Spoiler What Sex is Sheik?

[Hanyou]

The OoT manga is not canon.

Sheik is a disguise for Zelda and nothing more. They are the same character, and unless there's some grand revelation I'm unaware of, Zelda's a girl. Therefore, Sheik is a girl.

What information contained in the games leads people to conclude that Sheik is a guy? Yes, "she" is referred to as a male, but that's the whole point of the disguise!

As far as the rapid clothes-changing is concerned, that's just how people change in-game. Does the fact that Blue Tunic Link is an immediate change from Green Tunic Link mean that Link has somehow accessed some magical otherworld and brought out an alternate version of himself? A sex change is extreme; a simple disguise is not. Remember Occam's Razor: there is no reason to devise complicated explanations for things that can be easily explained, unless we're presented with evidence worthy of further examination. We are given no reason to assume anything other than the simplest explanation regarding Zelda's transformation into Sheik. There are countless stories of women who successfully disguised themselves as men even in the real world; Shakespeare's plays explored the subject on a regular basis. This "Sheik as a male" business complicates a very simple issue.

 

[Ooccoo Watcher]

If you want the true answer to the sex of Sheik go to the article in the article section titled "Sheik-Man or Woman, Male or Female", and read it.

 

[masksalesman_30]

I believe that Sheik is female. Maybe, zelda pretends to be a male to thicken her disguise from ganondorf, that would explain why ruto and everyone else thought she was male. In my opinion, zelda was just cross-dressing.

 

[TheWakerofWinds]

Zelda has magic, amirite? so she did a sex change when she changed into sheik. Even says so in Brawl (unless you don't count that as canon)

 

[DuckNoises]

Zelda has magic, amirite? so she did a sex change when she changed into sheik. Even says so in Brawl (unless you don't count that as canon)

That's not what it says in Brawl. Neither in-game evidence nor external evidence suggest this.

The persona Zelda adopted to escape from Ganondorf. She completely hid all traces of her Zelda identity and appeared to Link as the last member of the Sheikah tribe. She taught Link essential ocarina melodies and then vanished in an instant. She didn't appear very often--rather, she would show up to support Link in crucial situations.

It mentions nothing about transformations; it says she hid all traces of her identity and adopted a new persona. These are defined as:

per·so·na

1. a person.

2. personae, the characters in a play, novel, etc.

3. the narrator of or a character in a literary work, sometimes identified with the author.

4. (in the psychology of C. G. Jung) the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual; the public personality ( contrasted with anima).

5. a person's perceived or evident personality, as that of a well-known official, actor, or celebrity; personal image; public role.

i·den·ti·ty

1. the state or fact of remaining the same one or ones, as under varying aspects or conditions: The identity of the fingerprints on the gun with those on file provided evidence that he was the killer.

2. the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another: He doubted his own identity.

3. condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is: a case of mistaken identity.

4. the state or fact of being the same one as described.

 

[Zemen]

This seems to have gone on long enough (5 pages on a simple question is pretty impresive). Hanyou said it best, I believe. Zelda is a girl. Shiek is a disguise for Zelda, thus Shiek is a girl. Regardless of her being referenced as a male, Shiek is a girl. If you see someone across the street who looks like a boy, and you refer to them as a boy and find out later it's a girl, that doesn't magically mean that before when you saw her she was a boy. It means she was a girl the whole time. Unless surgery is involved, then that's a different story.

Anyway, it's pretty widely believed that Shiek is a girl. This thread is really long and the majority has spoken.

Thread Closed