In the introduction to her book, The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin states that what authors are “trying to do is tell you what they’re like, what you’re like-what’s going on-what the weather is now” etc., and the main thing Le Guin seems to be telling us in this story is how screwed up gender roles are. Admittedly, as this book was written in the 60s, we can recognize that this has changed at least somewhat. But when hearing Genly Ai describe what a woman is like to Estraven by saying “the heaviest single factor in one’s life, is whether one’s born male or female…it determines one’s expectations, activities, outlook, ethics manners” he furthermore states that women ”don’t often seem to turn up mathematicians, or composers of music, or inventors, or abstract thinkers” (p. 253). We still live in a world where much fewer women go into certain fields then men, the sciences and the military particularly come to mind, and it’s hard not to wonder whether humans will ever really evolve past our heteronormative society.