The Attempt 

Genly Ai's struggles to see the Gethenians as they see themselves was when he went to an unknown planet that people are considered to be neither male or female. Also, Genly is used to call the Gethenians as he or she because on Genly’s planet which is basically like Earth, that is the universal law to be either male or female. On Gethan, the people are not considered female or male and Genly hasn’t really gotten over the matter of looking at Gethenians and not worrying about calling them a male or female. Genly just accept their tradition and he categorize because that’s what seems normal for him. However, for the Gethenians' point of view, they don’t see each other as female or male until their kemmer season, they see each other as just regular humans beings. They ignore their gender and focus more at each other with their souls. Not being able to accept this causes a culture board for him in a sense, but what also cause a culture board is the fact that Genly seems to be more like a real life human (like from our reality, you know from Earth) which causes Gethenians to also not accept him, they see him as a pervert because he’s a male full time. Genly’s attitudes reveal about his world is that it’s more like ours and that their used to identifying each other as male or female. When he identify a female she and a male he, Genly knows how and what to talk about with them.