The peculiar blend of deviation from the feminine gender role and childlike coding may well cue Freudian notions of the Oedipal narrative.  According to Freud1 , children do not assimilate societal gender norms until the Oedipal phase of their development.  Before this phase, he posits, the children exist in a genderless state of fundamental bisexuality, free of the pressures to repress their homosexual attractions*.  Such preoedipal bisexuality provides a more insightful paradigm from which to address Marnie’s state: though she exhibits masculine traits, she still appears* to exhibit a great degree of the femininity that would belie heteroseuxality under the classically strict heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy along the lines of gender roles.  Also, the preoedipal bisexuality thesis accommodates her childhood trauma and her consequential quests to reclaim that childhood.

Whether as a bisexual person in preoedipal bliss or as a sinister lesbian, Marnie's coding as a sexual other recurs repeatedly through the film. Indeed, largely by virtue of the implied sex scene's departure from Marnie's "abnormal" sexual role does the scene hold relevance as a nonviolent non-rape. Whatever her deviation, Marnie's sexual otherness appears clearly:

Knapp reads the statement "We don't need men" in its literal sense: Marnie and her mother are, in her opinion, coded lesbian. Whether or not the statement extends to imply that the pair do need women, it still sets Marnie at odds with the heterosexual norm.

Mark introduces Marnie to his father as "not a woman" but "a horse fancier." By dichotomizing the freedom associated with Forio and the feminine role associated with womanhood in the Hitchcockian world, he casts Marnie yet again as a sexual other.