When it changed

First off, i would like to say that (coming from a female point of side) why do men feel more superior to us? We are different in some aspects like emotions and physical body parts but we are still apart of the same species. The stories brings up the male characters as aliens and the cause to inferior emotions. like being away from the opposite gender for a long while, and still surviving, can make you feel inferior if some random aliens comes saying that they are here to save you from yourself basically. they looked like they were slowly beginning to forget about ever having another gender. Like the feelings that a myth told to you when you were a child all of a sudden came true and that your life was going to change forever. I thought that the author was trying to show a story about what would happen if all the male gender on earth died out in a plague which was a mildly interesting situation.

it got me thinking when i read the line saying "where i come from, the women don't dress so plainly.", it made me thinking about society as it is now. the reasons why women like to dress so "non-plain". Do we do it just because there are another gender living with us and we are trying to attract them. And we WANT to attract them because they are so foreign to us?

The end.

Wow we finished the book! and it didn't take that long too! well I'm really surprised i actually really did enjoy this book. I'm still a little confused about why Le Guin would chose a title for this story. i mean yes there is the and it gives you a idea of where it came from, but i mean why that line? why only left side and it having to be darkness? Is it portraying genry or estraven? is it talking about how that world is the yin to our yang? The possibilities are endless, and I'm not sure, in my group today, we ever came up with a solid answer.

I think the last chapter was a good ending. we got to finally see what our minds were always wondering about, or well what my mind was wondering about. i always wanted to know if estraven had a special relationship with his brother. And that was the reason why he had to be exiled from his homeland and his brother died. Its a good parallel to chapter 2. it talked about the two brothers and how they had incest and then a child. So i guess chapter two was a foreshadow or was there to tell us the truth. i really was happy though when i found out estraven had a son with his brother though. that is because there was like a little part left of him after he died. his son (not from Ashe) seemed mad at estraven for begin exiled from the land and was branded a trator. but i thought it was cute that he forgave estraven right after genry told him that argaven was going to take back the traitor title on estraven. Also right after he asked about the other worlds and estraven which means he must have been curious about his father and is like estraven in a way that he also found other worlds interesting.

all in all it is always sad to read to the end of a book but at least it didn't end in a cliffhanger cause that would be a bust. =]

one paragraph homework.

When Ms. Aaland told us to write a story in ten minuets i was more worried about finishing a interesting story then paying attention to pronoun use. But i think the short amount of time was to force us into using the first gender that pops in our head for our characters. I noticed that i was very stereotypical. i found that interesting because I'm always the one to point out sexism or stereotyping mainly because its just there. I believe that women and men should be equal because whatever academic achievement there is, a women can always match a mans. After writing my story though, i found myself giving the more challenging and higher paying jobs to a male roll. It was not intentional but was there either way. Even though our generation is more equal, the work world shows us more men having higher jobs, so that effected my mind set. The data we collected in class and the years before gave us a very clear picture of how men still dominated. Mainly, this activity made me more aware of my pronoun use.

The ever to none creative Chapter 16,17

Just like the title says. i found chapter 16 to be the most boring. Or well the most uneventful. Is it because it was from estravens point of view or there was just lots of walking to be done and nothing exciting to write in between?

Okay well i can't say that the whole chapter was boring because one paragraph did catch my attention. it was on page 234 and top of page 235. It was the part that genry was trying to explain to estraven what the definition of a women was. at first i was thinking that he would say physical body differences and then he started going on about jobs and emotions. i found myself rejecting every idea he gave out because it sounded to stereotypical and sexist. But then i started thinking to myself what the my real definition of a male or female was and found out that it was also hard for me to explain too. We were also talking about this question in class for a little while, and i think we also came to a agreement. It was decided that we can't put a general definition on the emotion or characteristics of genders. But we can put one on the physical body structure of a person to determine if they are female or male. okie that sounded weird coming from me... stream of consciousness. =]

i doubt there will ever be a formal definition for a gender any time soon.

Who knew he had it in him?

First off, i want to give estraven a big thumbs up! who knew that he cared enough to break into a prison, steal, lie, and fraud as several people just to save the envoy. Dame he is one smart guy. Or maybe those guards either didn't care or were really stupid.. Anyway after this chapter everything seems to fit more. And its easier to not suspect estraven of being up to no good. Today in class we were talking about chapter 13 and how genry got captured and drugged in the prison. While we were discussing it, some of the people in the group and either said they read the chapter 14 by mistake or read a head. i remember them telling us that tonight's chapter was going to be the climax of the story. After reading it, i agree with them.

One of the best parts in the story to me was on page 198-199 when estraven said: "yet you are. it is strange. i am the only man in all of gethen that has trusted you entirely, and i am the only man in gethen that you have refused to trust." It almost makes me think that estraven is hurt by the fact that when he can finally trust someone, he is not trusted back. It also seemed that estraven had always been interested in joining with the eukemen to the point that when he said nativism toward a country is hatred toward another country is a good point. you can't put a boundary on land and say that you hate it, cuz land really doesn't have a boundary. And in having Orgota establish a connection with the eukemen first then karhide would most likely follow. He seems to jsut want to advance the people that live on the world.

A man can do WHAT?! 0_o

second blog! well, tonight i read the chapters eight and nine. i liked both chapters, but i guess this first paragraph will go to chapter eight. first off i want to say that im still very confused whenever i hear the words "him". It is okie when the story is talking about common actions but when they put the word him in sentences with giving birth... its weird. i read the sentence during the beginning of the story when the villagers were talking about how the king was to old to be giving birth. But to me, i was like Genry, i was thinking that it is was more weird to be thinking that the king was giving birth. usually when i hear the word king i think male and on a place i like to call earth, males do not give birth. Other then that weird confusion in my head, i also like how genry describes Orgora. Its sound like a place i would more likely go to live. The way genry describes orgota makes Karhide sound more stuffy, less colorful and elegant. which sorta sounds boring to me.

Chapter nine was another short story back into the past of the history of the world. at first when i the name estraven i was thinking that it was going to be story about when he was younger and had kemmering with his brother. or i had guessed in another chapter that he had vowed his first and only true kemmering to his brother. But the story turned out to be how he and the whole city go that name which was itnreasting too.

Chapter 5

This weekend we read chapter five. As this is my first blog, i feel like talking about two parts of the story that really made me read, blink, reread and think over. The first was a little culture shock that he mentioned. like the fact that his landlady may not have given birth but has fathered four children makes me aware yet again that they are aliens to me. In my mind i sorta just have the mind set that they are just almost like humans,until they throw something like that at me again.

what i really like in the story was the last page. Faxe was talking about how "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. ignorance is the ground of thought. unproof is the ground of action." This really made me think about how our lives are really based on the unknown. Its what makes the world go around. If you think about it, if we knew everything that was to happen in our lives we wouldn't have a purpose. like for example, if we knew that we were gonna die in 5 days, we would only think of the remaining five days as one day closer to dying. where else if we didn't know, then we could live the rest of those days with less stress. If we knew everything then we wouldn't have to make new inventions or study or go to school. it makes me think life would be all together more boring if we knew everything. It also brings me back to the story of bead women. The two similar themes were: everyone wishes to know everything but what would happen if you knew everything?

Overall though, i like how the journey is described from a traveler's point of view. i like it because a traveler would be more aware of surroundings then compared to a person born in that country.