Ortiz Monge 1

Emily Ortiz Monge

Professor Batty

English 102

December 9, 2018

Sexuality Is Always Up for Debate

Gender has been a great deal to society because it defines who you are no matter whether

you like it or not. It also creates a social structure of strong/weak and dominant/submissive.

What if gender didn’t even exist, do you ever wonder what the world be like if we did

don’t have anything like that to worry about. That’s where the debate comes in because many

believe a world without gender wouldn’t change a thing. There will still be people trying to

overpower each other, no matter if you are categorized as a male or female. I believe a world

where gender doesn’t exist wouldn’t change because we interpret things, we believe how it’s

supposed to be. The true question is will it solve some solutions and the answer is yes. In

Hwang’s book M. Butterfly, it talks about stereotypes between two cultures and how

masculinity/feminism affects one another. Le Guin wrote Left Hand of Darkness by making up

her own world and pictures how a genderless world would be like. Both authors define

androgyny as complex since many have tried to deconstruct gender in these recent years. In this

essay I will be conversing about gender identity, roles in society and absolute power of

men/women.

In the Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin story theorizes a world where equality and

harmony are attained because gender identity isn’t an issue on their planet called Winter. Her

goal was to show how each nation wanted knowledge and power which shows signs of struggle

for dominance. The novel alters the idea of gender, there’s a cycle that all Gethenians go through
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called kemmer, where anyone can bear children or inseminate. These individuals can take on the

sexual role of male or female once every month. Le Guin’s view on sexuality is a very fluid

concept throughout the book. Genly Ai experiences discomfort throughout his entire journey in

the novel, his sexual identity is stabilized as a male so the fact that Estraven is both male/female

makes Ai uneasy. Their relationship is complicated since Estraven is distant only because the

thought of sexual intercourse is impossible with Ai since he can change into a man when the

kemmering cycle begins. They have many awkward experiences throughout their journey. Ai is

in constant denial about accepting especially Estraven because how he has such a powerful

presence yet a feminine look. Ai’s masculine identity was slowing fading away the more he stays

in contact with the Gethenians. Le Guin provides “mirror image” for Ai’s character because in

the end he’s not the same man who first came to Winter planning to only accomplish his mission

or the just becoming the observer but ended up as a storyteller in the end when he talks to

Estraven’s family.

Theorist’s will argue that it’s the way society has built it and there’s presumptions that if

one has a penis or vagina you must be a boy or a girl since birth. Biological identity is an

essential to defining a human being but something we must do, not something we must be. Even

when the Gethenians go through the kemmering cycle they are defined as male or female the

only reason why there’s equality on certain levels is because every person understands what a

man or woman goes through. Although this doesn’t change the fact that there are still people

with power, so gender doesn’t really apply because there was still drama. In the article Aliens,

androgynes and anthropology: Le Guin’s critique of representation in The Left Hand of

Darkness, “Since sexual desire disappears once kemmer is over, this female investigator

remarks: “but what is left, in somer? What is there to sublimate? What would a society eunuch
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achieve?” (Fayad, pg.6). I do agree of what is quoted, what would this kind of society achieve

and doesn’t this strip Gethenians from fully becoming human beings. No one is pleased with the

idea that she basically portraying the androgynes as enervated males, but in her words, they are

in somer. Although I understand she isn’t completely stripping them from their humanity but to

be in kemmering only once a month is pretty hard to imagine and makes you wonder what

defines humans.

Understanding the roles men and women play in society, for example women taking care

of the children, cooking and cleaning while men go do all hard labor work to maintain their

family. Why must one define a man or woman as dominant/submissive because that person

might not be masculine enough or possibly oriental. This makes people issue why we drew a line

limiting to what a human whether it’s a boy or girl is capable of doing. Cultures also have a big

impact on how a “man” or “woman” is supposed to behave, so being able to deconstruct the idea

makes a bit difficult. Hwang’s idea of creating illusions about sexuality and mixes it with

cultural differences bringing out social stereotypes. Gender is only defined through the mind

because the body knows nothing about being right or wrong on ways of how to act, feel or the

simple gestures. All the costumes and scripts are to show how gender itself is a performance,

body language is another way of defining identity. Without any of these performances of what

can create gender identity would not exist if we didn’t have an idea of what it could be. There is

no such thing as a true identity since we fabricated by socially constructed from sets of relations.

