Escalante 1

Jose Escalante

English 102

Professor Batty

11/7/18

The “Norm”: Gender and Sexuality

Gender has always played an important role in societies, as a whole, and in how

people view their own sexuality. It has been dictated, since the time that hunter-gatherers

roamed the Earth, who does what based on gender; men being viewed as the providers

while women have been viewed as the caregivers. This gender norm has been accepted

ever since and the sexual traits associated with them. Gender has been viewed solely as a

binary, masculine and feminine; however, in more recent times this has been challenged

and questioned as the LGBTQ movement has grown. In the play “M. Butterfly” by David

Henry Hwang and the sci-fi novel “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin,

both Hwang and Le Guin discuss gender what really defines a person’s sexuality.

Hwang’s play “M. Butterfly” addresses gender in a subtle manner focusing more on

gender identity. In contrast, Le Guin’s novel “The Left Hand of Darkness” focuses more

on gender roles, sexuality and what defines sexuality. Although some may believe that

the gender they are born with determines their sexuality, this is not the case as the

experiences and actions people go through determine the sex someone chooses to identify

with.

In Hwang’s play he discusses the issue of gender and gender identity through both

Song and Rene. In Hwang’s play Chin says, “

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Don’t Forget: there is no homosexuality in China! /(Hwang 2.4.35)”

This is a defining moment in demonstrating Song’s identity crisis and her indecisiveness

when identifying with a certain gender. Rene has been seeing Song for a while and his

love for her has led her to believe that she love him as well. Song dresses as a woman

even when Rene isn’t around because of the comfort she feels in wearing this feminine

clothes she is so used to wearing. Although this this transformation is subtle, it has huge

effects on Song’s attitude and actions later on in the play and even in the way she ends up

feeling for Rene. Song is a man acting as a woman and dresses in woman’s clothes,

however she takes this role farther than it needs to go and because Rene truly believes

this lie he is living, Song begins to believe she is really a woman not a man on a mission

any more. Rene declares, “

Love warped my judgment, blinded my eyes… until I could look… and see

nothing but… a woman. / The love of a Butterfly can withstand many things… But…

The devastating knowledge that…the object of her love was nothing more, nothing less

than… a man.” (Hwang 3.3.27-29,36-40)

Rene has gone through a tremendous transformation and throughout the whole play has

been struggling with his identity and Song’s betrayal only solidified his gender crisis

even more. Rene finally gives up and realizes his true identity as a woman but kills

himself after realizing this. For so long he struggled to act like a man, strong,

commanding, authoritative, and driven, but has finally come to the conclusion that his

actions and experiences have brought out a more feminine side than masculine. Hwang

addresses gender through Rene and Song as both struggles with their gender identities
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throughout the play. Song is playing a part in order to spy for her country and in the end

appears to want to be a woman more than a man who falls in love with a man in a

country where it is illegal. Rene is a man who, from the beginning struggles to be a man’s

man but then meets Song, finds out she is really a man, and proceeds to kill himself after

declaring his womanhood. Like Hwang, Le Guin uses her characters to address gender,

but unlike Hwang, Le Guin addresses seaxuality more.

Le Guin touches repeatedly on the issue of gender using her main character, Ai to

challenge what defines a person’s sexuality. In her sci-fi novel “The Left Hand of

Darkness” the Gethenians inhabit the planet of Winter and are androgynous which

confuses Ai, as he doesn’t know how to refer to them. Ai finds this confusing as he is

from Earth and is used to seeing males act like males and women like women and their

sexuality determine the way they conduct themselves. In this novel Ai states, “My

landlady, a voluble man,... as I said, voluble… for he had fat buttocks that wagged as he

walked, and a soft fat face, and a prying, spying, ignoble, kindly nature.” (Le Guin p

49-50). Ai is still very much stuck in viewing gender through this binary lens of strictly

male and female and sexuality as heterosexual not androgynous. His landlady exhibits

certain characteristics that he believes pertain to woman so he decides to think of him as a

“landlady”.Oppong appears briefly in chapter seven of this novel but provides a huge

amount of insight into Gethenian life: family unites, social behaviors, and interactions.

Oppong the Investigator wrote, “Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally;...

Therefore nobody here is quite free as a free man anywhere else.” (Le Guin p.100). In

this note from Oppong Le Guin makes a very insightful point that used to be widely
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emphasized and that is that if a person is born a man and displays the tell tale

characteristics of a man they have, essentially, all the freedom in the world. This is

because of the idea that if a person is born a man he will be great, is strong, powerful, and

therefore has all the freedom he could want, so long as he continue acting like a man.

Once this person decides to stop acting like one, he loses his freedom which goes back to

sexuality because if a man does not act strong, confident, and dominant, then he is not

free. Oppong the Investigator goes on to say, “A child has no psycho-sexual relationship

to his mother or father.” (Le Guin p.100) In most, if not all, societies children tend to be

much closer to their mother because of the caring and nurturing nature woman have been

believed to play. Le Guin challenges this idea by making the Gethenians androgynous

which eliminates this stereotype that the woman in the relationship must carry the burden

of caring for the children, instead all people in Gethen are responsible for their offspring,

without one parent being more attached to them than the other simply because of the

gender role they must play and sex they must identity with or have. Le Guin’s novel and

Hwang’s play overlap when it comes to addressing gender but also diverge at some

points.

