I keep meaning to finally work my way through Le Guin's Hainish series, and this short story is part of that. As in a couple of novels I've read from her, Le Guin's family background in anthropology comes through here, and it's more successful in short story form than it is in the longer works. That distancing effect of scholarship is less intrusive in bite-sized pieces, or at least it is for me. 

The real interest, though, lies in how gender and sexuality is treated on Karhide. Children and old people are essentially androgynous, but when an adolescent comes into sexual maturity, they develop the ability to present as either male or female, and neither of these states are permanent. What this means for the individual, for the community, and for sexual relationships within that community is explored in a way that is thoughtful, affecting, and not remotely exploitative. It's just very well done, although I do think the story could have lost the prologue bit. (I don't much care for prologues in speculative novels, and it seems half a punishment to have to slog through irrelevant histories in short stories as well!)