Examples Of Gender Stereotypes In Sphinx

Throughout the novel Sphinx, written by Anne Garreta, I constantly run into the issue of gendering the characters in this genderless novel through the stereotypes that are placed on gender. From how the characters act, speak, and think, I often apply those stereotypes to the characters within this novel. This includes the pre-assumptions that one who is more closed off, cold, emotionless, arrogant, and stubborn is a man. Whereas, someone who is more optimistic, open, friendly, entertaining, and reserved is a woman. This preconceived notion of gender leads to the misconception of what gender is and generalizes a wide category of gender into the stereotypes and assumptions that are already in place. Ultimately, making gender and the stereotype

Such as when the narrator showed their jealousy about the glances that A*** received by stating, “I wanted to wrest A*** from their company, from the intrusive glances clinging to us there, and hide us both away.” (Gerreta, 42). Though jealousy can be a trait that anyone can have, what the narrator specifically states after about A***’s body, showing “a firm behind”, we can assume that the narrator is referring to A***’s buttocks (Gerreta, 42). From what we can assume from this is that the narrator is a male due to their jealousy of other people seeing A***’s buttocks. This is because men’s gaze often gravitates towards a few areas, the buttocks being one of them, and is often jealous of other people seeing the person that they are in love with getting attention for their buttocks. Now, it is important to note that so far, I can only “assume” because all of these are just assumptions made about the narrator from how I have viewed gender. When in reality, all these traits that I have highlighted about jealousy, the gaze on A***’s buttock, and wanting to be alone with the person who you love are all traits that anyone of any gender to make. Furthermore, it goes back to the stereotypes that make us assume someone’s gender when really, we have no real evidence to back up our claim that

This simply implies that when we assign someone to gender, it is ultimately a reflection of ourselves as we are the ones who make those generalizations about gender, which is why the mirror is so prevalent throughout the novel. That we constantly place a division on people through their identities such as sexuality, gender, and race, and we categorize them in a way that ultimately divides us rather than unites us. We see this played out not in only us stereotyping the gender of the characters, but also in the sexuality of characters as well. Due to the things that are categorized as feminine or masculine, we may associate not only the genders of the narrator and A*** but also their sexuality. This is why the mirror is in place to stop us from making these generalizations. One example of this was when “I observed my naked form displayed in the mirror: was it really that important how I chose to veil my nudity?” (Gerreta, 43). In this quote, you see that the narrator is looking at themselves in the mirror, but without knowing the general description of what the narrator looks like besides their race, we have no idea how to paint the picture of what is happening. Thus, with these missing pieces to the picture, we paint our own picture, giving the narrator a gender, what we picture their body to look like, and basically their life that is unknown to us. Hence, it