Orientalist myth construes the Arab as simultaneously hyper-sexualized and passive.

Evidence

The difficulty with this view is that it complicates the passivity amongst Arabs assumed by Orientalists like Patai and even Hamady and the others. But it is in the logic of myths, like dreams, exactly to welcome radical antitheses. For a myth does not analyze or solve problems. It represents them as already analyzed and solved; that is, it presents them as already assembled images, in the way a scarecrow is assembled from bric-a-brac and then made to stand for a man. Since the image uses all material to its own end, and since by definition the myth displaces life, the antithesis between an over-fertile Arab and a passive doll is not functional. The discourse papers over the antithesis. An Arab Oriental is that impossible creature whose libidinal energy drives him to paroxysms of over-stimulation—and yet, he is as a puppet in the eyes of the world, staring vacantly out at a modern landscape he can neither understand nor cope with. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 789

Categorization

• DEFINE: Said defines how myth operates as a representational device that papers over internal contradictions, a key mechanism for how Orientalist discourse manufactures its object.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 789