In the book M. Butterfly written by Hwang, David Henry also discusses the topic about

the absolute power of a man, the roles of dominant/submissive are reversed from the actual play.

Gallimard finds the play to be beautiful when the woman kills herself because the love of her life

leaves. While on the other hand Song doesn’t but believes he sees it that way only cause of his
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western ways. When Song plays the part of a woman, he/she even states that “Because only a

man knows how a woman is supposed to act” (pg.49, Hwang). A man knows exactly what he

wants out of a woman and create an image of their butterfly. The opposition of the two

sexualities has tons of dramatic tensions because culture plays a part, Gallimard wants to become

a masculine man just like his friend Marc but he’s in fact the opposite. So, Gallimard is afraid to

find out Song’s sexual identity and he tries really hard to find his “Perfect Woman”, because

without a “Perfect Woman”, then what would he be? Song supports these stereotypes and

reinforces them in order for Gallimard to buy into his act of a passive, sexually timid, and weak

woman. The readers know that Song is a man and it took Gallimard twenty years to figure it out,

so it makes us somewhat believe that he knew that entire time but couldn’t face the facts. If it

turned out to be all a lie, then his dream of becoming a man keeps going further and further

away. Also, the entire play was about their cultural differences and how they incorporated the

moral/values desire to get what they want out of a person, blinding themselves to seeing what the

true picture is. In article Critical Essay on “M. Butterfly” the writer mentions how culture shapes

our view when it comes to gender and help to only see it through that perspective, “And yet the

play is also much more than a revenge fantasy, because it suggests that the stereotypical

perceptions that lead to the tragedy are socially constructed; they are not inherent in the nature of

things. And if something is a human, cultural construct, it can also be deconstructed and

something else constructed in its place.” (Aubrey, Bryan). All these stereotypes that people

believe how culture is socially constructed is brought out and is attempted to debunk them by

mixing them up completely. So, Hwang confuses the reader so much these stereotypes are

inapplicable to defining gender.

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In conclusion, I believe gender will play a role in our lives no matter how we interpret it.

I agree with more of Hwang’s approach of how to view gender because it’s in our body

language, the way we dress and more importantly our how mind constructs it over time. The way

he shows how Song becomes the perfect woman for Gallimard because how else can you play a

role without knowing what someone true desires are from it. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with

trying to completely take it apart in order to create harmony because there will be other things

that can get in the way of you trying to build a peaceful world. Le Guin exposes blindness of

neutrality to its own cultural biases, but to deconstruct it into a genderless world is nearly

impossible and is hard to process because at one point in the novel something still constricts Ai’s

and Estraven’s their love from happening. Their world was peaceful but not perfect and I don’t

think the author was going for that but to become genderless is a hard thing to simply take out is

a huge part in identifying one-self.

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Works Cited

Aubrey, Bryan. "Critical Essay on 'M. Butterfly'." Drama for Students, edited by

Elizabeth Thomason, vol. 11, Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center,

http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/H1420035798/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS&xid=4751a9

26. Accessed 9 Dec. 2018.

Balaev, Michelle. “Performing Gender and Fictions of the Nation in David Hwang’s M.

Butterfly.” Forum for World Literature Studies, no. 4, 2014, p. 608. EBSCOhost,

library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr&AN=

edsgcl.398253065&site=eds-live.

Haedicke, Janet V. "David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly: The Eye on the Wing." Drama

Criticism, edited by Timothy J. Sisler, vol. 23, Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center,

http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/H1420058592/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS&xid=fa1259d

d. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018. Originally published in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, vol.

7, no. 2, Fall 1992, pp. 27-44.

Helmreich, Stefan. "The Left Hand of Nature and Culture." HAU : Journal of

Ethnographic Theory, vol. 4, no. 3, 2014, pp. 373-381. ProQuest,

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https://library.lavc.edu:2236/docview/1850088632?accountid=40027,

doi:http://library.lavc.edu:2138/10.14318/hau4.3.024.

Lothian, Alexis. "Grinding axess and balancing oppositions: the transformation of

feminism in Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction." Extrapolation, vol. 47, no. 3, 2006, p. 380+.

Literature Resource Center,

http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/A158961099/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS&xid=6bacfc20

. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.