs are so fascinating to social scientists nowadays, whereas in past years they were treated either as freaks or as embarassing perversions. There is also a non-zero portion of humans who are to some extent biologically intersexual. -- Mike Lowrey started out to be an anthropologist ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 15:52:19 -0600 From: PAT MATHEWS Subject: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At one point Genly Ai mentions that comfort is not important unless one is "an old woman or a cat." Well, LeGuin, who is of my generation, now knows what it's like to have an old woman's body and why we like, even need, our comfort. I have another memory which, on re-read, is not in Left Hand at all. Someone says to another "Grow up! Are you an old woman, to think the world owes you a living?" I wonder about that quote. Does the author (whoever it was) mean women should earn their livings until we drop dead? Is that also true of men? How is it they can accept retirement as something well earned, but with us, it's (sneer) "you think the world owes you a living?" Well, yes. We've paid our dues - and our Social Security and Medicare taxes. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 22:59:51 +0100 From: Alexis Lothian Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Quoting PAT MATHEWS : > I have another memory which, on re-read, is not in Left Hand at all. > Someone says to another "Grow up! Are you an old woman, to think the world > owes you a living?" I wonder about that quote. Does the author (whoever it > was) mean women should earn their livings until we drop dead? Is that > also true of men? How is it they can accept retirement as something well > earned, but with us, it's (sneer) "you think the world owes you a living?" > Well, yes. We've paid our dues - and our Social Security and Medicare taxes. I remember a similar quote from somewhere too, I think maybe in Le Guin. It sounds to me as if the author is saying that the world *does* owe old women a living - for exactly the reasons you have mentioned. The point being that once you have lived to be an old women you deserve a reward, but everyone else should just get their head down and stop complaining? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 16:08:00 -0600 From: PAT MATHEWS Subject: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU As a child of the Cold War, I used to find something very Russian about the Orgota. On re-read, I still do. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 16:10:09 -0600 From: PAT MATHEWS Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU >From: Alexis Lothian > >I remember a similar quote from somewhere too, I think maybe in Le >Guin. It sounds to me as if the author is saying that the world *does* >owe old women a living - for exactly the reasons you have mentioned. >The point being that once you have lived to be an old women you >deserve a reward, but everyone else should just get their head down >and stop complaining? Well, as a young woman, I did, and lived by that ethic well into late middle age. At a certain point something snapped and I accepted myself as old, in want of comfort, and able to accept living on an income without working. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 23:14:07 +0100 From: Alexis Lothian Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Quoting PAT MATHEWS : > From Alexis Lothian : > >I remember a similar quote from somewhere too, I think maybe in Le > >Guin. It sounds to me as if the author is saying that the world *does* > >owe old women a living - for exactly the reasons you have mentioned. > >The point being that once you have lived to be an old women you > >deserve a reward, but everyone else should just get their head down > >and stop complaining? > > Well, as a young woman, I did, and lvied by that ethic well into late > middle age. At a certain point something snapped and I accepted myself as > old, in want of comfort, and able to accept living on an income without > working. I agree completely with the 'old women/people are owed a living by the world' ethic - and with its corollary that the young should work hard for theirs (as I try to do). Sorry if that didn't come across. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 21:51:33 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Maybe you could read it another way, that it's only old women that the world does owe a living to? > I have another memory which, on re-read, is not in Left Hand at all. Someone > says to another "Grow up! Are you an old woman, to think the world owes you > a living?" I wonder about that quote. Does the author (whoever it was) mean > women should earn their livings until we drop dead? Is that also true of > men? How is it they can accept retirement as something well earned, but with > us, it's (sneer) "you think the world owes you a living?" Well, yes. We've > paid our dues - and our Social Security and Medicare taxes. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 12:10:03 +1000 From: Elizabeth Wulff Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU I think one of the things Le Guin does in LHOD is destabilise the point of 'normativity' that has been assumed (sorry if this has been said before - I can't remember and I'm sure it has?!). In terms of'gender' and 'sex' much feminist philosophical researchpoints out that 'sex' is just as much culturally constucted as 'gender'(Linda Nicholson 2000)- neither meanings arefixed and change as social practices and beliefs change - and as new research is made available - as others have pointed out. Judith Butler quotes Esther Newton: "At its most complex, [drag] is a double inversion that says, 'appearance is an illusion'. Drag says [Newton's curious personification] 'my "outside" appearance is feminine, but my essence "inside" [the body] is masculine.' At the same time it symbolizes the opposite inversion; 'my appearance "outside" [my body, my gender] is masculine but my essence "inside" [myself] is feminine (in Mother Camp 1972p103) (from Gender Trouble 1990). In my mind LHOD is gender parody. I think part of what Le Guin is saying is that it's not as important as our (Western) society makes out. Reference Alexis's comment