Mastodawn

May 8, 2023

Ursula K. Le Guin discussing her regrets about not using more gender-neutral language in her book 'The Left Hand of Darkness', the significance of pronouns, and the grammatical accuracy of the singular 'they':

"English has a truly ungendered pronoun only in the plural. He, she, and it are gendered, they is not. [...] Historically, and colloquially, they has been regularly used as an ungendered or bisexual singular."

🔗: http://theliterarylink.com/afterword.html

#UrsulaKLeguin #gender #diversity #pronouns

Afterward to Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin 1994 | The Literary Link

Since my post on Ursula K. Le Guin's approach to gender-neutral pronouns and her being firmly in support of the singular 'they' is still getting some traction, it's also worth sharing this long but definitely interesting interview to The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) from 2017 where she revisits the subject, among several other things.

'A Conversation on Craft with Ursula K. Le Guin'
🔗: https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_chronicle_view/4249/a_conversation_on_craft_with_ursula_k._le_guin

#UrsulaKLeguin #gender #diversity #pronouns #books #bookstodon

Association of Writers & Writing Programs

AWP provides community, opportunities, ideas, news, and advocacy for writers and teachers of writing.

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Alina Leonova May 9, 2023

@fringemagnet I'm reading Left Hand of Darkness now, and "he" keeps confusing me because I can't stop myself from imagining a man when I read that, even though I know these people are genderless. It makes sense that it's because of when it was written, but it's still annoying 😅

@AlinaLeonova It definitely *is* annoying and distracts you from imagining the characters as truly genderless, and it is one of the major criticisms that the book received too. The good thing is that she ended up fully acknowledging that and admitting to wishing she would have done it differently. But yeah, it's confusing af. XD

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Alina Leonova

@fringemagnet That's definitely not Ursula Le Guin's fault, she had to work with whatever was possible at the time, and she managed to write a progressive book despite that. I'd personally prefer a made-up pronoun since "they" wasn't an option, but I respect her opinion that she "couldn't do it to English" even though I disagree 😁 Having used "she" instead of "he" as a default would have been cooler too, though still not right.