Gayle Rubin

The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex

An exposition on how social structure that oppresses women emerged and maintained, by combining the framework provided by Levi-Strauss to expound on the universal need for social reproduction through working sexual arrangement, and that provided by Freud to look at how elements of social structure are in turn internalized by individuals psychologically to form the distinctive male and female identity.

As those working within the sociology of culture, Rubin also shares the view that no social arrangement of human sexuality rests solely upon biology, but everything about is mediated by social forces - insofar as this is the assumption, then, Rubin introduces the concept of "sex/gender system". This is to be roughly defined as a set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied. Then, identifying the exact nature and the precise definition of what this sex/gender system is is the key in understanding the nature of sexual oppression - and this is exactly the task that Rubin is after in this article.

In identifying the nature of structural domination by men over women through the mechanisms of kinship system, Rubin picks out two concepts formulated by Levi-Strauss as particularly useful - that of gift and incest taboo. Together, they lead to the concept of "exchange of women" - that places men and women in an asymmetric power relationship by rendering men as "givers" and women as "gifts" they exchange. Further, some additional concepts can be derived from Levi-Strauss, Rubin notes. Among the more representative of these are obligatory heterosexuality pressed onto everyone as a result of the kinship system - although specific forms this could take is highly variable according to which society one is looking at. Overall, this part appears to have the same problem as the Marxist exposition on how oppression of women takes place - that is, by subsuming gender under class it can tell how those in the lower class are exploited, but it cannot tell why it is the women rather than men who fill the lower class in the first place. In this writing, the problem is somewhat similar in that Rubin is not explicit on why it is the women rather than men who comes to be exchanged, rather than exchanging.

Anyway, the latter half of this piece is an exposition on how children are engraved with the conventions of sex and gender the social structure produces, using psychoanalytic theories of Freud. This is rather interesting original exegesis of Freud. Basically, the idea is that Freud may not be so useful if read in rather conventional sense - that is, the notion of "penis envy" on the part of girls and its associated ideas, that tends to lead to biological determinism. Instead, the basic ideas Freud developed must be reconceptualized so that the internalization of male and female identities by children has more to do with apprehension of social values associated with gender rather than the realization of their anatomical distinction. Framed this way, what boys actually come to realize is the superior social meanings accorded to being male, and that he only needs to wait for adulthood in order to have his own right to women just as his father did. In turn, what girls internalize is not the penis envy based on her anatomical deprecation, but rather the realization of lower social status that comes with being female. Female passivity is a reaction to this social condition, not her anatomical destiny.

Obviously, Rubin is highly concerned about this vicious circle of structural male domination and Oedipal complex that accords male and female children different social meanings and status to their respective gender. She propounds that the revolutionary reorganization of society that completely does away with kinship structure that subjugates women is necessary - but, as in most other writings of this nature, fails to specifically point out how this could be concretely achieved.