Gayle Rubin
Encyclopedia
Gayle S. Rubin is a cultural anthropologist
best known as an activist and influential theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism
, sadomasochism, prostitution
, pedophilia
, pornography
and lesbian literature
, as well as anthropological
studies and histories of sexual subcultures, especially focused in urban contexts.
and Friedrich Engels
) which serves a conventional social function (Claude Lévi-Strauss
) and is reproduced in the psychology of children (Sigmund Freud
and Jacques Lacan
). She argues that these writers fail to adequately explain women's oppression, and offers a reinterpretation of their ideas. Rubin addresses Marxist thought by identifying women’s role within a capitalist society. She argues that the reproduction of labor power depends upon women’s housework to transform commodities into sustenance for the worker. The system of capitalism cannot generate surplus without women, yet society does not grant women access to the resulting capital. Rubin argues that historical patterns of female oppression have constructed this role for women in capitalist societies. She attempts to analyze these historical patterns by considering the sex/gender system. According to Rubin, “Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes.” She cites the exchange of women within patriarchal societies as perpetuating the pattern of female oppression, referencing Marcel Mauss’ Essay on the Gift and using his idea of the “gift” to establish the notion that gender is created within this exchange of women by men in a kinship
system. Women are born biologically female, but only become gendered when the distinction between male giver and female gift is made within this exchange. For men, giving the gift of a daughter or a sister to another man for the purpose of matrimony allows for the formation of kinship ties between two men and the transfer of “sexual access, genealogical statuses, lineage names and ancestors, rights and people” to occur. When using a Marxist analysis of capitalism within this sex/gender system, the exclusion of women from the system of exchange establishes men as the capitalists and women as their commodities fit for exchange. She ultimately hopes for an “androgynous and genderless” society in which sexual difference has no socially constructed and hierarchical meaning.
In 1978 Rubin moved to San Francisco to begin studies of the gay male leather subculture
. On June 13 of that year, Rubin, together with Patrick Califia
and 16 others founded the first known lesbian SM group, Samois
. The group disbanded in May 1983, and Rubin was involved in founding a new organisation, "the Outcasts", the following year.
Rubin became a prominent "pro-sex activist" in the Feminist Sex Wars
of the 1980s, giving a now-classic paper at the volatile 1982 conference at Barnard College in New York City.
In her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex", Rubin interrogated the value system that social groups — whether left- or right-wing, feminist or patriarchal — attribute to sexuality which defines some behaviours as good/natural and others (such as pedophilia
) as bad/unnatural. In this essay she introduced the idea of the "Charmed Circle" of sexuality, that sexuality that was privileged by society was inside of it, while all other sexually was outside of, and in opposition to it.
She served on the Board of Directors of the Leather Archives and Museum
from 1992 to 2000.
In 1994, Rubin completed her PhD in anthropology
at the University of Michigan
, with a dissertation titled The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960 - 1990. She is currently an associate professor of anthropology at the university.
Cultural anthropology
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...
best known as an activist and influential theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, sadomasochism, prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
, pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and lesbian literature
Lesbian fiction
Lesbian fiction is a subgenre of fiction that involves one or more primary female homosexual character and lesbian themes. Novels that fall into this category may be of any genres, such as, but not limited to, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance.-History:The first...
, as well as anthropological
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
studies and histories of sexual subcultures, especially focused in urban contexts.
Biography
Rubin first rose to prominence through her 1975 essay "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex", in which she attempts to discover historical social mechanisms by which gender and compulsory heterosexuality are produced, and women are consigned to a secondary position in human relations. In this essay, Rubin coined the phrase "sex/gender system", which she defines as "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied". She takes as a starting point writers who have previously discussed gender and sexual relations as an economic institution (Karl MarxKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
) which serves a conventional social function (Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
) and is reproduced in the psychology of children (Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
). She argues that these writers fail to adequately explain women's oppression, and offers a reinterpretation of their ideas. Rubin addresses Marxist thought by identifying women’s role within a capitalist society. She argues that the reproduction of labor power depends upon women’s housework to transform commodities into sustenance for the worker. The system of capitalism cannot generate surplus without women, yet society does not grant women access to the resulting capital. Rubin argues that historical patterns of female oppression have constructed this role for women in capitalist societies. She attempts to analyze these historical patterns by considering the sex/gender system. According to Rubin, “Gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes.” She cites the exchange of women within patriarchal societies as perpetuating the pattern of female oppression, referencing Marcel Mauss’ Essay on the Gift and using his idea of the “gift” to establish the notion that gender is created within this exchange of women by men in a kinship
Kinship
Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....
system. Women are born biologically female, but only become gendered when the distinction between male giver and female gift is made within this exchange. For men, giving the gift of a daughter or a sister to another man for the purpose of matrimony allows for the formation of kinship ties between two men and the transfer of “sexual access, genealogical statuses, lineage names and ancestors, rights and people” to occur. When using a Marxist analysis of capitalism within this sex/gender system, the exclusion of women from the system of exchange establishes men as the capitalists and women as their commodities fit for exchange. She ultimately hopes for an “androgynous and genderless” society in which sexual difference has no socially constructed and hierarchical meaning.
