{"id":68,"date":"2022-02-27T23:18:44","date_gmt":"2022-02-28T04:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/?p=68"},"modified":"2022-02-27T23:18:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T04:18:44","slug":"gender-the-final-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/constructing-performing-gender\/gender-the-final-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender: the final frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 230px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/8\/88\/TheLeftHandOfDarkness1stEd.jpg\/220px-TheLeftHandOfDarkness1stEd.jpg\" alt=\"Front cover of the first edition, with art by the Dillons. Cover depicts two faces against an abstract background.\" width=\"220\" height=\"375\" data-file-width=\"242\" data-file-height=\"413\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cover of the first edition of Ursula K. LeGuin&#8217;s The Left Hand of Darkness.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In Ursula K. LeGuin\u2019s groundbreaking 1969 book <em>The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em>, the people who live on the planet Gethen are androgynous, and don\u2019t identify with a specific gender except during a period called kemmer when they become fertile and can have children. Despite this novel view of gender and gender roles, LeGuin uses the pronoun \u201che\u201d as a neutral pronoun to describe the people on Gethen. Seemingly in response to LeGuin\u2019s book and responding to the history of using \u201che\u201d as an assumed neutral pronoun, Ann Leckie\u2019s <em>Ancillary Justice<\/em> features a major intergalactic civilization whose language has no concept of gender or gendered pronouns. Leckie chooses to use the pronoun \u201cshe\u201d as the default neutral pronoun as she writes about this civilization. The Radch empire considers their ungendered language a mark of civilization, and characters often commit social gaffes when they visit other planets and make guesses at the genders of the people around them.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 266px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"n3VNCb\" src=\"https:\/\/i.gr-assets.com\/images\/S\/compressed.photo.goodreads.com\/books\/1386921432l\/19417541.jpg\" alt=\"Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) by Ann Leckie\" width=\"256\" height=\"385\" data-noaft=\"1\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cover for Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Both of these science fiction novels attempt to describe civilizations that have moved beyond our human perception of gender and gender roles. However, in doing so, they are constrained by the language, tools, and perceptions of gender that already exist. These authors can\u2019t invent a new gender in a vacuum, so they are forced to use our current understandings of gender as a reference point. Though they are trying to invent new genders and ways to understand gender on their own, their imaginations can\u2019t move beyond societal iterations of gender. Even as they deliberately try to take gender out of the picture, these books prove that gender is something we do \u2013 even when we\u2019re deliberately trying not to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; In Ursula K. LeGuin\u2019s groundbreaking 1969 book The Left Hand of Darkness, the people who live on the planet Gethen are androgynous, and don\u2019t identify with a specific gender except during a period called kemmer when they become fertile and can have children. Despite this novel view of gender and gender roles, LeGuin uses [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":569,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constructing-performing-gender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/569"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/gender-sexuality-womens-studies-2001-spring-2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}