Let’s Talk About Sex
Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is the story of Genly Ai’s travels to a strange planet called Gethen, or Winter. His mission there is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join an alliance Genly Ai represents called the “Ekumen”. However, his journey is rather difficult due to the great difference in societies from Genly Ai’s home planet, Earth, and this new one. In Gethen, he learns that the people are completely unsexed for the majority of their days. When they are sexed, it is only for a few days and each person is either male or female during this time. The different governments use Genly Ai as a pawn, but in the end they join the alliance. Unfortunately, it comes with the price of his friend’s life. LeGuin has Genly Ai’s descriptions of gender become less and less male or female for the purpose of showing his assimilation on Gethen.
When Genly Ai first arrives on Gethen, LeGuin has him sex everyone to show how much of a stranger he is to the planet. LeGuin has Estraven and Genly Ai supper at Estraven’s house, at which time LeGuin has Genly Ai think about the androgynous people of Gethen and she has him realize that he sees “a Gethenian first as a man, than as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature…” (12). When LeGuin has Genly Ai say this, she is showing the way Genly Ai’s understanding of sex being very set in place is also a representation of how he is mentally unfit with the rest of the Gethenians. Additionally, LeGuin has Genly Ai call everyone on Gethen “man”, and ”he” because he cannot picture a culture that has no distinction between sexes at all times. When LeGuin has Genly Ai meet the King of Gethen, Argaven up close, she has him remark that “Argaven ...
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...raven] what women are like…”(235). LeGuin has Genly Ai struggle with this thought as a show of how used to unsexed people he really is. When LeGuin has him see permanently sexed people from his home planet, LeGuin has him be so unfamiliar with it that he doesn’t like it. At first sight, LeGuin has Genly Ai describe them as “…a troupe of great, strange animals, of two different species, great apes with intelligent eyes, all of them in rut, in kemmer…”(296). LeGuin has Genly Ai experience these people in such a negative way because Genly Ai simply wasn’t used to the sight of such sexed people. LeGuin even went so far as to have Genly Ai include the Gethenian word “kemmer” to show how much assimilation has taken place within him.
It is in this way that LeGuin uses Genly Ai’s descriptions become less and less gendered to show that he has accepted the culture on Gethen.
1 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985) 217.
James Whale recreates the original horror of Frankenstein with his sequel Bride of Frankenstein, in which Henry Frankenstein once again tries to play God with the addition of an Eve to his already thriving Adam. "Henry Frankenstein...may attempt to reverse the Original Sin and re-enter the community by acquiescing to the horror cliché that 'there are things we are not meant to know'--except that his initial hubristic motive was not just to figure out eternity but to create life without the help of any Eve (he wants to 'be as God' in a double sense), and when in the sequel he manages to get married it is a sure bet that some Dr. Praetorius will 'force' him into an all-male effort to create a bride for the monster" (Kawin 683). Unfortunately, the creation of Eve does not necessarily mean that her heart will belong to Adam. When the female monster first lays eyes on Monster, she lets out a blood-curdling scream. Thus, showing that love cannot be created, just like a person should not be created out of the dead.
Donna Freitas in The End of Sex gives her thoughts on how hookup culture is affecting specifically college students. Her judgment comes out of a space where she wants, “to empower them (participants in hookups) to seek the kinds of relationships they want…” (16). Though her perspective comes from a good place, her argument has points that are shaming, archaic, dismissive, and one sided. Her argument seems to be that of a pro-woman stance at times, neglecting one of the key feminism ideals of choice. Freitas uses patriarchal arguments to back up her ideas, tarnishing her perspectives that come off as woman empowering. The book, The End of Sex, neglects to be conscious of female independence
The following essay is concerned with the frame structure in Mary Shelley`s Frankenstein and its’ functions as it is suggested by Beth Newman`s "Narratives of seduction and the seduction of narratives". To start with, the novel Frankenstein is a symmetrically built frame narrative with a story at its center. This is not always the case with frame structured novels, as there are examples without a proper center (e.g. Heart of Darkness). The elaborate system of frames indicates that this center reveals some kind of a mystery. However, it would be wrong to asume that the center alone contains the meaning of the novel. On the contrary, the meaning of the novel is brought about by the relation between the different stories at the center and the frames around it.