In 1978 Rubin moved to San Francisco to begin studies of the gay male leather subculture
Leather subculture
The leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures...
. On June 13 of that year, Rubin, together with Patrick Califia
Patrick Califia
Patrick Califia , born 1954 near Corpus Christi, Texas is a writer of nonfiction essays about sexuality and of erotic fiction and poetry. Califia is a bisexual trans man.-Biography:...
and 16 others founded the first known lesbian SM group, Samois
Samois
Samois was a lesbian-feminist BDSM organization based in San Francisco that existed from 1978 to 1983. It took its name from the fictional estate of Anne-Marie, a lesbian dominatrix character in Story of O, who pierces and brands O...
. The group disbanded in May 1983, and Rubin was involved in founding a new organisation, "the Outcasts", the following year.
Rubin became a prominent "pro-sex activist" in the Feminist Sex Wars
Feminist Sex Wars
The Feminist Sex Wars and Lesbian Sex Wars, or simply the Sex Wars or Porn Wars, were the acrimonious debates within the feminist movement and lesbian community in the late 1970s through the 1980s around the issues of feminist strategies regarding sexuality, sexual representation, pornography,...
of the 1980s, giving a now-classic paper at the volatile 1982 conference at Barnard College in New York City.
In her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex", Rubin interrogated the value system that social groups — whether left- or right-wing, feminist or patriarchal — attribute to sexuality which defines some behaviours as good/natural and others (such as pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
) as bad/unnatural. In this essay she introduced the idea of the "Charmed Circle" of sexuality, that sexuality that was privileged by society was inside of it, while all other sexually was outside of, and in opposition to it.
She served on the Board of Directors of the Leather Archives and Museum
Leather Archives and Museum
The Leather Archives & Museum , based in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, USA, has much information and details on the beginning of the leather subculture and BDSM community...
from 1992 to 2000.
In 1994, Rubin completed her PhD in anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, with a dissertation titled The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960 - 1990. She is currently an associate professor of anthropology at the university.
Awards
- 2000 Leather Archives and Museum "Centurion"
- 2000 National Leather Association Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1992 Pantheon of Leather Forebearer Award
- 1988 National Leather Association Leather Woman of the Year Award
Publications
- Deviations: Essays in Sex, Gender, and Politics, forthcoming.
- "Samois", in Marc Stein, ed., Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003). PDF download
- "Studying Sexual Subcultures: the Ethnography of Gay Communities in Urban North America", in Ellen Lewin and William Leap, eds., Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002)
- "Old Guard, New Guard", in Cuir Underground, Issue 4.2 - Summer 1998. online text
- "Sites, Settlements, and Urban Sex: Archaeology And The Study of Gay Leathermen in San Francisco 1955-1995", in Robert Schmidt and Barbara Voss, eds., Archaeologies of Sexuality, (London: Routledge, 2000)
- "The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather in San Francisco 1962- 1996", in James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy Peters, eds., Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture, (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998)
- "From the Past: The Outcasts" from the newsletter of Leather Archives & Museum No. 4, April 1998
- "Music from a Bygone Era", in Cuir Underground, Issue 3.4 - May 1997. online text
- "Elegy for the Valley of the Kings: AIDS and the Leather Community in San Francisco, 1981-1996", in Martin P. Levine, Peter M. Nardi, and John H. Gagnon, eds. In Changing Times: Gay Men and Lesbians Encounter HIV/AIDS (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
- The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960 - 1990. University of Michigan, 1994. (Doctoral dissertation)
- "Of catamites and kings: Reflections on butch, gender, and boundaries", in Joan Nestle (Ed). The Persistent Desire. A Femme-Butch-Reader. Boston: Alyson. 466 (1992)
- "The Catacombs: A temple of the butthole", in Mark Thompson, ed., Leatherfolk — Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice, (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991).
- Misguided, Dangerous and Wrong: An Analysis of Anti-Pornography Politics.
- "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, in Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger, (Routledge & Kegan, Paul, 1984. Also reprinted in many other collections, including Abelove, H.; Barale, M. A.; Halperin, D. M.(eds), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader(New York: Routledge, 1994).
- "The Leather Menace", Body Politic no. 82 (33-35). (April 1982)
- "Sexual Politics, the New Right, and the Sexual Fringe" in The Age Taboo, Alyson, 1981, pp. 108–115.
- "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex", in Rayna Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women, New York, Monthly Review Press(1975); also reprinted in Second Wave: A Feminist Reader and many other collections.