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Originally Posted by latepaul
[...] Also, in the passage in 18, the issue arises because Estraven suddenly goes quiet and Genly decides to tackle it explicitly, saying he thinks it's because of shifgrethor which he acknowledges he doesn't get. AFICS it's never really resolved what Estraven's silence was about.
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On its own, Estraven's silence could simply have been that it was tired and didn't feel like talking. Surely this is something everyone feels at various times. However a bit later in that scene we have:
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[Estraven] explained, stiffly and simply, that he was in kemmer and had been trying to avoid me, insofar as one of us could avoid the other. “I must not touch you,” he said, with extreme constraint
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So there is sexual tension here. It's a very strong tension on Estraven's part because (we know from prior explanation) that kemmer involves very strong compulsion, and that the gender change during kemmer is driven partly by the company, so we would assume Estraven is becoming the female aspect of kemmer. Silence seems an appropriate part of the self-constraint required.
That Genly might have a revelation about the nature of gender on Gethen at this point seems okay, but how this helps to understand shifthregor is still unclear to me.