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Homoeroticism in The Left Hand of Darkness

Because of the use of the male pronoun for the androgynous Estraven, and because of Le Guin’s placing Estraven only in stereotypically male situations, some gay rights groups consider The Left Hand of Darkness to be, well, a gay book. Consider, most readers see Estraven as a man, after all, even in the book, he has never actually borne any children, and Ai is a human man, and they fall in love. So we have a predominantly male character who has effeminate tendencies and a manly man who fall in love, kind of sounds like a gay love story to me. I wouldn’t say that Le Guin intended for the book to be about an unconsummated homosexual love story, on the contrary, in order for Gethenians to have sex they have to develop opposite genders. The impossibility of homosexual Gethenians is another criticism of Le Guin’s ideas. In fact, in order for Genly and Therem to consummate anything, Therem would have to develop female sexual organs while in kemmer, so if they had consummated their relationship it would have ceased to be homoerotic at all. However, because Ai sees Estraven as a man and because he falls in love with him anyway, one could argue that this love is a manifestation of Ai’s repressed homosexual tendencies, but this interpretation is highly unlikely. We also have to consider that Ai is a man who has not had sex in over two years. It is widely known that the male sex drive can be quite strong, and often even straight men will engage in sexual relations with other men if there are no women available (sexual dynamics of all male prisons, anyone?). So rather than actually being homosexual or even being progressive and being attracted to Estraven’s personality, Ai could merely need a sexual outlet. He has not even seen a woman in two years and he is in close proximity to a manwoman for almost two months, it is really not surprising at all that the friendship between the two develops an element of sexual tension. Honestly, I think that there are many ways that the love story between Estraven and Ai can be interpreted it just depends on your cultural conditioning.

Background from http://www.dejimah.com/blog/archives/000843.html .