Background Reading Report of "The Traffic of Women:  Notes on the 
Political Economy of Sex" by Gayle Rubin  p157-210. 
Article found in Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R. 
Reiter.  1975

Susan Scheuble


Rubin attempts to provide some of the essential explanations to the 
problem of women's oppression, in order to arrive at a more fully 
developed definition of the sex-gender system.   In doing so, she 
sketches some of the elements of various literature which have covered 
this same issue.   Rubin begins by analyzing some pieces by Claude 
Levi-Strauss and Sigmund Freud.   Both wrote extensively about the 
domestication of women, however, not in a way in which to develop 
critical insight to the problem.  Rubin uses their work as a basis in 
which to due so.  Rubin views their work to suggest "a systematic social 
apparatus which uses females as raw materials and products;"  yet neither 
one of these men see their work in the same fashion.

There is not a theory which attempts to explain womenUs oppression to the 
extent of Marx theory of class oppression.  Rubin begins by summarizing 
the many attempts individuals have used the foundations of Marx theory to 
explain female oppression.   Many have argued that the oppression of 
women is in the heart of capitalism and that an end to capitalism would 
mean the end to women's oppression.   Rubin feels that Marxism explains 
the usefulness of women to capitalism as a labor force, but fails to 
explain anything about the oppression of women.  Rubin provides a glance 
at noncapitalistic societies where women are extremely oppressed through 
foot-binding, chastity belts, gang rapes, and the traffic of women in 
which females are traded, shared, bought and sold among men.
 
Rubin makes mention that in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, 
and the State, Engels Rintegrates sex and sexuality into his theory of 
society.   This book provides insight on the existence and importance of 
social life in which Rubin calls the sex-gender system.   Engels is 
quoted  "The social organization under which the people of a particular 
historical epoch and a particular country live is determined by both 
kinds of production:   the stage of development of labor on the one hand, 
and of the family on the other."   (p164)  Rubin pursues Engels' view 
that the subordination of women is located in the mode of production in a 
theory Engels called kinship systems.  A kinship system is described as a 
socially defined kinship group that is not biologically defined.   The 
complexities of kinship systems are vast and varied among cultures around 
the world, but always involves the exchanges between males and females 
and recognizes the importance of sexuality and gender.   This leads Rubin 
to Levi-Strauss' The Elementary Structures of Kinship, in which he 
"constructs an implicit theory of sex oppression."

Levi-Strauss' view of kinship systems,  in The Elementary Structures of 
Kinship, holds two aspects central to women:  the gift and the incest 
taboo, which adds up to his idea of the exchange of women.  Gift 
transactions are basic in all societies and marriage is seen as the most 
valuable of all.  With a gift of a women, kinship and blood ties are 
established which is far greater than other simple gifts of 
reciprocity.   The exchange or traffic of women further creates a 
distinction between the gift and the giver.  It is traditionally been the 
male who gives and receives women, thus creating this power distinction.  
In most  societies, the women receives no benefit of the exchange; she is 
seen only as a conduit creating relationships between men. Rubin argues 
that the traffic of women is actually more pronounced and commercialized 
in more civilized societies, and it is in this traffic that we can find 
the center of women's oppression, rather than within the traffic in 
merchandise.    It is within these kinship systems that women do not have 
full rights to themselves.

The kinship bonds also establish taboos on who can have sex with who.   
Rubin states that it is this taboo which divides "the sexes into two 
mutually exclusive categories, a taboo which exacerbates the biological 
differences between the sexes and thereby creates gender, ...thereby 
enjoining heterosexual marriage."  (p178)   In the Elementary Structures 
of Kinship, gender is a socially imposed division of the sexes.  "Kinship 
systems rest upon marriage.  They therefore transform males and females 
into men and women, each an incomplete half which can only find wholeness 
when united with each other."  (p179)    Rubin believes that Levi-Strauss 
is really saying that heterosexuality is an instituted process, a process 
in which Rubin argues is the same system whose rules and relations 
oppress women.    Rubin summarizes Levi-Strauss's theory of kinship 
stating that the incest taboo, obligatory heterosexuality, and the 
asymmetry of gender entails the constraint of female sexuality.  

Rubin goes on to propose that psychoanalysis describes the mechanisms by 
which "children are engraved with the conventions of sex and gender."  
(p183)   What follows is a very long description of Freudian Oedipal 
complex, which if taken literally, which Rubin doesn't,  places all 
aspects of gender and sexuality shaped around the having or not having a 
penis.  Rubin states that Freud did caution us about the data on women 
being collected by men and that he stressed all adult sexuality resulted 
from psychic, not biologic, development.   Rubin summarizes these 
relations, " Kinship systems require a division of the sexes.  The 
Oedipal phase divides the sexes.  Kinship systems include sets of rules 
governing sexuality.  The Oedipal crisis is the assimilation of these 
rules and taboos.  Compulsory heterosexuality is the product of kinship.  
The Oedipal phase constitutes heterosexual desire.  Kinship rests on a 
radical difference between the rights of men and women.  The Oedipal 
complex confers male rights upon the boy, and forces the girl to 
accommodate herself to her lesser rights."  (p198)

In her summaries of Levi-Strauss and Freud, Rubin suggests that we should 
not aim for the elimination of men, but for the elimination of the social 
system which creates sexism and gender.   Rubin feels that women are 
oppressed as women, and also oppressed in having to be like women or 
men.  Rubin finds a solution of androgyny and the lack of gender most 
appealing.   In order for a complete analysis of women, theory must take 
into account everything:  "the evolution of commodity forms in women, 
systems of land tenure, political arrangements, subsistence 
technology,...and women, marriage, and sexuality."  (p210)  

Gayle Rubin's article The Traffic of Women provides and interesting yet 
depressing analysis of the literature of sex and gender as well as many 
accounts of oppression of women in both so-called civilized and primitive 
societies.  The book Toward an Anthropology of Women which included the 
article also seemed fascinating, containing individual articles related to 
women.


Susie