on the King's reaction to the photo's Ai shows him of his kind. The concentration of being 'in kemmer' or singularly sexed all of the time and relating that to the most important state of being 'embodied' is problematic (distasteful to the King).In our society how and what people do with their bodies (physically, sexually) is very important.And, as Pamela mentioned, ambiguity is not okay. Always defined against that 'norm'. The Gethenians seem to me to be human (or humanoid, I suppose) all of the time with commonalities and differences of personality that don't relate to'kemmer' (or sex - ie. it's almost unknown) and then when in kemmer it doesn't matter which (sex) they are but the combination of two bodies which makesa whole (and I don't necessarily mean a heterosexual 'whole').A isolated body is not social - bodiesexist in social relations with other bodies (Moira Gatens, Genevieve Lloyd 1999). They are affected and affecting. How can you value one sex over another when kemmer can't be fixed?? That to me is a wonderful critique of how (socially valued) sex is designated a constructed gender role that has power over 'the other'. I personally think that society has attempted to 'hard-wire' sexual preference and identity (with the help of the Christain Right and a long history emphasising procreation) and I don't think preference, identity or desire can be any more fixed than anything else. Of course, my evidence for this is philosophical and not scientific. I'm not denying that one is born with a specific sex (well most of the time and which is largely fixed) but I am suggesting that by the time that person thinks and expresses that person is already culturally conditioned about what that 'sex/gender' means and what that sex/gender can and can't 'do' or 'be'. Regardless of its flaws (as others have pointed out already and rightly so) isn't LHOD trying to move past those very boundaries?! Problematic issues on many levels. In our society 'bodies' can't escape racial, ethnic, class identities in similar ways.Modern theoretical patterns have been obsessed with compartmentalising ways of being a 'body' that can't be easily separated one from the other orthe perspective from which they are constructed. And that perspective has long been proved to benefit a few rather than many (as others have mentioned). Gone on way too long, and way not enough LHOD, sorry folks, Elizabeth (stuck in feminist philosophical theories of the body) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 22:44:27 -0500 From: Pamela Taylor Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] The Left Hand of Darkness To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU I like being girly (pass the skirts and tea cakes, please), but I also like being decidedly ungirly -- strong, competitive, aggressive, outspoken, and intellectual. And I'm decidedly hetero. I got the strong woman part from my mom who was always a strong woman. I will never forget the day she sledgehammered down a wall that ran through the middle of our dining room. She was an athlete and very competitive. Of course, nuture isn't everything -- no doubt I inherited a lot of the same tendency only to have them reinforced by her example. What a wonderful example to have had!! Saddest part -- she always wished she were a man, whereas I shudder to think of the notion. (Sorry, guys.) Which brings me back to books -- it seems to me so many of the scifi heroines don't embrace their feminine side any better than my mom does. I would love to read books that embrace women as complete people with "feminine" and "masculine" traits mixed. I'm sure there are plenty of books like this, but I haven't found many. Also, I wonder how LHOD would read if the neutrals were more like us "strong women" who exhibit those traditionally masculine traits along with feminine traits, rather than like "girly men." Although grown up tomboys are often given the bitch label, I feel like there is a lot less hostility (in America) to them than to feminine men. Might LeGuin have been more successful writing these characters as strong women than as effeminate men? Would that have changed Genly's perception (I bet it would!). I imagine the solution to violence lies in appreciating men who display "feminine" characteristics as much as we value women who display "masculine" characteristics. Pamela ----- Original Messages ----- Mary Kay wrote: >Another important thing to remember is that the differences overlap. Part >of the gender construct is to say that men have y-trait and women have >x-trait, when in fact, for just about any non-sex-primary trait, you can >usually find a substantial minority of the other sex that has that trait. >But within traditional gender constructs, these minorities are marginalized >because traditional gender categories are defined with clear boundaries >between male and female. Pat Mathews replied: >Tell me about it! As an analytical type female and an introvert at that, I'm >so far off the norm I found the female culture that suited me best, outside >of science fiction fans, was flannel-shirt lesbians. And I'm straight as >far as I know. > >Pat Sue Lange replied: >Pat, > >I think you are part of a group of people unidentified, unlabeled >anywhere: grown-up tom boys that are not gay. No one writes about >this group or even talks about it. But think of all that midwest >softball. I remember women that played with impeccable form and had >their five kids and husband out in the bleachers. They were not gay >women living in denial. Women that had not found themselves yet. They >were just tough as nails and hetero. And as far as I could tell well >adjusted. > >What about farm girls? When I was young, farm girls were physical and >strong and always into guys. What happened to them when they grew up? > >I only ask because I question my ownself all the time. I wonder if >I'm in denial about being gay, because I really don't want to be a >sissy girl. I want to be tough. But I don't want to have sex with >women. Pat Mathews replied: > Right. I didn't want to be girly, except to have the ability to pass myself > off as a 'normal' female, but I have (to the best of my knowledge) no sexual > interest in women whatsoever. I'd probably