Gethen & Gloria: Differences in Single Sex Societies

Tags: Single-sex vs. third sex, fantasies/sexual desire, gender, sexuality

 “When you meet a Gethenian, you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is to cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectation of the patterned or possible interactions between persons of the same or the opposite sex.” (Le Guin 94)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last week in class, we discussed Tiptree’s “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” and the concept of “being female” in a world where there was once, but is no longer, a male gender. Lorimer thinks the inhabitants of the future he encounters might call themselves “Women’s World”, “Liberation”, or “Amazonia” – names that are based around the absence of men, or emphasize women’s “freedom” from them. But in fact, the women call themselves they call themselves “human beings… humanity, mankind…the human race” (Tiptree 216). 

In light of this, we discussed in class the question of what it means to be female in the absence of the male, and how the concept may have changed – one example given as a sign of a fundamental difference between the women of the future and the women of today was the attitude toward fantasies. In response to Lorimer’s comment that “everybody” has aggressive fantasies, Connie replies, “’But nobody does… I mean, [have]the fantasies’” (Tiptree 215). These women are thus somehow very different from the women of today, who do have such fantasies as well – there is a fundamental difference, then, between the women of the future and those of today.

It is to this difference that Ursula LeGuin seems to speak when the Investigator of her novel writes, “What is very hard for us to understand is that four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all…The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and its continuity, is without sex” (Le Guin 93). Although written by a woman of Chiffewar (and therefore still marked as being potentially very different from the words of a woman of Earth today), these words are still framed as thoughts  about Gethen from the point of view of a person whom the reader can find more relatable than the people of Gethen themselves – if only because she shares the characteristic of coming from a bisexual society. Such a woman finds the very concept of a world without the constant potential presence of sexual desire or the fantasies of sex to be difficult to understand, suggesting that both Tiptree and LeGuin seem to share a belief that in a society where only one sex is present, a constant desire for sex, or fantasies of sex,* disappear.

Of course, there appears to be a biologically inherent reason for this in Gethen that does not seem to be present on Gloria – in somer they simply have no sex drive, unlike the women of Gloria, who undergo no such biological change. The question that arises from this is – what are the differences that arise in these two types of single-sex societies: (1) a society where everyone is a gender that has historically been defined in relation to another gender that is no longer in existence, and has not been for so long that the people no longer really remember it, but still use the language that was defined by this difference in genders; and (2) A society where everyone is a single sex** that is not neutral, as Ong Tot Oppong comments (Le Guin 94), but has in it the potential of two other sexes that seem to exist to complement and be opposite to each other  (from a traditional point of view), and where the language itself reflects these differences.  Why might the concept of fantasy disappear from both such societies? Is there a difference? I’d imagine there is, yes, but more importantly, what is the nature of that difference?

After all, the advice that Ong Tot Oppong gives to her reader (at the beginning of this post) seems like it might have stood the crew of the Sunbird very well (you know, if they hadn’t been…well, drugged…)

My notes are after the jump -

Ai and Estraven

The relationship between Ai and Estraven takes long to develop because of Ai’s distrust and Estraven’s failure to communicate. But the biological division is still greater than the social ones, and the journey across the ice parallels the slow process of empathy. Genly Ai describes Estraven in physical, somer-kemmer or woman-man dualized terms, especially by sight: “I saw [Estraven] now defenseless and half-naked in a colder light … and saw him as he was” (201), “I saw then again … what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in [Estraven]: that he was a woman as well as a man” (248). For Ai, their defining moment of friendship came from accepting the difference between the two, and yet the power in the scene (248–249) derives from the great potential of their mutual love during Estraven’s kemmer.

Ai’s valuation of physical sexuality and love contrast Estraven’s use of intuition and psychological understanding, as mysterious as the nature through which they travel: “There is a frailty about [Ai] … he has a spirit easy to despair and quick to defiance: a fierce impatient courage” (227), “[Ai’s] name is a cry of pain” (229), “I am infected by Ai’s pure pleasure” (230). Even Estraven’s curiosity of Ai’s kemmer-perversion is framed in terms of what Estraven believes is Ai’s “low-grade sort of desire” (232) and not primarily a physical description.

