Rainbow in Gethen: Queer utopia and community collectivism in Ursula K. Le Guin's “Coming of Age in Karhide”

Abstract

This essay seeks to examine how Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction short story “Coming of Age in Karhide” (1995) set in the planet of Gethen in the fictional Hainish universe envisions a political utopia of sequentially hermaphroditic humans to offer a succinct critique of traditional gender roles and conventional sexual customs while celebrating the potential of collective responsibility. While maintaining that the recent scholarship on queer utopias in SF has largely geared toward posthumanist articulations, the present essay argues that Ursula K. Le Guin who laid the genre conventions of queer utopic narratives unabashedly places her short story “Coming of Age in Karhide” within the ideals of humanism by upholding community as a unifying entity, at the same time carefully avoiding the pitfalls of anthropocentrism. Drawing from queer theorists and social scientists, this essay, while exemplifying the implications of a futuristic gender-neutral society, albeit partially, examines Le Guin's celebration of community collectivism in “Coming of Age in Karhide” to argue that the integration with the values and expectations of the larger community occasions individual growth and identity formation of the teenage protagonist and thereby, attests to the author's humanistic temperament.