Thinking Sex
By Gayle Rubin
Gayle Rubin here states about the political
dimensions of the sexuality. She says that like
gender, sexuality is also political. In the late 19 th
century, there were powerful social movements
which focused on the educational and political
campaigns to encourage chastity, to eliminate
prostitution and to discourage masturbation
especially among the young. These were mainly
to remove the immoral thinking of sexuality. The
notion of sex is said to be harmful to the young.
Rubin looks at the obscenity laws that made
publishing information about sex and sexuality
illegal. Elements of canon law was adapted into
civil codes, many of the laws were to arrest the
homosexuals and prostitutes to come out of the
Victorian campaigns against white slavery. She
states about another period of sex panic was the
[Link] this time a major shift took place were
the attention turned to two perceived sexual
perversions which is the homosexuality and the
sexual offender. After World War II many people
had begun to form erotic communities, especially
in urban areas. Here people were free to access
the kinds of sexual pleasure they were seeking,
mainly the same sex or practices like bondage.
The congressional investigations, executive
orders media aimed to root out homosexuals
employed by the government. Arresting of
homosexuals, thousand lost their jobs and
restrictions on federal employment of
homosexuals persist to this day. Harassment of
homosexuals lasted at least into [Link]
also states about the pornography and its need
to be protected from children. Rubin also notes
how sex is policed in the name of patriotism or
nationalism. Homosexuality linked to
communism. Homosexuality was cast as threat to
national strength. Rubin theorizes the common
principles underlying the set of historical sex
panics. She says that there is a need of “radical
theory of sex” that can identify, describe, explain
and denounce the erotic injustice and sexual
oppression. And then she says about the sexual
essentialism and the idea that sex is natural and
independent on social and historical institutions.
And that the constructivists show that society
creates the meanings attached to sex. Society
has constructed that only heterosexuality is good
and homosexuality is bad but there is no such
thing called good or bad. Likely Foucault’s History
of Sexuality has been he most influential text on
the new scholarship of sex. The civil rights and
feminist movements similarly began by showing
that our conceptions of people of color or women
as “inferior” is not natural, but man-made.
Legitimate and illegal sex. Rubin also talks about
the five interpretations on sexuality. The first one
is Sexual negativity which views that sex is
basically bad. The second one is fallacy of
misplaced scale which for instance by punishing
sexual acts out of line with more dangerous
activities like assault. The third is hierarchical
system of sexual value; some sexual acts are
perceived good and normal but some are
perceived as bad and abnormal. Rubin also
thinks that many social institutions also try to
create this hierarchy. And the fourth is the
Domino theory of sexual peril. The belief that if
something from the bad side crosses the line, all
chaos will break loose and society will crumble.
And the fifth interpretation is that the concept of
“benign sexual variation” it doesn’t depoliticize
sex but it opposes a certain wat of politicizing it.
In Rubin’s understanding, people tend to think
that the sex they enjoy is the sex everyone
should enjoy and, conversely, no one should
enjoy the sex they don’t enjoy. This is where
policing comes into play. People universalize
their sexual tastes, saying everyone should be
like them and that difference is dangerous.
Political writing on sexuality reveals complete
ignorance of both classic sexology and modern
sex research. Rubin presented the notion of
sexual hierarchy, in which some type of sexuality
is considered as legitimate. erotic speciation.
Homosexuality is the best example for erotic
speciation. Always present among human beings.
Foucault’s argument that same sex has occurred
throughout the history, but this behavior became
a species, the homosexual. Society started to talk
about sexual behavior, as an identity. According
to Rubin same thing happened with prostitution.
Exchanged sex for money and resources, sort of
employment. Homosexuality and Prostitution
stopped looking like activities people engaged in
and started to look like categories of people.
(grouped , segregated ,and punished) .
