Regarded as one of the best writers in the science fiction/fantasy genre, Le Guin's beef was getting stuck in that particular box and, worse, that that box has never been highly regarded in literary circles. The better literary publications and literary critics don't give much attention to fantasy and science fiction. Le Guin thought she deserved better, and she was probably right.
"The word genre came to imply something less, something inferior, and came to be commonly misused, not as a description, but as a negative value judgment," she said in a speech she gave in Seattle in 2004. "Most people now understand 'genre' to be an inferior form of fiction, defined by a label, while realistic fictions are simply called novels or literature."
She puts it more succinctly and sarcastically in an essay called "Le Guin's Hypothesis," "So. Literature is the serious stuff you have to read in college, and genre is what you read for pleasure, which is guilty." Similar comments pop up here and there throughout the book.
In that Seattle speech she said, "Some 'literary' novelists have performed amazing contortions to preserve their pure name from the faintest taint of genre pollution." In her book reviews she named names, including the likes of Margaret Atwood. Jose Saramago and Jeanette Winterson. About the latter, she complained, "Winterson is trying to keep her credits as a 'literary' writer even as she openly commits genre" in The Stone Gods. She lets H.G. Wells off the hook because he wrote his classic stories like The Time Machine before there even was a genre.
It is not clear whether Le Guin was really critical of those who "commit genre" without ever getting charged with the crime or simply envious of them. She got stuck in the genre ghetto and was never able to escape.
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