Halfway Human

Carolyn Ives Gilman

Completed 11/25/2018, Reviewed 11/25/2018

4 stars

This was a fascinating book.  It’s about a planet that has three sexes: male, female, and neuter.  The plot follows one neuter as it recounts its life story to humans from another planet.  While the book is basically about sexuality, it is more strongly about slavery and oppression and the what happens to the minds of slaves.  The book is a rough read, particularly because of the sexual abuse the main character endures, and also because of the slave mentality that the main character can’t seem to break out of.  I really enjoyed it, though, finding it a provocative tale that mirrors so much of society today in many different ways.

The story begins with Tedla, a neuter being known as bland, having been found on a planet light years from home, after a suicide attempt.  The locals have never seen a bland before and the doctor calls her daughter Val, a Xenologist to come and interview Tedla.  It takes a while for Val to gain Tedla’s confidence, but soon its story comes out.  Tedla is a fugitive from its home planet where it, like all blands, are slaves to the gendered people.  In fact, the blands are not considered humans at all.  This is because all beings on this planet are sexless until puberty and are only considered born once they develop sex organs.  Thus, blands are not considered born and are therefore not human.  Val tries to figure out why Tedla attempted suicide, but instead, she gets an amazing story of life growing up on a world that discriminates between gendered and genderless beings. 

Tedla’s story begins as a child growing up in a group home, as all children are.  It (and I use the pronoun it because that is the preferred pronoun according to Tedla) has some interactions with blands as they help raise the children.  That is how we begin to learn of the culture of the blands.  However, at about age twelve, they are given a test to determine if they are becoming gendered.  Tedla is horrified to find out it is a bland, and immediately the cruel treatment begins.  It then goes through a series of guardians, the nice word for owners, some of whom treat it well, some not.  Through a series of circumstances, Tedla ends up with an alien from another planet as guardian and stubbornly begins to learn the innate immorality of the treatment of blands.

As I mentioned earlier, the sexuality is the obvious issue being discussed, that being differently gendered makes one a non-human.  Tedla endures sexual abuse just for being a neuter, even though it is illegal to do so.  Basically, it begins its life as a bland as a sexual slave.  Eventually, Tedla gets out of that situation and becomes simply a slave, as all blands are.  This is really the crux of the book.  The blands live below the humans in what is called greyspace.  They come up to the human city via doorways that are in every dwelling.  They cook, clean, take care of the children, basically doing everything we think of slaves doing.  They are indoctrinated into believing they are less than human and need their guardians for all direction.  They are made to not believe that they are capable of independent thought or action.  Even when Val is interviewing Tedla, it believes that it can’t function without a guardian, despite all evidence to the contrary.  When the alien comes from another planet to study this race, his mere presence is enough to make the planet believe that he has come to overturn their society and free the blands. 

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s very powerful in its representation of the evils of slavery.  It’s a tough read, only because Tedla’s life story is so devastating.  There’s a great twist at the end as well that makes it all that much more deplorable.  But I highly recommend this book as one to read for its message as well as its excellent writing and story line.