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Percy Gonzalez

Professor Batty

English 102

12 December 2018

A Dynamic Society

Gender and race are integral aspects of society. Gender provides structure while race adds

variety and a sense of community among members of the same ethnicity. With different races

also come different cultures and customs. Recently, new ways of thinking about race and gender

have emerged, and authors like David Henry Hwang and Ursula K. Le Guin are among those that

have explored new territories about these topics. While Hwang, in his play M. Butterfly, deals

with themes such as homosexuality and transsexualism in addition to racial stereotypes, Le Guin

takes a more creative approach in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness by creating a whole race

of ambisexual beings that can switch between genders, and thus makes for some interesting

analysis on gender roles and power dynamics. In the end, I believe the goals of the authors of

these works were to subvert binary oppositions, and although some may claim that these works

promote traditional oppositions like male/female and East/West, in reality these works make an

attempt to minimize these aspects.

David Henry Hwang deals with the topic of transsexualism extensively in his novel M.

Butterfly in a way that aims to make it less of a taboo. The character Song is a male spy who

disguises himself as a woman in order to acquire political intelligence from Gallimard; however,

even while he is not on an active mission, he still dresses as a woman. So often, in fact, that one

of his superiors takes notice and questions his sexuality:

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Chin: Like that dress! You’re wearing a dress. And every time I come here, you’re wearing a

dress. Is that because you’re an actor? Or what?

Song: It’s a….disguise, Miss Chin.

Chin: Don’t forget: There is no homosexuality in China!

As is evident by Chin’s reaction, homosexuality was seen as a sin in the eyes of the communist

regime, yet it was ok for a person to pretend being gay in order to advance the interests of the

state. This seems like an irony to me, and I believe that Hwang included this paradoxical

thinking into the novel to show how flawed it is. Because Song dresses as a woman even when

not in the presence of Gallimard, we can assume that he enjoys the feeling of dressing as a

woman, and that he may be intentionally playing along with Gallimard’s fantasies because he too

has fallen in love. Karen Shimakawa claims, “in Song's and Gallimard's last dialogue, it becomes

increasingly difficult to ascertain what Song's motives are. While it initially seems that he is only

taunting Gallimard ("Admit it. You still want me"), he begins to suggest (if ambiguously) that

there is something more sincere in his appeal…” (Shimakawa 349) By creating such a character,

Hwang attempts to make transsexualism a less ostracized concept. Most likely Hwang agrees

with the idea that love is love, no matter what sex a person may be and how they choose to

identify themselves.

After it is discovered that Song is actually a man, we can also see that in essence, the

novel up to this point has really dealt with homosexuality. Obviously, Song knows that

Gallimard is a man, and it is implied that Gallimard in turn figured out at some point that Song
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was a man—he simply chose not to acknowledge that fact because he was so in blinded by the

idea of being with the perfect woman:

Judge: But why would that make it possible for you to fool Monsieur Gallimard? Please—get to

the point.

Song: One, because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted to believe more than

anything that she was, in fact, a woman. And second, I am Oriental. And being an Oriental, I

could never completely be a man.

This quote explains Gallimard’s perspective on his relationship with Song. Again, Gallimard was

so obsessed with the idea of falling in love with his ideal woman that his brain could not and

would not accept the fact that Song was actually a man. It’s as if subconsciously, Gallimard

knew the truth, but it was buried under all that emotion and passion. Michelle Balaev also brings

up a good point about what the realization would mean to Gallimard: “Gallimard says that he

was too afraid to find out Song’s sexual identity because it would mean that he was further away

from being a ‘real’ man” (Balaev 611). All his life, Gallimard had struggled with women and had

low self-esteem, and so now that he had found a woman he could control, he could not let go of

that power. This also illustrates the notion of gender roles in the play—Gallimard, in order to be

seen as masculine and dominant, chose not to see that side of Song just so he could live out his

fantasy of being in charge. And Song, assuming the role of a woman, let himself be directed by

Gallimard. In this case, these two characters adopted traditional gender roles, even though Song

was not born a female.

