Le Guin presents to us, in The Left Hand of Darkness, with a breed of human which is truly biologically asexual, and posits that many of the traits we consider implicit to mankind are a result of the way we categorize behaviors, activities, ideologies and so forth in a male/female, dualistic manner. To strengthen the distinction between "us" (represented by Genly Ai) and "them" (the Gethenians in general and Estraven in particular), she gives us a very distinctive, stereotyped view of masculinity and femininity through Genly Ai early in the novel.

Le Guin's novel seems to be an interesting, if strange, subject -- bisexual individuals -- yet it seems that a majority of the sort of "oddness" that appears is either random differences from humans -- for example, not being able to say the "L" sound (Le Guin 30) -- or in the developing relationship between Genly and Estraven in the later parts of the novel. Other than that....most of the events and societal customs observed seem either familiar or not very outlandish.

[edit: Never mind. I ran into someone who caught me up. I'm keeping the post up here for the Le Guin link below]
I was down in San Diego during class today. Could someone give me a super-brief run-down of what we talked about? (e.g. The impact of Black=normal on racial/political relations in Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin's treatment of gender as ____, Soviet Union/USA metaphors, or whatever we ended up discussing). Thanks much!