have made a good tweedy academic > of the turn of the century. > > Pat ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 10:30:02 +0200 From: Crystal Warren Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib and back to le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU Thanks for this comment. As someone who is not an American I have been hesitant to enter the debate about Abu Ghraib. I have also just got back to my computer after a bad bug - me, not the machine, so have been catching up on all the debate. Now, prompted by Laura, I can perhaps get back to Le Guin. The whole discussion going on about the military etc going on, got me thinking about Genly Ai's first experience in Orgota when he is locked in a cellar with other paperless civilians. He himself notes later that he had been distracted by the surface of Orgota and had forgotten the night in the cellar, the dark side of the culture he was visiting. We get the impression that Karhyde was above such things, but one also wonders about that, how much did Ai (and hence the reader) not see. Certainly the terms of Estraven's banishment are designed to be a death sentence. Yet in both countries, ordinary people helped each other. Perhaps a useful reminder from le Guin (and as pertinent now as in the 1960's) that all forms of government have a dark side. It is dangerous to assume that "our" soldiers/police/secret service/politicians/ whatever would never do that, that "we" are always the "good guys". This tendency does come through in The Left Hand of Darkness too. Genly Ai believes in the Ecumen, and is completely convinced that joining them is the only right course for Gethen. What is refreshing is the willingness to wait until the planet is ready to freely join. One wonders how long it took them to get to this point of co-operative outreach. I can imagine earlier expeditions to new planets arriving in force and dragging the inhabitants into the system "for their own good" But perhaps I am just cynical from reading - and living through - too much history:( There is also the embarrassment at the thought of Gethenians being an experiment, and having to face the fact that perhaps the Hainish ancestors were not always "the good guys". Crystal ----- Original Message ----- From: "davebelden" To: Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 7:57 PM Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib > Here's an interesting blog that suggests that it is combat that can teach > compassion, even when basic training and national propoaganda has diminished > it: so one problem at Abu Ghraib was not having it run by combat veterans > who have learned we are all human beings: > > http://weblogs.csmonitor.com/my_american_experience/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 08:09:05 -0500 From: Pamela Taylor Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib and back to le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU > Genly Ai believes in the Ecumen, and is completely convinced that joining > them is the only right course for Gethen. What is refreshing is the > willingness to wait until the planet is ready to freely join. But did they really make a concrete decision to join in? I didn't get that impression. Every time I've read the book it struck me that Genly really rushed the process and there wasn't any consensus. Maybe, it's that Le Guin rushed over the process as a way to shorten a fairly long book, so we don't see Karhyde wanting to join the ecumen. To me it seemed like they say, ok, bring down the ship if you must, which is quite different than we want to join your society. Pamela ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 11:49:56 -0400 From: davebelden Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib and back to le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU > This tendency does come through in The Left Hand of Darkness too. Genly Ai > believes in the Ecumen, and is completely convinced that joining them is the > only right course for Gethen. What is refreshing is the willingness to wait > until the planet is ready to freely join. One wonders how long it took them > to get to this point of co-operative outreach. I can imagine earlier > expeditions to new planets arriving in force and dragging the inhabitants > into the system "for their own good" But perhaps I am just cynical from > reading - and living through - too much history: In two recent columns in the NYTimes David Brooks, a conservative, writes about how wonderfully beneficent he thinks the US is, and how noble was it's war in Iraq, how high minded in its intentions, and yet how chastened he now feels: we, the good guys, didn't realize that just by coming in with such great power we would emasculate (he doesn't use that word, nor 'disempower', but means something like that) the Iraqis. One column argued that for the Iraqis to win, they now have to defeat the US. Your comment about the Ekumen made me think of this. First steps for current war hawks towards the Ekumen (give them a few more thousand years...)?? A good number of them are now talking about the value of a traditional conservatism that doesn't try and change things so drastically. Recall all the comments about the neo-Conservatives being ex-Trotskyites and former revolutionaries who found a new way to create revolutions - with the most powerful army in the world? I think a lot of Western readers of Le Guin might feel some kind of identification with the Ekumen - this is what we hope our society will become, we can perhaps fairly easily (? in our dreams) imagine that over thousands of years the Ekumen might have developed out of our culture. It's a comforting trope (is that the right word?) or fantasy. But how does the Ekumen get reformed itself? I haven't read all of Le Guin, so I don't know how this spectacularly wise and wonderful civilization, or alliance, keeps itself spectacularly wise and wonderful when it has representatives like Genly Ai who are so obviously as human as the rest of us. Isn't the Ekumen simply too unbelievable? Much as I love the idea of it. It doesn't really matter, I guess, it's just a useful device that enables someone we can identify with go into some new and weird planet, so