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I. Gender on Gethen i. There is no fixed gender; go through kemmer ii. Sexual Deviants iii. II. Religion i.

The Harrandata and the cult of Meshe ii. Mythology? III. Politics i. ii. IV. Gender and religion - sexual tension and strange psychic energy leading to divination? V. Communication and Religion - religious ways seeped into the language VI. The danger of bias - the envoy who saw the people as effeminate, examples. We must be careful not to bring our cultural biases because we will not understand them as a people as example (Estraven and envoy). VIII. Conclusion: This is why we should send more anthropologists to the planet Winter. The following is a report on the relationship between gender, religion and communication on the planet Gethen (Winter). Gender, religion and communication are related in the following ways: through ritual (gender and religion), mythology (religion and communication), environment (religion and ?).

Cultural norms regarding sex. Sex is not something taboo. Gethenians accomadate each other whenever others are in kemmer. There are even kemmer houses so that one can meet a mate. However the subject of perverts is a little taboo, because they are socially shunned. They are considered sexual deviants. Why would they be considered deviant? Their nickname is half-deads. Incest is allowed so long as the siblings do not swear to be kemmerings (something like marraige, monogomous relationship). People may or may not form monogomous relationships, but it happens less often than it does within Terran culture. (Offer a conjecture here). The concept of shrifgrethor plays an important one between people and their interactions with one another. It is according to the envoy that I interviewed who has been on the planet for 3 years, a prestige game. Certain ways of phrasing can increase or decrease ones shrifgrethor, which is maybe something like reputation (?) check for quotes in the book. Environment is very harsh so people are pretty slow, which is related to the religion, something a bit like Taoism.

The Handdara is a religion without institution, without priests, without hierarchy, without vows, without creed; I am still unable to say whether it has a God or not. It is elusive. It is always somewhere else. Its only fixed manifestation is in the Fastnesses, retreats to which people may retire and spend the night or a lifetime. I wouldn't have been pursuing this curiously intangible cult into its secret places at all, if I hadn't wanted to answer the question left unanswered by the Investigators: What are the Foretellers, and what do they actually do? I had been longer in Karhide now than the Investigators had, and I doubted that there was anything to the stories of Foretellers and their prophecies. Legends of prediction are common throughout the whole Household of Man. Gods speak, spirits speak, computers speak. Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith. However, the legends were worth investigating. I hadn't yet convinced any Karhider of the existence of telepathic communication; they wouldn't believe it till they "saw" it: my position exactly,regarding the Foretellers of the Handdara. The Handdara is a religion without institution, without priests, without hierarchy, without vows, without creed; I am still unable to say whether it has a God or not. It is elusive. There are cloisters called Fastnesses where anyone may stay the night or a lifetime. . They were practicing the Handdara discipline of Presence, which is a kind of trancethe Handdarata, given to negatives, call it an untranceinvolving self-loss (self-augmentation?) through extreme sensual receptiveness and awareness. Though the technique is the exact opposite of most techniques of mysticism it probably is a mystical discipline, tending towards the experience of Immanence; but I can't categorize any practice of the Handdarata with certainty. .

It was an introverted life, self-sufficient, stagnant, steeped in that singular "ignorance" prized by the Handdarata and obedient to their rule of inactivity or noninterference. That rule (expressed in the word nusuth, which I have to translate as "no matter") is the heart of the cult, and I don't pretend to understand it. "Well, we come here to the Fastnesses mostly to learn what questions not to ask." "But you're the Answerers!" "You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?" "No""To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question." Handdara seek to unlearn to empty their minds of knowledge and preconceived notions. Practice of non action, emptying An Orgota Creation Myth The origins of this myth are prehistorical; it has been recorded in many forms. This very primitive version is from a pre-Yomesh written text found in the Isenpeth Cave Shrine of the Gobrin Hinterlands. in the beginning there was nothing but ice and the sun. Over many years the sun shining melted a great crevasse in theice. In the sides of this crevasse were great shapes of ice, and there was no bottom to it. Drops of water melted from the ice-shapes in the sides of the chasm and fell down and down. One of the ice-shapes said, "I bleed." Another of the ice-shapes said, "I weep." A third one said, "I sweat." The ice-shapes climbed up out of the abyss and stood on the plain of ice. He that said "I bleed," he reached up to the sun and pulled out handfuls of excrement from the bowels of the sun, and with that dung made the hills and valleys of the earth. He that said "I weep," he breathed on the ice and melting it made the seas and the rivers. He that said "I sweat," he gathered up soil and sea-water and with them made trees, plants, herbs and grains of the field, animals, and men. The plants grew in the soil and the sea, the beasts ran on the land and swam in the sea, but the men did not wake. Thirty-nine of them there were. They slept on the ice and would not move. Then the three ice-shapes stooped down and sat with their knees drawn up and let the sun melt them. As milk they melted, and the milk ran into the mouths of the sleepers, and the sleepers woke. That milk is drunk by the children of men alone and without it they will not wake to life. The first to wake up was Edondurath. So tall was he that when he stood up his head split the sky, and snow fell down. He saw the others stirring and awakening, and was

afraid of them when they moved, so he killed one afteranother with a blow of his fist. Thirty-six of them he killed. But one of them, the next to last one, ran away. Haharath he was called. Far he ran over the plain of ice and over the lands of earth. Edondurath ran behind him and caught up with him at last and smote him. Haharath died. Then Edondurath returned to the Birthplace on the Gobrin Ice where the bodies of the others lay, but the last one was gone: he had escaped while Edondurath pursued Haharath. Edondurath built a house of the frozen bodies of his brothers, and waited there inside that house for that last one to come back. Each day one of the corpses would speak, saying, "Does he burn? Does he burn?" All the other corpses would say with frozen tongues, "No, no." Then Edondurath entered kemmer as he slept, and moved and spoke aloud in dreams, and when he woke the corpses were all saying, "He burns! He burns!" And the last brother, the youngest one, heard them saying that, and came into the house of bodies and there coupled with Edondurath. Of these two were the nations of men born, out of the flesh of Edondurath, out of Edondurath's womb. The name of the other, the younger brother, the father, his name is not known. Each of the children born to them had a piece of darkness that followed him about wherever he went by daylight. Edondurath said, "Why are my sons followed thus by darkness?" His kemmering said, "Because they were bornin the house of flesh, therefore death follows at their heels. They are in the middle of time. In the beginning there was the sun and the ice, and there was no shadow. In the end when we are done, the sun will devour itself and shadow will eat light, and there will be nothing left but the ice and the darkness."

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