The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4)

by Ursula K. Le Guin

“In danger, honor,” he said, evidently a proverb, for he added mildly, “We’ll be full of honor when we reach Karhide….”

“No, that’s true…. You hate Orgoreyn, don’t you?” “Very few Orgota know how to cook. Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession…. Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.”

“Tell me, how does the other sex of your race differ from yours?” He looked startled and in fact my question rather startled me; kemmer brings out these spontaneities in one. We were both self-conscious. “I never thought of that,” he said. “You’ve never seen a woman.” He used his Terran-language word, which I knew. “I saw your pictures of them. The women looked like pregnant Gethenians, but with larger breasts. Do they differ much from your sex in mind behavior? Are they like a different species?” “No. Yes. No, of course not, not really. But the difference is very important. I suppose 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, ethics, manners—almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women…women tend to eat less…. It’s extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing….” “Equality is not the general rule, then? Are they mentally inferior?” “I don’t know. They don’t often seem to turn up mathematicians, or composers of music, or inventors, or abstract thinkers. But it isn’t that they’re stupid. Physically they’re less muscular, but a little more durable than men. Psychologically—” After he had stared a long time at the glowing stove, he shook his head. ...

Out they came, and met the Karhiders with a beautiful curtsey. But they all looked strange to me, men and women, well as I knew them. Their voices sounded strange: too deep, too shrill. They were like a troupe of great, strange animals, of two different species; great apes with intelligent eyes, all of them in rut, in kemmer…. They took my hand, touched me, held me.

conditioning matters