finally reading Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. I realize there’s no one stopping time livetweeting a book so I apologize but

*also danger spoilers ahead*

I’m approaching midway point in the book where you read one of the first reports about the Gethenians “ambisexuality”

it’s written by Ong Tot Oppong, a woman who’s an investigator for the Ekumenical (the union of 80-ish? humanoid-settled worlds)

and she is definitely writing as if from the perspective of our own patriarchal time and place, trying to understand the androgyny of this offshoot of humans

-there’s some suspicion that they’re products of a disturbing experiment of mad scientists (a species without females or males can’t be natural! So some kind of patriarchal logic might go)

-sex and gender go thru this lunar cycle of somer (non-sexual time) and kemmer (think: Vulcan pon farr) in which one partner takes on the female/passive role and the other the male/active role. There’s some generalizations about the physical transformations that happen here

-admits it’s hard for us to understand an androgynous species—hence the recourse to gendered/sexed lingo (androgynous until sex or pregnancy happens)

What’s interesting is how she can’t seem to understand how and why one sex partner takes on any given role (there’s only two, in her understanding)

If the investigator had some background in queer theory, I think she would’ve paused at the phenomenon of, what she’d understand as, same-sex kemmer-ing (both partners taking on the same role). If you’re looking for a theory of sexuality, look at these exceptional

Also, the kemmering thing is fascinating. Perhaps she’s romanticizing it, but the idea that most of the time sex is not a thing. Except when it is and they have absolutely no problem in making “plenty of room” for it. (sounds like lit people take off work for it ha)

but also, the encounter Estraven has (a chapter earlier) with his ex-kemmering person is moving and somehow a more realistic portrayal of romance than the Investigator’s impulse to call it a form of marriage

to close out this thread, here’s a clip of Tuvok going thru pon farr and the Doctor saving the day