The Left Hand Of Darkness: Is Gender Necessary?

Like Butler, Carter also agrees that performativity is an imitation of the convention of gender, which could be seen clearly from Eve’s transgender process. As mentioned above, Eve doesn 't accept his gender as a female after the surgery. Carter describes doing a gender as a process of learning and mimicking. Eve has been shown 3 video-tapes assigned to assist him to adjust to his new body. He is shown Virgin and Child and animal offsprings to evoke his maternal instinct. He is also shown “feminine” things like, rose, sea and moon. The videos aim to help him learn to be a woman by showing conventional feminine stuffs. The mimicking process is more obvious when he becomes Zero’s wive. He tried to imitate the way other wives behave and the

For Carolyn G. Heilbrun, androgyny is a “metaphor for gender liberation” and “a physical fact of life that highlights the performative nature of gender identity and symbolizes sexual emancipation” (Van Leeuwen, 2006). Le Guin in her essay also questioned “Is Gender Necessary?” Gender is built around certain cultural notions or “proper” behaviour and social contracts. It is a cultural product, a set of ideas that are appropriated by individuals through cultural “training” reinforced by media, political structures, fashion industry, which define what it should look like to be masculine or feminine. The Left Hand of Darkness is set on Gethen, where the residents are sexless for the three quarters of each month. However depending on the circumstance, they can be sexually active for a short period of time every month when they can turn either male or female. The sexual state is called Kemmer while their normal state is Somer. When a partner who is also in the state of Kemmer is found, they synchronise arbitrarily by one becoming male and the other female. Le Guin appears to challenge this gender norm of society based on biological determinism and try to deconstruct the conventional idea of femininity and masculinity to see what hides beneath them. As mentioned previously, for Gethenians, there is no absolute

Both of the novels agree that gender is performative, which overlaps with Butler’s opinion that performativity of gender is a stylised repetition of acts. Additionally, The Passion of New Eve coherent with Butler’s idea that mimicking or miming of the dominant conventions of gender. However, due to lack of gender of the Gethenians, there is no conventional gender role in the Gethenian society. Therefore, there is no such term of mimicry of gender. Besides, the two novels could be seen as supporting evidence of performativity as a subversive force against patriarchal gender norm and by presenting the concept of androgyny, the two novels successfully challenge the heteronormative culture which is normally used to sustain patriarchal