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The previous passage from the play also brings racial stereotypes into the situation. A

common stereotype about Orientals is that they are submissive and quiet, and that they let

themselves be dominated. This is what Song means when he says that he could never completely

be a man; he could not behave in a masculine and dominant manner, which are characteristics

that men are expected to have. As a matter of fact, Balaev claims, “Social categories of genders

create elaborate scripts detailing how persons should act in order to be a real or “true” woman or

man” (Balaev 609). Thus, Song is neither fully a man or fully a woman, and so the lines

between “male” and “female”—as well as the connotations that go along with them—are

blurred. Some may say that the fact that opposites such as these are present in the novel indicate

Hwang is trying to emphasize the notions of man vs. woman and East vs. West, but in reality

Hwang is trying to subvert them: By having two traditionally “opposite” characters fall in love

with each other, he attempts to unify the two sides. In fact, Balaev states, “Literally and

metaphorically, Gallimard moves across the market of exchange in terms of gendered bodies and

nations. In the end, Gallimard finally resolves his identity conflict rooted in myths of gender by

becoming his own unattainable woman finally attained” (Balaev 616). In other words, Gallimard

at the end of the play is a mix of binaries. He has merged both sides of the spectrum into one.

The Left Hand of Darkness offers insight into the theory of gender roles in an ironic way:

by getting rid of genders. Ursula K. Le Guin herself states, “I eliminated gender, to find out what

was left” (Pennington 352). By eliminating the concept of male and female in her novel, we are

able to see what is different in terms of gender roles if there were no genders. For example, the

way that Gethenians reproduce in the novel is through a process called kemmer. There is a

certain period when and individual can randomly adopt a gender; either male or female. Thus,

each individual has an equal chance of being male or female for a certain time, but for the rest of
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the year they are androgynous. Child-rearing is done by both parents on an equal plane—there

are no gender roles here. Whereas traditionally, the father is the source of income and the mother

stays at home cleaning, cooking, and caring for the kids, each parent takes the same measures

when it comes to raising their children. And the same goes for essentially all aspects of

Gethenian society: “Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves,

protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole

tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on

Winter” (Le Guin 94). In addition, “…since masculinity and femininity—gender concerns—are

as fluid as the Gethenians who, as androgynous creatures, have the potential to be both male and

female. It follows that if biological gender differences are insecure, then sociological distinctions

separating the masculine from the feminine are also insecure” (Pennington 353). In short, by

getting rid of traditional genders in the story, we are able to see clearly where the differences in

social roles lie by comparing the ones in the novel to the ones in real life.

Both M. Butterfly and The Left Hand of Darkness focus on different aspects of society,

especially binary opposites. M. Butterfly deals with the issue of racial stereotypes as well as themes

like homosexuality and transsexuality, while The Left Hand of Darkness revolves around gender

roles. Both of these works attempt to subvert these binary opposites by exploring new ways of

thinking about topics that previously were taboo. In a modern-day society such as ours, it is

imperative that we come to adopt an open mindset and accept people’s differences—especially

when it comes to race and gender; only then will world peace be achievable.
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Works Cited

Balaev, Michelle. “Performing Gender and Fictions of the Nation in David Hwang’s M.

Butterfly.” Forum for World Literature Studies, no. 4, 2014, p. 608. EBSCOhost,

library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr

&AN=edsgcl.398253065&site=eds-live.

Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. New York : New American Library, c1988., 1988

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York : Ace Books, 2000, ©1969., 2000.

Pennington, John. “Exorcising Gender: Resisting Readers in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Left Hand of

Darkness.” Extrapolation, no. 4, 2000. EBSCOhost,

library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr

&AN=edsgcl.68704463&site=eds-live.

Shimakawa, Karen. “‘Who’s to Say?’ Or, Making Space for Gender and Ethnicity in ‘M.

Butterfly.’” Theatre Journal, no. 3, 1993, p. 349. EBSCOhost,

library.lavc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsglr

&AN=edsgcl.14617715&site=eds-live.
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