Domino Theory of Sexual Peril (Metaphor)
After discussing the “line” that people draw in order to separate good sex from bad sex, Rubin turns to a metaphor in order to explain the anxiety people have about crossing this line:
All these models assume a domino theory of sexual peril. The line appears to stand between sexual order and chaos. It expresses the fear that if anything is permitted to cross this erotic DMZ, the barrier against scary sex will crumble and something unspeakable will skitter across. (152)
The “domino theory” is a metaphor in which Rubin provides an image for what is going on in people’s minds. Just like how if one domino falls in a line of dominoes, they all fall, so does Rubin think people imagine that letting one sexual act cross from “bad” to “good” will lead to a chain reaction in which they all do. This is why a single sexual act can cause so much anxiety: it’s because people think that one act will lead to all the others.
The metaphor is a telling one. The "domino theory" was the theory, during the Cold War, that if one country (for example, in Southeast Asia) became communist, then all the countries around it would, like dominoes, "fall" too. A "DMZ" is a demilitarized zone, like the one established between Communist North Vietnam and pro-Western South Vietnam during the Vietnam war. It was feared that if Communists crossed the DMZ into South Vietnam, it would start a "domino reaction," and other countries would follow suit. By using this metaphor, Rubin links hierarchical thinking about sex to patterns of thinking about politics that were prevalent at the time. Similar to the fear governing Cold War politics in the West, there is a fear of the effects of sexual contamination, and so the dominant group tries to contain and repress these threats.
Sexual Panic Mob (Simile)
Rubin provides a historical survey of sexual panics in American society, in which people become obsessed with a particular sexual act or sexual minority and think it is the root of wider social problems. Here, she uses a simile to discuss how people stigmatize a particular activity:
Because sexuality in Western societies is so mystified, the wars over it are often fought at oblique angles, aimed at phony targets, conducted with misplaced passions, and are highly, intensely symbolic. Sexual activities often function as signifiers for personal and social apprehensions to which they have no intrinsic connection. During a moral panic such fears attach to some unfortunate sexual activity or population. The media become ablaze with indignation, the public behaves like a rabid mob, the police are activated, and the state enacts new laws and regulations. When the furor has passed, some innocent erotic group has been decimated, and the state has extended its power into new areas of erotic behavior. (163)
The mention of a mob brings to mind a group of angry, irrational people carrying torches and marching to punish some social outcast. Most of the time, this kind of literal mob is absent in sexual panics. But that kind of energy and anger is present in the media discourses around sex and in the laws and policies people advocate for. There is a kind of vigilante justice outside the law, ferociously stigmatizing and attacking sexual minorities in everyday life.
