The Left Hand of Darkness

Genly is an unreliable narrator, continuously projecting his own perspective onto Gethenian societies. This is in some ways unavoidable: every anthropologist is biased by their own cultural context. Genly is no exception to this, even serving as a representative for Le Guin's critique of anthropology as a discipline. Note the following passage from Chapter 1, which exemplifies this unreliable narration:

Though I had been nearly two years on Winter I was still far from being able to see the people of the planet through their own eyes. I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own. [...] Estraven’s performance had been womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit. Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him? 

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Chapter 7 of The Left Hand of Darkness is an anthropological assessment on "The Question of Sex," taken from the field notes of an anthropologist from the first Ekumenical landing party on Winter. The following excerpt from this anthropologist's account includes a curious example of situational irony:

The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

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