Both Hwang and Le Guin subvert gender norms and sexuality norms imposed by

society. Michelle Balaev wrote in her Article ​Performing gender and fictions of the

nation in David Hwang’s play M. Butterfly​,“Gallimard says that he was afraid to find out

Song's sexual identity because it would mean that he was even further away from being a

"real" man… Real men are defined by loving women. In order to be a Man, Gallimard

must find his Perfect Woman, for, without a Perfect Woman, what would he be?” (Balaev
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7). Balaev discusses Rene’s motive for accepting this lie he is living with Song and why

he fought so hard to find his “Perfect Woman”. Rene believes that since he is not the

typical male, like his friend Marc, he must compensate for this by finding who he

believes to be the perfect woman. However, when he finds out Song’s true identity and

sexuality, he goes through an identity crisis himself because before this he was sure he

was a man since he had the “Perfect Woman” to love him. In Leighton Grist’s article ​"It's

only a piece of meat": gender ambiguity, sexuality, and politics in The Crying Game and

M. Butterfly​, he wrote, “Gallimard has… believed Song to be female and has… enjoyed a

longstanding sexual relationship with him. Song moves near Gallimard and begins to

strip. Gallimard scurries into an interior, cell-like space and, slamming an iron mesh door

behind him, squeezes himself into the corner farthest from Song and rocks with anguish.

The naked Song commands, “Look at me.” Gallimard responds with nervous glances and

painful, lacerating laughter.” Grist talks about Rene’s uncomfortable attitude towards

Song after she reveals herself to be a man, which relates to the idea that society has

implemented that a woman and a man distinguish themselves by the way they act. Rene

runs from Song as she strips out of confusion as he sees the feminineness of Song’s

movements but the male exterior performing these actions, sending him into a state of

shock and histeria. Mona Fayad states in her article ​Aliens, androgynes, and

anthropology: Le Guin's critique of representation in The Left Hand of Darkness​ that ,

“Whether viewing gender as irreducible difference located in the body, or as a discursive

construct, the argument has centered on a heterosexual norm that assumes a division

between masculine and feminine identities…Yet, traditional discourse has offered an

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alternative to this binary opposition… thus minimizing the role of anatomy in defining

gender identity… Androgyny… [which] functions as a third term that neutralizes the

gendered way in which the subject is constructed.”(Fayad 1). Fayad believes that the term

“Androgyny” helps to eliminate the binary that exists in gender which is shown in Le

Guin’s novel as she has made the Gethenians an androgynous people. Ai has a hard time

referring to the Gethenians as male or female because of their androgynous nature since

he is still used to viewing gender as dualistic. However, Ai begins to fall in love with

Estraven, whom he refers to as a he, which makes him uncomfortable as he doesn’t know

which sex Estraven is. In the article ​Exorcising Gender: Resisting Readers in Ursula K.

Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness​ by John Pennington, Pennington wrote, “The Left Hand

of Darkness evokes a powerful individual reader response because each reader must

define his or her inner space where gender finds its own ideological space…”

(Pennington 3). Pennington is criticizing Le Guin’s chose in challenging gender norms

using the common language which uses binary gender language. This not only affects the

readers but Ai in this novel. Ai begins to refer to Gethenians as he and she because that is

the only way he knows to classify gender and sex. He sees no other way to classify them

and how they act because to him they either act like a man or a woman.

In conclusion, both Le Guin and Hwang address gender and sex in their texts

challenging this idea that sex and gender can only exist as binaries. Although this is not

the case, society has made it seem this way and even when attempting to refer to others

aside from these binaries, people can’t help but use this dualistic language of male and

female or heterosexual, homosexual/ lesbian to address people who identify with neither.
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Works Cited

1. Hwang, David H, and Giacomo Puccini. ​M. Butterfly.​ 1989. Print.

2. Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929-2018. ​The Left Hand of Darkness.​ 1987-1969. Print.

3. Balaev, Michelle. "Performing gender and fictions of the nation in David Hwang's M.

Butterfly." ​Forum for World Literature Studies​, vol. 6, no. 4, 2014, p. 608+. ​Literature

Resource Center​,

http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/A398253065/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS&xid=9

c324547. Accessed 7 Nov. 2018.

4. Grist, Leighton. "'It's only a piece of meat': gender ambiguity, sexuality, and politics in

The Crying Game and M. Butterfly." ​Cinema Journal​, vol. 42, no. 4, 2003, p. 3+.

Literature Resource Center,​

http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/A160418995/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS&xid=7

3232dc0. Accessed 7 Nov. 2018.

5. Fayad, Mona. "Aliens, androgynes, and anthropology: Le Guin's critique of

representation in The Left Hand of Darkness." ​Mosaic: A journal for the interdisciplinary

study of literature,​ vol. 30, no. 3, 1997, p. 59+. ​Literature Resource

Center,​ http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/A465696089/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS

&xid=291dd59e. Accessed 7 Nov. 2018.

6. Pennington, John. "Exorcising Gender: Resisting Readers in Ursula K. Le Guin's Left

Hand of Darkness." ​Extrapolation,​ vol. 41, no. 4, 2000, p. 351. ​Literature Resource

Center,​ http://library.lavc.edu:2102/apps/doc/A68704463/GLS?u=lavc_main&sid=GLS&

xid=14112b65. Accessed 7 Nov. 2018.