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Book
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969
A science fiction novel set on the planet Winter, where a human envoy from Earth encounters a society of ambisexual beings. Through exotic adventure, political intrigue, and survival across ice fields, the narrative explores themes of alienation, humanity, and sexual differentiation.
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What this book knows
Gender is a habit of mind: strip it away and what remains is the irreducible self, alone on the ice with another.
embodiment
The most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female—in most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook.
LHD-RC-146To go through kemmer without a partner is pretty hard on a Gethenian. So they prevented it. Prisoners were as sexless as steers.
LHD-RC-109self-and-identity
Each of us is singular, isolate. There is no world full of other Gethenians here to explain and support my existence. We are equals at last, equal, alien, alone.
LHD-RC-145What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
LHD-RC-149belonging
I began to feel like an atheist praying. Presently I felt his sleep as if it were my own: the empathic bond was there.
LHD-RC-157No amount of shock, awe, terror could restrain that insatiable, outreaching mind for long. Suddenly I heard his voice inside my own head.
LHD-RC-158Illuminates
6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
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