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Likewise. It's hard to believe the author of The Left Hand of Darkness did a bit of accidental misogyny, rather than choosing to comment on misogyny in the culture she was describing.
Speaking of which, she also wrote some excellent sci-fi, not least that one I just mentioned.
useless-
The Left Hand of Darkness
Which I assume is the book @ltc was talking about. It's not a good treatment of gender. A world full of people who have no gender most of the time, but both the protagonist and the author consistently refer to the characters in male terms when they're in active, important roles and female when not. Genly calls the overweight, gossipy, nosey person who rents him a room his landlady, but the country is ruled by a king.
did a bit of accidental misogyny
Internalised misogyny is a constant thing in most of her books, which remind me a lot of Mary Renault, who did the same thing. In the first Earthsea book there are almost no female characters and all but one of them are evil or weak and let Ged down or betray him. They're even more absent from the third. Same pattern in The Dispossessed: an anarchist utopia where the very language they speak is designed to make the articulation of bigotry difficult, but almost no involvement of women in the plot and one of them is the protagonist's mother who... is malevolent and spiteful and spends her whole time attacking her son's work and mission. Have to wonder what kind of a relationship the author had with her own mother.
Le Guin was criticised for this all through her writing career, conceded herself that it was an issue and the belated fourth Earthsea book was explicitly written to address it. Surprised any of this is news to you both.
itsbruce
Hmmm, I might have got completely the wrong end of the stick but knowing Le Guin's politics and having read some of her other work which tackles gender, it didn't come across as outright misogynistic to me. It read more as a commentary on misogyny and how women are portrayed in literature. I may be giving her too much credit though, I've not read up on it much to be honest!