Left Hand of Darkness Post #2

We are about 1/3 finished with the book, and I still don't really understand that much of it. I feel like Le Guin jumps around too much, and she is leaving too much out of the book. Just when I start to understand one land and culture, Genly leaves and goes to another place, or she switches view points completely. ie: Chapter 6 which is from Estravens point of view, or Chapter 9 which is a flashback/story.

Something else that really bothers me about the book is how they refer to all people as men, even after it has been made perfectly clear that they are not MEN but instead of no specific gender. This matter is addressed in Chapter 7 of the book.

"Yet you cannot think of a Gehtenian as "it." They are not neuters. They are potentils, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish "human pronoun" used for persons in somer, I must say "he," for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman."

On one hand I do agree with this quote, because I think it would be wierd to call all gethenians "its", but I do find it very sexist of them to refer to everyone as a man. It makes the reader forget that it is not a world of all men. Also I find it very hypocritical, considering that Le Guin goes throughout the book saying that there's no gender, that everything is fluid, but then she refers to them as men, never as girls or women, (unless a person is in the femenin stage of kemering), everyone is a man. It's kind of like in foreign languages, how if there's a group of men and women, even if there's just one man, its referred to as a group of men. It's annoying how the male gender always dominates.