I won't touch on the actual gender issues because I don't feel that I know the play or Le Guin well enough. But here's where I started making faces: "Fair or unfair, I question the wisdom of radically changing a Shakespeare play just as I’d question the wisdom of chipping at the Venus of Milo to make her thinner so as to suit modern ideas of beauty, or repainting the Sistine Ceiling to brighten it up, or performing the Halleluiah Chorus in waltz time."


She seems to assume that her examples are things that no reasonable human could support? Okay. First of all, there is a difference between the first two examples and the last-- I do not recommend destroying priceless works of art, no. But actually? If someone made a reproduction of the Venus de Milo and then chipped at it to get to suit modern ideas of beauty, that would be an interesting piece of commentary.

And as for the Hallelujah Chorus? I'm humming it as a waltz right now. It's catchy.