we can see it through our own eyes. But I would expect the later Le Guin to have made more references to corruption within the Ekumen and people struggling with same - maybe some representatives of the Ekumen even abuse those less powerful than themselves now and again and have to be called to account? Has she done this? Dave ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 11:48:57 -0700 From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib and back to le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU In terms of Iraq & Abu Ghraib, another relevant Le Guin novel is THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST. It's no coincidence that it's relevant: TWFWIF was written very much about the US' war in VietNam. Abu Ghraib, specifically, has also very much been reminded of Susan Matthews' PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE -- see http://www.sff.net/people/susan.scribens/books-poc.htm The protagonist has been posted at a penal colony in which there are horrific abuses going on. Regarding colonialism, imperialism, and struggle generally, I'm thinking about THE GOULEP by Stella Atrium -- a really lovely book which was published by a small press and hardly noticed by anyone. I highly recommend it, though. Crystal Warren wrote: >> This tendency does come through in The Left Hand of Darkness too. Genly Ai >> believes in the Ecumen, and is completely convinced that joining them is the >> only right course for Gethen. What is refreshing is the willingness to wait >> until the planet is ready to freely join. One wonders how long it took them >> to get to this point of co-operative outreach. I can imagine earlier >> expeditions to new planets arriving in force and dragging the inhabitants >> into the system "for their own good" But perhaps I am just cynical from >> reading - and living through - too much history: ... Dave Belden wrote: >I think a lot of Western readers of Le Guin might feel some kind of >identification with the Ekumen - this is what we hope our society will >become, we can perhaps fairly easily (? in our dreams) imagine that over >thousands of years the Ekumen might have developed out of our culture. It's >a comforting trope (is that the right word?) or fantasy. But how does the >Ekumen get reformed itself? I haven't read all of Le Guin, so I don't know >how this spectacularly wise and wonderful civilization, or alliance, keeps >itself spectacularly wise and wonderful when it has representatives like >Genly Ai who are so obviously as human as the rest of us. Isn't the Ekumen >simply too unbelievable? Much as I love the idea of it. It doesn't really >matter, I guess, it's just a useful device that enables someone we can >identify with go into some new and weird planet, so we can see it through >our own eyes. But I would expect the later Le Guin to have made more >references to corruption within the Ekumen and people struggling with same - >maybe some representatives of the Ekumen even abuse those less powerful than >themselves now and again and have to be called to account? Has she done >this? > >Dave ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 14:04:09 -0700 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib and back to le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU At 10:30 AM 5/19/2004 +0200, Crystal Warren wrote: >This tendency does come through in The Left Hand of Darkness too. Genly Ai >believes in the Ecumen, and is completely convinced that joining them is the >only right course for Gethen. Considering when this was written, is the "Ecumen" the shadow of NATO? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 10:44:44 +0200 From: Crystal Warren Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Abu Ghraib and back to le Guin To: FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU I haven't read all of Le Guin (yet!), so she might have written about this more. If I recall correctly the precursor to the Ekumen appears Rocannon's World. At this stage it is a League of Worlds which seems to be a more formal governing structure, yet with internal divisions. Don't have all the details as I read it a while back, but I think there was a planet which joined the LoW in order to get spaceships and technology, which it then used to attack a rival planet. Le Guin also shows how the LofW initial contact with Rocannon was flawed and disruptive. It would seem that right from the start Le Guin was portraying "good" systems with flaws. I think there was a Federation stage as well. I know that I have read an article somewhere which traces the history of the Hainish novels, putting them into chronological order and exploring the development of the League of Worlds/Federation/Ekumen and other variations. I will try and find the reference in my files at home, but did find an internet site which has done something similar: http://hem.passagen.se/peson42/lgw/history.html Of interest to our current discussion, it was in Rocannon's World that mind speech is first encountered. Crystal > I think a lot of Western readers of Le Guin might feel some kind of > identification with the Ekumen - this is what we hope our society will > become, we can perhaps fairly easily (? in our dreams) imagine that over > thousands of years the Ekumen might have developed out of our culture. It's > a comforting trope (is that the right word?) or fantasy. But how does the > Ekumen get reformed itself? I haven't read all of Le Guin, so I don't know > how this spectacularly wise and wonderful civilization, or alliance, keeps > itself spectacularly wise and wonderful when it has representatives like > Genly Ai who are so obviously as human as the rest of us. Isn't the Ekumen > simply too unbelievable? Much as I love the idea of it. It doesn't really > matter, I guess, it's just a useful device that enables someone we can > identify with go into some new and weird planet, so we can see it through > our own eyes. But I would expect the later Le Guin to have made more > references to corruption within the Ekumen and people struggling with same - > maybe some representatives of the Ekumen even abuse those less powerful than > themselves now and again and have to be called to account? Has she done > this? > > Dave