Editing Jorge Luis Borges (section)

===Sexuality and perception of women===
The story "[[The Sect of the Phoenix]]" is famously interpreted to allude to the ubiquity of sexual intercourse among humans{{sfn|Williamson|2004|p=489|loc="years later Borges would tell Ronald Christ that he meant the Secret to refer to sexual intercourse"}} – a concept whose essential qualities the narrator of the story is not able to relate to. With a few notable exceptions, women are almost entirely absent from Borges's fiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=The Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges's "El muerto" and "La intrusa"|type=paper|work=XIX Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress|place=Washington DC|date=September 1995}}</ref> However, there are some instances in Borges's later writings of romantic love, for example the story "[[Ulrikke (short story)|Ulrikke]]" from ''[[The Book of Sand (book)|The Book of Sand]]''. The protagonist of the story "El muerto" also lusts after the "splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo Bandeira<ref name="Hurley 1988">{{Citation|translator=[[Andrew Hurley (academic)|Hurley, Andrew]]|year=1988|title=Jorge Luis Borges: Collected Fictions|place=New York|publisher=Penguin}}</ref>{{rp|197}} and later "sleeps with the woman with shining hair".<ref name="Hurley 1988" />{{rp|200}} Although they do not appear in the stories, women are significantly discussed as objects of unrequited love in his short stories "The Zahir" and "The Aleph".<ref name="Hurley 1988" />{{Page needed|date=August 2015}} The plot of ''La Intrusa'' was based on a true story of two friends. Borges turned their fictional counterparts into brothers, excluding the possibility of a homosexual relationship.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Keller|first1=Gary|first2=Karen S.|last2=Van Hooft |title= The Analysis of Hispanic Texts: Current Trends in Methodology|editor1-first=Lisa E.|editor1-last=Davis|editor2-first=Isabel C.|editor2-last=Tarán|publisher=Bilingual P|year=1976|pages=300–19|chapter=Jorge Luis Borges' "La intrusa": The Awakening of Love and Consciousness/The Sacrifice of Love and Consciousness}}</ref>

"[[Emma Zunz]]" is a story with an eminent female protagonist. Originally published in 1948, this work tells the tale of a young Jewish woman who kills a man in order to avenge the disgrace and suicide of her father. She carefully plans the crime, submitting to an unpleasant sexual encounter with a stranger in order to create the appearance of sexual impropriety in her intended victim. Despite the fact that she premeditates and executes a murder, the eponymous heroine of this story is surprisingly likable, both because of intrinsic qualities in the character (interestingly enough, she believes in nonviolence) and because the story is narrated from a "remote but sympathetic" point of view that highlights the poignancy of her situation.<ref>Brodzki, Bella. "'She Was Unable Not to Think': Borges' 'Emma Zunz' and the Female Subject." MLN, vol. 100, no. 2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, p. 338, https://doi.org/10.2307/2905740.</ref>