Borges' sexuality  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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With a few exceptions, women are almost entirely absent from the majority of Jorge Luis Borges's fictional output.

There are, however, some instances in Borges's writings of romantic love, for example the story "Ulrikke" from The Book of Sand. The protagonist of the story "El muerto" also lusts after the "splendid, contemptuous, red-haired woman" of Azevedo Bandeira and later "sleeps with the woman with shining hair". 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". 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.

There has been discussion of Borges’ attitudes to sex and women. Estela Canto, who had known Borges since 1944, asserted in Borges a contraluz (1989) that Borges’ attitude to sex was one of “panicked terror”. According to Canto, Borges’ father had arranged a meeting between his son and a prostitute, out of a concern that a nineteen-year-old Argentine boy should not be a virgin.

See also

• The Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges' "El muerto" and "La intrusa" Herbert J. Brant [1]
• http://blog.jahsonic.com/the-two-of-us-should-take-a-walk-together