Left Hand of Darkness Response to Wave 1

Genly's character in Left Hand of Darkness is, in my opinion, not likeable. In fact, genly comes off as a mysoginic and closed minded person. Although he is trying to open the mind of gethenians and persuade them into being more open to new ideas of living, it's contradictory to his judgements and is more according to his way of life on ekumen. I can see that going into a world with no gender roles can be very complicating. In fact, i feel his struggle in determing the feminity or masculinity of each gethenian. That being said, it becomes clear that we are so used to putting categories and certain roles on living beings that we do not focus on the importance of their actual character. For example, in Chapter 7's explanation of kemmer and how the process works, genly says "There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive"(94). There, we see how Genly is not only confused by the equality on karhide but how he is so accustomed to putting roles on genders. This kind of mindset reveals a lot about himself, his home planet, and also us as human beings. Reading this book, we are befuddled by the absolute equality in gender and class. There is not one being on karhide that is of higher power than the other. Therefore, we can relate to Genly's way of living on ekumen, because like us they categorize and places certain characterstics on men and women. Let alone, they assign gender roles. In addition, his  way of thinking that females are of low standard and can't be dominant like men show another kind of relation to us. Because women as a whole still have trouble to this day to be looked and treated as equals to men. With his discrminative thoughts on women, it reveals the truth of how the people on ekumen perceive the woman. However, we cannot fully assume that all men are discrimanating to women in the way that Genly is. Though Genly respresents his planet, he is still only one being with this mindest coming from ekumen. He still does not think for everyone on ekumen. We can't be certain that all men on Genly's home planet share the same way of thinking that he does until we find more evidence to prove it so.