Since Genly Ai is from a different planet where a human is categorized as male or female, he faces many  challenges being on the planet Winter. Genly is so used to looking at someone and calling them he or she because on his planet, that’s normal. On Winter, they aren’t male or female. For Gethenians, they don’t see each other as male or female until their kemmer season, which is when they see each other as humans. They look pass their gender and look more at each other, like looking at a soul. Not being able to accept this causes a culture board for him in a sense, but what also causes a culture board is the fact that Genly seems to be more like a real life human which causes Gethenians to also not accept him, they see him as a pervert because he’s a male full time. Genly’s attitude reveals that his world is more like ours and that they're used to identifying each other as male or female. Calling a male he and female she, identifying them so Genly knows how and what to talk about with them.