Gethen

Genly Ai is on a mission on Gethen to get them to join an alliance with other planets. However the Gethenians are not like other creatures, they have no gender. Well they have no gender for part of the month then during a time known as kemmer a Gethenian will either turn into a male or a female with their partner. This part of their culture makes it difficult for Genly to conform and be trusted since he is what they call a "pervert", because he is always a man. This hurts the King's trust in Genly because he is different and he fears the difference between them. Genly comes from a world that sounds like genders are very aware of their ways because he always talks about bad attributes of the Gethenians as female attributes and good ones as male attributes. This keeps him from understanding the Gethenians because he cannot understand them if he continues to see them as acting within a certain gender and not seeing them for what they are, genderless.