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  • Gayle Rubin - Traffic in Women

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    Sampurna Das
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    The author tries to understand the genesis and nature of oppression of women, of sexual minorities, and of certain aspects of human personality within individuals. This Rubin defines as the sex/gender system. A sex/ gender system, Rubin defines, is the social position of individuals based on biological sexuality. Rubin considers her topic to be vital because the answers given to it determine our visions of the future, and our evaluation of whether or not it is realistic to hope for sexually egalitarian society. And, to arrive at the origin of this hierarchical system Rubin does “exegetical” reading of Levi-Strauss and Freud.

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    The author tries to understand the genesis and nature of oppression of women, of sexual minorities, and of certain aspects of human personality within individuals. This Rubin defines as the sex/gender system. A sex/ gender system, Rubin defines, is the social position of individuals based on biological sexuality. Rubin considers her topic to be vital because the answers given to it determine our visions of the future, and our evaluation of whether or not it is realistic to hope for sexually egalitarian society. And, to arrive at the origin of this hierarchical system Rubin does “exegetical” reading of Levi-Strauss and Freud.

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    4 views28 pages

    Gayle Rubin - Traffic in Women

    Uploaded by

    Sampurna Das
    The author tries to understand the genesis and nature of oppression of women, of sexual minorities, and of certain aspects of human personality within individuals. This Rubin defines as the sex/gender system. A sex/ gender system, Rubin defines, is the social position of individuals based on biological sexuality. Rubin considers her topic to be vital because the answers given to it determine our visions of the future, and our evaluation of whether or not it is realistic to hope for sexually egalitarian society. And, to arrive at the origin of this hierarchical system Rubin does “exegetical” reading of Levi-Strauss and Freud.

