Summary of Sections 5–7
The fifth section of Rubin’s essay is “Sexual Conflicts,” and here she explores how sex creates conflicts in a society in addition to the legal ones discussed in the previous chapters. She primarily explores what she calls “territorial and border wars.” These conflicts have to do with sexual minorities, including homosexuals and sex workers, fighting for space in which to live their lives. For instance, after World War II, many gay people from rural areas moved to big cities in search of the freedom to live their lives. In these cities, communities of people tended to find each other and establish neighborhoods that provided a kind of sexual enclave. For instance, today we see gay neighborhoods such as the Castro in San Francisco, East Lakeview in Chicago, and Greenwich Village in New York. Historically, these neighborhoods started off as low-income “gay ghettos.” Gays have had to both defend this space and develop an economy that can protect it from being co-opted by others.
Another conflict Rubin addresses is one that has been implicit throughout the previous chapters: the conflict of “moral panic.” A moral panic is when sex starts to bear the anxieties of other social problems. Sex might be blamed for something that has nothing to do with sex. As a result, a sexual minority is scapegoated and targeted. They are victimized by society at the same time that they are cast as aggressors, the source of a larger problem.
Rubin thinks there are two moral panics emerging in the 1980s. The first is a moral panic about sadomasochism, and this is a panic that is actually perpetuated by feminists. According to some feminists, consensual sexual acts that include domination or pain, such as bondage and whipping, are dangerous and hurt women. Here, sadomasochism is blamed for patriarchy, perpetuating the subordination of women. But in the process, women who enjoy sadomasochism are actually further oppressed and marginalized. The second moral panic is related to the AIDS epidemic. Here, AIDS, which disproportionately affects gay men, is used as an excuse to criminalize, rather than help, gay men. Homosexuality is cast as diseased, and AIDS is used as a reason to monitor and segregate gay men.
Section 6, “The Limits of Feminism,” continues some of Rubin’s discussion of the relation between feminism and sexual liberation. She begins by observing two trends in feminist thought. The first is sexual liberation, and it sees the liberation of sex as a means to the liberation of women, whose sexuality is often policed. The second, which is associated with an anti-pornography movement in feminism, thinks sex is a means through which women are oppressed. According to this view, sexual liberation usually means sexual liberation for men: more access for men to women’s bodies. In this view, sex should indeed be policed, if it is sex that perpetuates male domination. This is the view that objects to sadomasochism, for instance. But the primary target of this view was pornography, which feminists saw as objectifying women in order to provide pleasure for men.
These two sides led to what has been called the feminist “sex wars” of the 1980s, which caused a rift in feminism between the pro-sex and the anti-pornography camps. Rubin notes a more recent “middle position,” but she is skeptical of this position, too. In particular, she thinks the new “sexual moderates” tend to condescend to sexual minorities. They seem to think that anyone who enjoys sadomasochism or pornography has been brainwashed, and should perhaps be pitied rather than criminalized. This view cannot help sexual minorities, including gay men and female sex workers, because it still makes them into deviants who need to be, if not penalized, "reformed" or "fixed."
Rubin concludes by arguing that the end of sexual oppression cannot be brought about by feminism alone. Remember from the previous sections that sex, in Rubin’s thinking, is a vector of oppression independent of other vectors of oppression, including gender. Feminism has learned how to theorize gender oppression. But that does not mean it knows how to think about the oppression of sex. Rubin argues for separating sexuality and gender analytically. That means developing a theory of sexuality separate from a theory of gender, in order to provide a more holistic sense of the ways in which sex and sexuality are regulated in our society.
Although the first step in liberating sex is developing an autonomous theory of sexuality, Rubin hopes that this radical theory is not forever divorced from feminism. She imagines that, after we have a radical theory of sexuality, it will enrich and be enriched by feminism. Rubin calls for a coalition for pro-sex activists and feminists to work together for the liberation of all. This will first require, as Rubin puts it in her “Conclusion,” that progressives from all social movements first give up their prejudices and biases when it comes to sex. In order to see sexual hierarchy at work, people have to re-assess the ways in which they create hierarchy in their own lives, by calling some sex good and some sex bad. Unlearning these biases is a condition for future coalition building and political activism.
Analysis of Sections 5–7
These sections are the most controversial of “Thinking Sex,” and it is useful to remember how we got here. Rubin began with a historical survey of sexual panics. Then, she considered a pattern across these sexual panics, thereby deriving her account of sexual hierarchy and the ways in which society values some sex over others. This led her to conclude that sex is a distinct vector of oppression. Now, she argues for where to go next, and how social progressives should address sexual oppression. She concludes that feminism cannot, on its own, lead the way, because feminism does not primarily study the distinct vector of oppression under analysis.
If Rubin had started her essay with this radical critique of feminism, it would be harder to swallow. Instead, she has been careful to logically build up to it. She seems particularly conscious of larger debates happening within feminism during the 1980s, which have come to be called the “sex wars.” Rubin herself participated in these wars. In fact, she was an organizer of the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, which was seen as a watershed moment of pro-sex activists breaking off from anti-pornography feminists. In this essay, Rubin doesn’t bury her political commitments. But the order of her writing, building up to the point about feminism instead of leading with it, suggests she is also in the business of trying to persuade others to join her who may not already agree.
Indeed, the language of coalition Rubin uses to describe the relationship between a radical theory of sex and feminism foregrounds the need to work together. No doubt, Rubin is thinking about other histories of coalitional activism. For instance, we have discussed how civil rights and feminism took on two different vectors of oppression: race and gender. They developed different critiques of society, and they targeted different laws and policies. But that doesn’t mean they went their separate ways. In fact, feminism drew a lot of inspiration from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It is important for each movement to support each other in creating a more just world. Similarly, Rubin is careful to say that, although it is necessary to develop an autonomous or radical theory of sex, this should not be seen a threat to feminism, any more than civil rights is a threat to feminism. They simply deal with different vectors of oppression. Ideally, they will support each other moving forward.
Although Rubin calls for a radical theory of sex, it is important that she argues it is sex, rather than sexuality, that is the vector of oppression. In other words, she is not writing exclusively about discrimination against gays and lesbians, for instance. Sexual orientation is only one of the categories employed in a sexual hierarchy, and ending discrimination against gays and lesbians will not eliminate other forms of oppression, for instance the marginalization of the BDSM community. What Rubin is advocating for is not just the ending of discrimination against people of minority sexual identities, but the end of a sexual hierarchy altogether, in which any sexual act can seem to be “better” than other.
One cautionary tale that results from this analysis is that sexual minorities, too, can sometimes form hierarchies. Within the gay community, there can still be “good” sex and “bad” sex. Moreover, in trying to attain larger social legitimacy, the gay community might ostracize the members that have “bad” sex in order to put on a more socially acceptable face to the wider public. Rubin warns against this tactic of trying simply to make certain behaviors a little more respectable. The task, rather, should be an overhaul of hierarchy altogether. This is what makes the theory “radical”: not a piecemeal solution of inching the line to let more people classified as “good,” but an erasing of the line altogether.
