The gendering of mythic figures is structurally enforced, not incidental.

Evidence

Just as Oedipus has to be male, Echo has to be female. (Narcissus as figured can go both ways and, as we have seen, in the banalized psychic-problematic interpretation, has been most often located in the female.) Echo is female figured because the asymmetry of the reward-punishment compensation circuit between herself and Tiresias is equalized, still asymmetrically, from the moment of the impossibility of echoing as punishment. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1497

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Spivak’s strategic essentialism project: gendered figuration as enforced positionality rather than chosen identity — echo of the bind she traces for the subaltern who cannot ‘choose’ essentialism. — connects to: Patriarchal societies deploy myths deliberately to impose their laws — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 666

Broader Connections

• Patriarchal societies deploy myths deliberately to impose their laws #expands (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 666