patricia wheeler compares gilman's treatment of gender and sexuality, and particularly her attempt to create a character that exhibits neither male nor female characteristics, to left hand of darkness by ursula le guin. wheeler mentions that many criticized le guin for ultimately failing to create characters that did not exhibit gendered traits, and suggests that this failure could possibly be evident in halfway human as well, depending on how the reader chooses to imagine tedla. wheeler wonders "is it possible to see it [tedla] as completely without gender attributes?" wheeler remarks on gilman's use of the juxtaposition of capellan and gammadian societies in her story as a way to examine how gender is treated in our society.