Musing: books - Ursula Le Guin, a perfectly normal part of life?

[wilderthan]

I just finished reading The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin. A thing that strikes me about her writing is a lack of judgement. She definitely has her opinions, but I didn't feel as if The Dispossessed told me to feel one way or the other about communism. In The Wave In The Mind, she even managed to talk about incest avoidance (in an essay about genetic determinism) without letting on in the slightest what she thinks about people who, well, don't avoid incest.

One thing that struck me though, in reading The Dispossessed, was that homosexuality was just an accepted part of the world. Homosexuality is mentioned, not for special interest or anything, but because it's a part of life. And homosexual characters are characters first, and their sexuality is a part of them like their hair and skin are a part of them, rather than a part of their characterisation as such.

I've come across the same kind of attitude from her before. There's just... no judgement about the things that people do. Her characters do sometimes judge, but she doesn't. I know that Sutty in The Telling has/had a female lover, and I think there might have been some prejudice against her, but all the same, it was clear to me that it wasn't Le Guin making the judgement.

I find that so refreshing. Where homosexuality isn't condemned, particularly in fandom and also in literature, it's usually the centerpiece or it's there to make a point. The fact that Le Guin has homosexual characters as a matter of course and that they're not treated as something special or different really makes me long for that to be a reality. I sort of imagine someone saying to her, "I'm gay," and her responding, "so? What's that got to do with anything?", with the picture I get from The Dispossessed.

Comments

[calliopepurple.livejournal.com]

I like that too. I got a book for my birthday, Slow River by Nicola Griffith, where the main character is a lesbian. There's no big deal made about it, it just is that way, like said protagonist's describing part of her family as "my uncle and his husband". At the end, when it turns out that the protagonist was molested by her mother, there's no attempt to say that's what made her gay. It's simply an explanation for her dreams of monsters.

Writers need to do that more often, I think.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

That sounds interesting. I haven't come across it happening much at all, really. There's usually either no mention of homosexuality, or they have some reason for mentioning it -- and then it's often demonised..

[calliopepurple.livejournal.com]

It's good near-future science fiction that just happens to have gay characters. Not like Mercedes Lackey's Herald-Mage trilogy, which was a gay character who just happened to be in an emotionally wrenching fantasy series.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I might try it. :)

[meowwl.livejournal.com]

I've found myself re-reading "The Left Hand of Darkness" more than once amoung the years, and each time, I notice something new.

I find her attitude to sexual orientation refreshing...It kind of points to me that your sexual orientation shouldn't be something to judge you by, any more than your skin color should.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I've read it a couple of times, too. I'm reading one of her short story anthologies, The Birthday Of The World, right now, and the gender issues are all very interesting. There's a short story set on Winter in that, too, which very much focuses on the sexuality issues.

And I dearly wish people would all be like that. For now, though, I have to settle for terribly inquisitive, somewhat belligerent, and protestations of how I'm "different" when I claim I'm just normal. :p I consider myself only different in the way that people with red hair are different, but straight people don't often seem to accept that. Mind, that could also come from the fact that I'm only eighteen and most of the people I spend time with have barely put any consideration to it.

[lassarina]

It kind of reminds me of reading source material for Exalted, in which people clearly take lovers of any gender they feel like (and one particular race can ONLY be made by matings between an animal and a human when other specific conditions are met), and there's a total lack of judgment there.