Kemmering and Heterosexuality

When reading The Left Hand of Darkness I was very interested by kemmering, and it led me to some questions about how sexuality and sexual desire are represented in Gethen. I was actual very relieved when LeGuin addressed (in a bracketed addition to her original article) the fact that the world she draws is entirely heteronormative. She says, "I quite unnecessarily locked the Gethenians into heterosexuality. It is a naively pragmatic view of sex that insists that sexual partners must be of the opposite sex! In any kemmering house homosexual practice would, of course, be possible and acceptable and welcomed -- but I never thought to explore this option; and the omission, alas, implies that sexuality is heterosexuality. I regret this very much." Indeed, the way that she constructs the kemmering process in the novel explicitly denies the existence of any kind of sexuality other than heterosexuality on a physiological level which was a bit upsetting for me. Though we are obviously not supposed to identify the Gethenians as 'human' it seemed to me that their sexual process was far too similar to the human sexual process to deny the parallels -- calling on descriptive phrases such as 'hormonal secretion' 'genitals engorge' immediately draws on human biology. Obviously, a major human debate about sexuality and gender deals with whether sexual orientation is a genetic fact or if it is a lifestyle choice. She describes the kemmering or sexing process: "hormonal secretion is further stimulated...until in one partner either a male or female hormonal dominance is established. The genitals engorge or shrink accordingly...they do not know whether they will be male or female, and have no choice in the matter." First, with LeGuin's explicit description of the biological process of 'sexing' the Gethenians, it seems that she is saying that yes, sexuality is genetic and further, the only result of the genetic process is heterosexuality, and anything outside of that is a lifestyle choice. This is only reinforced by the weighty 'either or' statement in this excerpt -- either male or female, and nothing in between. Sexual orientation aside, in constructing this 'either or' scenario, LeGuin denies the existence of transgendered individuals, hermaphrodites, etc.
I don't want to be too negative here, because she of course did say that the heteronormativity was a mistake, and that she regrets that her words locked the Gethenians into an unequivocally heterosexual lifestyle. So, I will end with a few possible questions that might be worth discussing in class tomorrow if anyone has an interest. First, what did anyone else make of the absence of sexuality outside heterosexuality? How do you think an inclusion of more sexual categories would impact the overall narrative?

Compulsory Heterosexuality Reinforces Gender Dualism

Ursula K. Le Guin begins The Left Hand of Darkness with a defensive introduction: “I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing” (xv). She labels the novel as a “thought experiment.” At certain moments, Le Guin asserts, we can see that people are already androgynous. But (and I think that Jasmine’s post on this is completely on point) Le Guin's thought problem does not present true “androgyny” or create a full spectrum of gender expression; in creating a balance of “yin and yang,” “masculine and feminine,” Le Guin only reinforces and exaggerates gender duality without questioning it.

Genly Ai identifies the difference in biological sex and the dualism it creates as “the heaviest single factor in one’s life” (234). And when that “divisive” factor is removed, Le Guin still only writes about Gethenians’ heterosexual kemmer encounters. When she wrote The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, Le Guin was certainly “aware” of same sex encounters; Genly claims that “perverts” in Gethenian society (people who have hormonal imblances that make them more “male” or more “female”) “are not excluded from society, but they are tolerated with some disdain, as homosexuals are in many bisexual societies. The Karhidish slang for them is halfdeads” (63). “Bisexual,” in this context, means “heterosexual” rather than what we think of as “bisexual” today. It fascinates me that Le Guin would explore a world of “ambisexual” beings as necessarily heterosexual, even as she explores polyamorous (“promiscuous”) kemmerhouses. That, to me, emphasizes one of the main ways in which Le Guin does not make it beyond the gender binary or the concept that biological sex dictates gender expression.

Le Guin notices this in her 1987 of “Is Gender Necessary?” (I’m also quite surprised that this didn’t occur to her in the 1976 edition.) Not only does she finally figure out how to refer to the Gethenians without gendered pronouns (there are some “they” revisions), she also chides herself for “unnecessarily lock[ing] the Gethenians into heterosexuality…. In any kemmer-house homosexual practice would, of course, be possible and acceptable and welcomed - but I never thought to explore this option; and the omission, alas, implies that sexuality is heterosexuality” (14). STILL, even decades later, Le Guin assumes that homosexuality only occurs in kemmerhouses- the sites of indiscriminate, “promiscuous” sexual encounters. Did it occur to her that when Gethenians vowed kemmering, at some point in their many kemmering cycles together, both of them might develop the same sexual organs?

I tried to make sense of this compulsory heterosexuality by placing it within Le Guin’s thought problem - if the only point of kemmer is to reproduce, then perhaps there is no evolutionary “need” for same sex encounters. This doesn’t work, though, because Le Guin describes kemmer as a sexual compulsion - the Gethenians feel the need to have sexual encounters even if they use contraceptives. It could be argued that any given Gethenian can develop either male or female sex organs during kemmer, so they all have bisexual or “ambisexual” sexual experiences - but I’m interested in the fact that Le Guin writes that someone who becomes “male” after kemmer must find “female” sexual partners, or that she labels them as "male" and "female" after these sexual organs develop (was that necessary?). Because she is locked into these concepts of sexual interdependence, balance, dualism, she falls into traps of sexual essentialism - “male” means “masculine” means “seeks female”; “female” means “feminine” means “seeks male” - which, in turn, produces some disturbing false dichotomies* throughout the novel, which Le Guin seems to unquestioningly support in “Is Gender Necessary?” I love that the novel aims to praise gender interdependence and equality of the sexes (especially during a time where an increasingly radical feminist movement often advocated for sexual difference and separatism), but she unnecessarily approaches that goal by assuming that there are only two biological sexes, only two genders to blend equally rather than a spectrum of gender expression, and that only heterosexual encounters are key to this interdependency.

*(example of a false gender dichotomy: Woman who investigated Gethenian sexual practices - “did [the Hainish who she believes genetically engineered the ambisexual Gethenians] consider war to be a purely masculine displacement-activity, a vast Rape, and therefore in their experiment eliminate the masculinity that rapes and the femininity that is raped?” (96) - in a 100% heterosexual society, perhaps it would be true that masculinity/male rapes and femininity/female is raped)