Gayle Ruby

Gayle Rubin at a GLBT History Museum event in San Francisco. (2012)

Gayle S. Rubin (* 1949 ) is an American feminist who has worked primarily in the field of anthropology and social policy with an emphasis on women's and gender studies . She has u. a. the discussion about pornography as well as consensual sadomasochism in the controversy between so-called sex-positive and anti-pornographic feminists, known as the Feminist Sex Wars .

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Gayle Rubin's works deal critically with the relationship between politics, society, emancipation and sexuality. Rubin is considered to be the founder of the sex-gender system with her writing The traffic in women (1975). This is the first time she differentiates between biological (sex) and socially constructed (gender) sex. Her vision is an androgynous and genderless society in which ascribed sexuality and "sex roles" are abolished. (See Charlotte Ulrich)

In 1978 Rubin moved to San Francisco to do research on the homosexual leather movement . On June 13th of this year, together with the writer Pat Califia and several other feminists, she founded Samois , the first well-known American, feminist BDSM lesbian group, which was politically committed to the rights of lesbian sadomasochists in the 1980s and started coming to Power published the first known BDSM manual. The group disbanded in May 1983, whereupon Rubin helped found a new organization called " The Outcasts " the following year .

reception

In the 1980s, Califia and Rubin were well-known representatives of the “ pro-sex activists ” in a dispute that became known in the Anglo-Saxon world as The feminist sex wars .

In Thinking Sex in 1984, Rubin analyzed how sexual practices are hierarchized and stigmatized in the “modern sexual system” . From this point of view, sexual conflicts often take the form of a “ moral panic ”. People are incited and a rational discussion is made impossible. Rubin advocates sexual and theoretical pluralism and also discusses the “limits of feminism” for a political theory of sexuality.

From 1992 to 2000 she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Leather Archives and Museum .

In 1994 Rubin completed her dissertation in anthropology at the University of Michigan , where she works as an assistant professor in women's studies and gender studies . The title of the work, which deals with the subculture of the male-gay “ leather scene ” in San Francisco, is The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960–1990 .

Awards

• 2000 Leather Archives and Museum "Centurion"
• 2000 National Leather Association Lifetime Achievement Award
• 1992 Pantheon of Leather Forebearer Award
• 1988 National Leather Association Leather Woman of the Year Award

Sources by and about Gayle Rubin

• Samois : Coming to Power. Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S / M , Alyson Publications , Boston, 3rd edition October 1987, ISBN 0-932870-28-7
• The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex , in: Toward an Anthropology of Women. Ed. Rayna rider. 157-210, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1975
• Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality , in: Henry Abelove u. a. (Ed.): The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, New York (Routledge), 1993, (first published in 1984.), dt. Sex Think. Comments on a radical theory of sexual politics in Thinking Queer. Against the Order of Sexuality (Queer Studies) , ed. by Andreas Kraß , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2003, pp. 31–79, ISBN 3-518-12248-7
• Samois , in Marc Stein, ed., Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America , (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003),
• Rubin, Gayle, The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960-1990 , 1994, Dissertation Abstracts International, 56 (01A), 0249, (UMI No. 9513472)
• Studying Sexual Subcultures: the Ethnography of Gay Communities in Urban North America , in: Ellen Lewin and William Leap (ed.): Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology , (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), ISBN 0-252-07076-3
• Sites, Settlements, and Urban Sex: Archeology And The Study of Gay Leathermen in San Francisco 1955-1995 , in: Robert Schmidt and Barbara Voss (Eds.): Archaeologies of Sexuality , London, Routledge, 2000, ISBN 0-415-22365 -2
• The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather in San Francisco 1962-1996 , in: James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy Peters (Eds.): Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture , San Francisco, City Lights Books , 1998, ISBN 0-87286-335-2
• From the Past: The Outcasts from the newsletter of Leather Archives & Museum No. April 4, 1998
• Music from a Bygone Era , in: Cuir Underground , Issue 3.4 - May 1997, online version of the text
• Elegy for the Valley of the Kings: AIDS and the Leather Community in San Francisco, 1981-1996 , in: Martin P. Levine, Peter M. Nardi and John H. Gagnon, ed. In Changing Times: Gay Men and Lesbians Encounter HIV / AIDS (University of Chicago Press, 1997)
• Of catamites and kings: Reflections on butch, gender, and boundaries , in: Joan Nestle (Ed). The Persistent Desire. A Femme-Butch-Reader , Boston: Alyson Books , 466 (1992)
• The Catacombs: A temple of the butthole , in Mark Thompson, ed., Leatherfolk - Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice , Boston, Alyson Publications , 1992, ISBN 1-55583-187-7
• Ruby, Gayle. Misguided, Dangerous and Wrong: an Analysis of Anti-Pornography Politics. in: Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures: The Challenge to Reclaim Feminism. Assiter Alison and Carol Avedon (Eds.), Boulder, Colorado, Pluto, 1993, 18-40, ISBN 0-7453-0523-7
• Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality , in Carole Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger , Routledge & Kegan, Paul, 1984, ISBN 0-04-440867-6
• The Leather Menace , in: Body Politic , 82 (34), 1982
• Sexual Politics, the New Right, and the Sexual Fringe in The Age Taboo , Alyson, 1981, pp. 108-115, ISBN 0-932870-13-9
• The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex , in: Rayna Reiter, ed., Toward an Anthropology of Women , New York, Monthly Review (1975); Anthology in Second Wave: A Feminist Reader The exchange of women. On the “political economy” of gender, in: Dietze / Hark: Gender controvers, pp. 69–122]
• Thinking Sex is anthologized in Abelove, H .; Barale, MA; Halperin, DM (Ed.): The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader , New York, Routledge, 1994, ISBN 0-415-90519-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leatherarchives (PDF document; 1.4 MB) ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.