Sex Roles in LHOD

When asked by Estraven how women on Earth are different from men, Genly responds, “It’s extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with them in the society, they still do all of the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing..” After Genly says this, it kind of makes him realize how little the differences are between men and women. Yet, the roles in society are completely different. Le Guin creates a race of people who do not have to live up to the expectations of gender identity. Therefore, their characteristics develop in response to their environment and situation. This would make it extremely difficult for anyone raised on earth to be a successful envoy, because we would all have trouble knowing what they are thinking.

We are so used to thinking of human identity as divided into girl and guy groups. We see people like us or unlike us. Because we are raised this way, it would make it so hard for any of us to go to a planet where there is only one gender. We base our thoughts off of gender more than we really think. For example: if a 5 year old boy wanted to be Cinderella for Halloween, society would think of that as wrong. We have these gender roles already built in us since the day we are born…just like a girl would get a pink baby blanket and a boy would get a blue baby blanket. Le Guin makes us look at how these gender roles really shape us…that is more than we can even realize!