In his paper which is called Is There A History of Sexuality, Halperin drew a distinction between the topics of sexuality and of sex. He claimed that the two concepts are separate ideas. In Halperin's view, sex is a natural function that has not changed in many years, if ever at all. He says that sex “is a natural fact, grounded in the functioning of the body, and as such, it lies outside of history and culture” (Halperin 416). This means that sex cannot be measured in historical thought, for it has not changed since the beginning of time. As a natural function, it will continue to exist without the influence of culture, for it has always existed inside of the natural body. Sexuality, on the other hand, is a completely different issue to be considered. Sexuality is a socially created phenomenon, or as Halperin says, “sexuality is not a somatic fact, it is a cultural effect” (Halperin 416). This means that sexuality is entirely dependant upon the social world because it is created by the social world. Halperin argues against the prevailing concept that our sexual activities make any statements about our sexuality in and of itself. Halperin claims that “one of the currently unquestioned assumptions about sexual experience which the study of antiquity calls into question is the assumption that sexual behavior reflects or expresses an individual's 'sexuality'” (Halperin 417). With this statement, Halperin raises the issue of what exactly a sexuality is, and how it can be defined. Specifically, Halperin is saying that the modern concept of sexuality can not be applied to the supposed sexualities expressed...
The construction of gender is based on the division of humanity to man and woman. This is impossible ontologically speaking; because the humans are not divided, thus gender is merely an imaginary realm. It only exist in the language exercises, and the way that cultural products are conceived in them. This essay is a preliminary attempt to offer an analysis of ‘One Is Not Born a Woman’ by Wittig and ‘The Second Sex’ by Simone De Beauvoir holds on the language usage contribution to the creation of genders and the imagined femininity.
Betsy Lucal, "What it means to be gendered me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System."
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
My first reaction to Egalia’s Daughters, by Gerd Brantenberg, was something like "WHAT is this". I was immediately very confused, and had no idea what this author was writing about. In fact, I felt as though I opened the book to the middle of a story, and became turned off by the whole experience. It took about three chapters, and someone’s help, until I started to read the book understandably, with ease, and began to enjoy the world I was entering. It became very apparent that I would have to detach myself from all that I thought I knew about gender, and simply allow myself to take in the message Brantenberg was trying to convey. As soon as I began to understand what I was reading, I found myself thoroughly engaged by both the story and the sociological aspects of both the Egalian, and my societies social constructions of gender. Although I was aware, to some degree of the socialization of gender in our society, having not taken any feminist or women’s studies courses, I was not familiar with how much gender is ingrained in our culture, language, government, identities, etc. This book truly brings forth those ideals by expressing the opposite of what we know in our society to be true concerning the socialization of gender.
As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender an individual is pushed to conform to social expectations of his/her group.
In 1977 Ervin Goffman published his book the ‘Arrangement of the Sexes’ to explain how social relations are gendered in ways that produces gendered performance in society. Using his theory of gender to support his arguments, Goffman believes that sex is the fundamental code upon which social interactions and social structures are built. That this code also establishes the ideas individuals have concerning their fundamental human nature. In every society, sex is differentiated at birth. All infants are placed in one or other of the two sex classes according the infants physical body parts, especially its genitalia. This differentiation by physical configuration allows a sex-linked label of identification such as man-woman, male-female, and boy-girl. Other forms of sex-class differentiation is the concept of masculinity femininity, with women having feminine
In the novel This Earth Of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, discrimination against social structure, race, and gender is apparent. The setting is in the Indies, or now called Indonesia. At that time, there are terms for different races in the book, which are “Native” indicating someone who is pure Indonesian, “Indo” a half European and half Indonesian, and “Pure Blood” or “European” when someone is pure European. An Indo and a Pure Blood receives more respect in society than a Native. Furthermore, European or Pure Blood is at the top of this social hierarchy, people who are European or Pure Blood receives the utmost respect in society. Differences in gender is prevalent in this novel, where most women in this book have power in their own homes, but in society is looked down upon. Female characters experiencing these are Annelies, the main character’s love interest, Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies’ mother who is a concubine, and Magda Peters, the main character’s European teacher. Women in this novel are portrayed differently according to what race, social structure, and gender they are born in, which can be seen through Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies, and Magda Peters.
Everyday the North American media sends millions of sexually provocative images through the airwaves and onto television screens. According to a recent study, an overwhelming 56% of all television programs contain sexual content (Vieth, 2). Our society has become so immune to the representation of sex that, for the most part, it goes unnoticed. Although concerns regarding sexuality still remain, society's tolerance level has changed dramatically over time. The history of attitudes toward sex and sexuality is a cultural process that can be seen through the literature of an era. The Awakening was the first piece of American fiction to blatantly attack the nineteenth century notion that marriage, emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy were inextricably bound together. Chopin's novel was advanced in theme over other nineteenth century works. Her piece more closely reflects the modern novel. Chopin gives her readers the story of a married woman, Edna Pontellier, as she explores her sexuality and need for emotional intimacy outside her marriage. Edna's need for extramarital relationships challenged the nineteenth century ideas of femininity and propriety.
Butler states that “gender...is an identity tenuously constituted in time--an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts,” and she makes specific reference to these