Gayle Rubin

Gayle S. Rubin (born 1949) is an American cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and 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. She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Biography

College and early activism

In 1968 Gayle Rubin was part of an early feminist consciousness raising group active on the campus of the University of Michigan and also wrote on feminist topics for women's movement papers and the Ann Arbor Argus. In 1970 she helped found Ann Arbor Radicalesbians, an early Lesbian Feminist group.

Rubin first rose to recognition 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. The paper's argument that there is a difference between gender and sex has become central to women's studies.