Genly Ai is -- essentially -- an alien tourist on a planet. He is attempting to fit the world around him into the views he has always lived. Gender is a significant aspect in Genly's society, and as such, he is trying to understand and accommodate the views of the people of Winter.
I can only imagine that the world Genly Ai comes from is one not too similar to our own but at least fundamentally similar in the case of gender. Chapter 7, "The Question of Sex", details the observations of one of the preceding Investigators sent by the Ekumen to study and observe the planet of Winter. The Investigator, Ong Tot Oppong, describes on pg. 94 how a society without gender could vary so dynamically from our (or the Ekumen's) own. The absence of a dominating gender has shifted the history of Winter from one unlike the history on Terra, alluded to be our planet Earth. On pg. 99, Genly notes how Winter has failed to accomplish an industrial revolution over the entire course of their civilization in thirty thousand years whereas the people of Terra accomplished far more in thirty decades; however, the people of Winter have never "paid the price that Terra paid."
Winter's history is slow, relatively nonviolent, and static, yet Genly Ai struggles to understand how a society can be build without a particularly significant cornerstones -- gender. Genly Ai's attitudes reveal that the world he comes from is one where his people not only differ in mindset from those on Winter but also anatomically.
I feel the same way about the people. I think that if I went to the planet Winter I would have a difficult time in familiarizing my self with the people of Winter. I think the parts about when Genly is the speaker, its hard to see the people of Winter because of how he is trying to tell the readers what he sees, but hes from a different place so that may also affect the view even more.
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