The Left Hand of Mars: Ursula K Le Guin

In the Spirit of Perkins Gilman in Herland, Le Guin addresses inequality. In Left Hand of Darkness Le Guin focuses on sexuality and acceptance for others. Le Guin uses the idea of androgyny, which is unusual to the reader to parallel that of homosexuality, which may have seemed foreign to some readers when the book was published. Mr. Ai, who is characterized as a man 100% of the time is described by the Gethenians as “a sexual freak, or an artificial monster, or a visitor from the domains of the Void". (32) "You can see he is a sexual deviant". (156) Estraven, who learns to love Ai, says of his fellow men "They look at a man from another world and see what?... a pervert..." (159)The Gethenians are distrustful of the person they do not understand. Mr. Ai also expresses judgement to those he doesn't identify with and says “Cultural Shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were five-sixths of the time hermaphroditic neuters." (48) "They behaved like animals...or like women. They did not behave like men..."(49) “It seems like they were an experiment...Their ambisexuality has little or no adaptive value."(89) "There are aspects of ambisexuality that we have only glimpsed or guessed at...we may never grasp entirely."(93) Ai has trouble describing and accepting the Gethenians as equals since he can’t give them gender terms and categorize them. Towards the end Ai admits of Estraven "I saw then...what I had always been afraid to see...acceptance of him as he was. (248) Both sides expose this fear of a people they don't understand. Le Guin pushes the message that until we can accept and give equality to everyone, we can’t be fully human. Ai finally accepts the “other” and accomplishes his mission.