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    we x) \ Gayle Rubin a The Traffic in Wome Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex “Phe literature on women—both feminist and anti-feminist~is ‘a long rumination on the question of the nature and genesis ‘of women’s oppression and social subordination. The ques- tion is nota trivial one, since the answers given it determine our visions of the future, and our evaluation of whether or not it is realistic to hope for a sexually egalitarian society. More importantly, the analysis of the causes of women’s oppression forms the basis for any assessment of just what would have to be changed in order to achieve a society without gender hierarchy. ‘Thus, if innate male aggression and dominance are at the root of female oppression, then the feminist program would logically require either the extermination of the offending sex, or else 2 eugenics project to modify its character. If sexism is a by-product of capitalism's relentless appetite for profit, then sexism would wither away in the advent of a successful socialist revolution. If the world histor Acknowledgments are an inagequate expression of how much this per per, like most, is the product of many minds. They are also necessary to free others of the responsibility for what is ultimately a personal vision of # collective conversation, I want to free and thank tae following persons: Tom Anderson and Arlene Gorelick, with whom I co-authored the paper from which thit one evolved: Rayna Reiter, Larry Shields, 'y Kelly, Peggy White, Norma Diamond, Randy Reiter, Frederick ‘att, Anne Locksley, Juliet Mitchell, and Susan Harding, for evuntless conversations and ideas; Marshall Sahlins, for the revelation of anthro poloyy: Lyan Eden, for sardonie editing: the members of Women's 40/004. for my initiation into Weaching: Sally Brenner, for ping: Susan Lawes, for incredible patience; and Emma Gold man, for the tile 1 is“ paper, to’ Conduct a’ su tained’ critique of some of the currently popular explanations of the geniésis of sexual inequality—theories such as the popu- lar evolution exemplified by The Imperial Animal, the alleged overthrow of prehistoric matriarchies, or the attempt to ex- tract all of the phenomena of social subordination from the first volume of Capital. Instead, I want to sketch some ele- ments of an alternate explanation of the problem. Marx once asked: “What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other. A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain rela- tions. A cotton spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cot- ton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relationships it is no more capital than gold in itself is money or sugar is the price of sugar” (Marx, 1971b:28). One might paraphrase: What is a domesticated woman? A female of the species. The one explanation is as good as the other. A woman is a womiari. She only beconies a domestic, a wife, a chattel,a playboy: bunny, a prostitute, or a human dicta- phorie in-certain relations. Torn from these relationships; she iso more’ thé helpmate/of man than gold in itself is money - etc. What.then, are these relationships by which a female becomes:an. oppressed woman? The place to begin:to unravel: the. system of relationships by’ which women beco: prey of men/is in the overlapping works of Claude. Levi Strauss’ and. Sigmund Freud. The domestication. of ‘women, under other"names, is discussed_.at'length in-both of their © oeuvres. .In:reading through these works, one begins to have a sense of a systematic social apparatus which takes up females etials. and’ fashions domesticated women as prod- ucts. Neither“Freud nor ' Lévi-Strauss sees his work in- this hight, and certainly neither turns a critical glance upon the processes he describes. Their analyses and descriptions must be read, therefore, in something like the way, in which Marx read the’ €lassical political economists who preceded him (on jue; which their work can generate when subjected toa feminist. eye! Nevertheless, they pro ceptual tools with which’ One can‘build descriptions of the part of social life which. is.the. locus of the oppression of ‘women; of sexual ‘minorities, and of certain aspects of human personality within individuals. I call that part of social life the “sex/gender system,” for lack of a more elegant term. As a’preliminary definition, a “‘sex/gender system” is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexual- ity into products of human activity, and in which these trans- formed sexual needs are satisfied. ‘The purpose of this essay is to arrive at a more fully devel- oped definition of the sex/gendér system, by way of a'some- what idiosyncratic and exegetical reading of Lévi-Strauss and Freud. I usé the word “exegetical” deliberately. The diction- ary defines “‘exegesis”.as 2 “critical explanation or analysis; especially, interpretation. of ‘the Scriptures.” At times, my réading of Lévi-Strauss and Freud is freely interpretive, \Ov- ing from the explicit content of a.text to its presuppositions and implications. My-teading:of certain psychoanalytic texts. is “filtered through @ lens'provided by Jacques Lacan, whose. own interpretation of the Freudian scripture has been heavily aes Pepyes ee Moving between Marxism, strueturalism, and psychoanalysis produces a-certain clash of epistemologies: In particular, structuralism is a.can from which worms. ¢raiel out all over the. epistemological, map. Rather than trying to’cope' with this problem, I have more or less ignored the fact that Lacan and Lévi-Strauss’ are’ among the foremost living an cestors of the conwemporary French intellectual revolution (see Fou cault, 1970). It would be fun, interesting, and, if this were France, essential, to start’ my argument from the center ‘of the structuralist maze and work my way om there, along the lines of a “dialectical theory of signifying practices” (see Hefner, 1974). gcial ei human ee ‘workers, peas at, they are also méh’and wotnen’is not seén’as very significant. By contrest, in the maps of social salts drawn by Freud and Lévi-Strauss, differences: between the social ‘experience of men’ and women. : Marx ‘There is no theory which accounts for the oppression of women—in ‘its endless variety and_monotonous similarity, cross-culturally and throughout history—with anything like the explanatory power of the Marxist theory of class oppres- sion. Therefore, it-is not surprising that there have been numerous attempts to apply Marxist analysis to the question of women: ‘There are many ways of doing this. It has been argued’ that women are a reserve labor force for capitalism, that women’s generally lower wages provide extra surplus to’a capitalist, employer, that women serve the ends of ‘capi- talist consumerism’ in their roles as adininistrators of family consumption, ‘and so forth. However, a.number of articles have tried to do something much more ambitious—to locate the oppression of women in the heart of the capitalist dynamic by pointing to the rele- tionship between housework and the reproduction of labor (see Benston, 1969; Dalla Costa, 1972; Larguia and Dumoulin, 1972; Gerstein, 1973; Vogel, 1973; Secombe, 1974; Gardiner, 1974; Rowntree, M. & J., 1970). To do this is to place women squarely in the definition of capitalism, the proeéss in which capital is produéed by the extraction of, surplus value from labor by capital. Briefly, Marx argued that capitalism is distinguished from all other modes of production by its unique aim: the creation ‘ahd expansion of ait Whereas o The raffie Women 161 ek modes of production ng. from labor and into itself. The result of the capitalist production’ process is neither a mere product (use-value) nor a com) that is, a use-value which hhas exchange value. Its result, its product, is the creation of sur- ‘plus-value for capital, and consequently the actual transforma- tion of money or commodity into capital... .”” (Marx, 1969:399; italics in the original) The exchange between capital and labor which produces sur- plus value, and hence capital, is highly specific. The worker gets a wage; the capitalist gets the things the worker has made during his or her time of employment: If the total value of the.things the worker has made exceeds the value of his or her, wage, the aim of capitalism has been achieved. The capi. talist gets back the cost of'the wage, plus an incrément— surplus value. This can occur, because the wage is determined not by the value of what the laborer makes, but-by the value of what it takes to’ keep him or-her going—to reproduce him or her from day to day, and 'to reproduce the entire work force from one generation to the next. Thus, surplus value is the difference between what the laboring class produces as a whole, and the amount of that total which is recycled into maintaining the laboring class. . ‘The capital given in exchange for labour power is converted into hececsaries, by the concumption of which the muscles, nerves, bones, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new labourers, are begotten;. -.:the. individual ‘consumption .of the labourer, whether it: ed si the ‘workshop or outside it, uibi 1 See ‘swhether-it be part of the process of. production’ or not, forms therefore a'factor of the production and reproduction of capital; just.as cleaning machinery does. . . . (Marx, 1972:572) on idual, the production “Of labour-power consists in jis ‘reprodi ‘of himself or his maintenance. For his main- fenarice ‘tie ‘requires a given quantity of the means of sub- Labour-power sets itself in action only by working. ya definite quantity of human muscle, brain; nerves ted, and these require to be restored. . .. (Ibid.:17) aS 3 aioe aint of the difference between the repr 1Or Powe its. lucts depends; therefore; "05 to i forme ee eee ae clothes cleaned, beds made, wood'chopped, ete. Housework is therefore a key element in the process of the reproduction of the laborer from whom surplus value is taken. Since it is usually women who do housework/it has been observed that it is through the reproduction of labor power that women are articulated into the surplus value nexus which is the sine qua non of capitalism.* It.can be further argued that since no wage is paid for housework, the labor of women in the home contributes td the-ultimate quantity of surplus value realized * A lot of the’ debate on women and-housework has centered around the question

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