Ai and Estraven also differ in their narrative styles. Whereas Ai frequently writes as “I” and recalls dialogue, Estraven instead observes, describes, and conjectures. Again one sees the dualism between seeing, through one’s own eye, and intuiting as facets of getting to the truth, which for each is appreciation for the other. The physical love, seeing-is-believing methodology of Ai then is a rather Western perspective next to the Estraven’s Eastern intuition: emotional, patient, trust-valuing, believing-is-seeing. But their apparent equality in the fairness of a harsh environment covers, with a layer of snow, the dominance each school exerts on either Ai or Estraven, who only when stripped bare of the social and normative values of Karhide or Terra—shifgrethor and masculinity—contemplate a substantial friendship aided by the tension of kemmer between aliens. The periodic changes in narrative voice provides a better “blending process” than, say, “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” which as Rhiannon pointed out is characterized by a marked imbalance.

On the other hand, such an imbalance is present but not at the detailed, personal level which suggests a gradual acceptance of otherness. Instead, the ultimate arrival of Ai’s ship, the prophecy of Gethen’s alliance, and Estraven’s death are each conquests, however empathetic or nonviolent, which in this case are of the Western ideas over the Eastern. More important than the exactly posed conflict is Ai’s final isolation following his transformation across the ice. In a position to understand and appreciate both worlds, Ai instead sees in his own kind as “great apes with intelligent eyes” while finding “familiar” the ungendered face of a Gethenian (296). Had Estraven survived, they may have experienced a similar alienation among his Karhidians, who in fact betrayed him to punish his own attempt for understanding. Is this the cost of acknowledging the other? The story ends before we see the Ekumen and Gethen’s progress, so Ai and Estraven are tragic characters. Or, perhaps the way to reaching out to the other may be attained, as Ai did, at the level of personal touch, and its prevalence increased by diffusion rather than swept away by some clash of cultures.

Tiptree’s Women: Themes of Alienation and Escape

Although all vastly different, several of the stories that we read in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever share a common theme: women’s response to crisis, and their reaction to and escape from the specter of male-dominated society.

In the highly disturbing “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”, we see a girl so desperate to escape the stigma she suffers for her own ugliness that she first tries to take her own life and then, when provided with the opportunity, throws herself so completely into a fictional life created for her that she essentially abandons her own identity. A parallel escape into fantasy occurs in “With Delicate, Mad Hands”, as CP uses her fantasy of an “Empire” in which she is accepted to power her dedication to her work and to allow her to distance herself from and cope with the pain and humiliation she suffers on a daily basis. In both these examples, the protagonist’s suffering is clearly presented as the product of an oppressive, male-dominated society in which she simply cannot fit. In “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”, modern consumerism bears the brunt of Tiptree’s attack: celebrities are “gods” and a girl initially described as being full of guileless love can only find happiness by assuming a “perfect” image that is nevertheless empty (“Delphi” has no say in her own life, she is constantly monitored, her physical senses are dimmed, and her sexuality dampened). Even the romance of the story is a superficial lie; Paul is quick to reject the idea that his love could be anything but the beauty in front of him. In “With Delicate, Mad Hands”, CP is, like P. Burke, ostracized because of her physical appearance, which, in a society where a woman’s purpose seems essentially to fulfill sexual needs and serve as “a low-status noncompetitive servant and rudimentary mother figure” (219), is enough to condemn her to a life of abuse that culminates in murderous insanity. Both of these characters, as seems to be the norm for Tiptree, are quite doomed—they die young, after experiencing only the briefest tastes of love and acceptance.

The female characters in “The Women Men Don’t See” and “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” are of a different breed entirely. Calm and professional, these women aren’t fazed by the attempts at domination by the men they encounter. Like P. Burke and CP, Ruth and Althea are misfits in a patriarchal society, and seek escape. However, as Ruth’s ingenuity shows, they need neither man’s approval nor men themselves. Similarly, the women in “Houston, Houston” have absolutely no desire to include men in the culture they have developed. Although one could definitely argue that their society is handicapped by their lack of progress, individuality, and desire to feel deep emotions, they clearly don’t feel that gaping hole in their lives that Bud and Dave feel driven to fill.

While all of these stories share a theme of women escaping the domination of men, they illustrate two widely divergent forms of escape: Escape by rising above prescribed societal roles (and, indeed, any need for men at all), and escape by falling below them.