I think so, but it's a long time since I read it. I did recently read some short stories in the same world where Ursula (since my sister corresponded with her over email about her interpretation of Taoism and Ms. LeGuin signed all of hers with a friendly "Ursula" we figure the whole family is on a first name basis although I would probably not indulge that if I were to actually talk to her directly. But I digress) explicitly addresses the heteronormative bias apparent in it. In case that clarifies anything for you.
ETA I don't remember that coming up in the Lit class I read it for in college. Male teacher, mostly male students, though. Apparently at some point a student refused to read it because it was "too gay" so our prof was at some pains to tell us it was not gay at all.
I mean, I guess it's queer?
I also wanted a line about how he had his facial hair permanently removed before going there, because I'm guessing the Genethians don't have beards?
This is why I don't read classics and/or sci-fi, I guess.
You should write to Ursula and ask her about the beard thing.
I thought Le Guin addressed the beard thing, but I might be misremembering.
I could have missed it, honestly.
From the Foreword to The Birthday of the World and Other Stories:
In my 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness the first voice is that of a Mobile of the Ekumen, a traveller, making a report back to the Stabiles, who stay put on Hain. This vocabulary came to me along with the narrator. He said his name was Genly Ai. He began telling the story, and I wrote it.
Gradually, and not easily, he and I found out where we were. He had not been on Gethen before, but I had, in a short story, "Winter's King." That first visit was so hurried I hadn't even noticed there was something a bit weird about Gethenian gender. Just like a tourist. Androgynes? Were there androgynes?
During the writing of Left Hand, pieces of myth and legend came to me as needed, when I didn't understand where the story was going; and a second voice, a Gethenian one, took over the story from time to time. But Estraven was a deeply reserved person. And the plot led both my narrators so quickly into so much trouble that many questions didn't get answered or even asked.
Writing the first story in this book, "Coming of Age in Karhide," I came back to Gethen after twenty-five or thirty years. This time I didn't have an honest but bewildered male Terran alongside to confuse my perceptions. I could listen to an open-hearted Gethenian who, unlike Estraven, had nothing to hide. This time I didn't have a damned plot. I could ask questions. I could see how the sex works. I could finally get into a kemmerhouse. I could really have fun.
I'd better read that, then!
I do recommend the collection. Interesting stuff.
One week to Borderlands!
13 quotes from Sense and Sensibility, courtesy of Book Riot: [link]
My favorites right now are:
"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!"
"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others."
