Feminist Sex Wars
Gayle Rubin is a sex-positive feminist.[31] The 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality is often credited as the moment that signaled the beginning of the feminist sex wars.
Rubin is a sex-positive feminist.[31] The 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality is often credited as the moment that signaled the beginning of the feminist sex wars;[32] Rubin gave a version of her work “Thinking Sex” (see below) as a workshop there.[33] “Thinking Sex” then had its first publication in 1984, in Carole Vance’s book Pleasure and Danger, which was an anthology of papers from that conference.[33] “Thinking Sex” is a sex-positive piece[31] which is widely regarded as a founding text of gay and lesbian studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory.[1][2]
…
In her 1984 essay “Thinking Sex”, Rubin interrogated the value system that social groups—whether left- or right-wing, feminist or patriarchal—attribute to sexuality which defines some behaviours as good/natural and others (such as pedophilia) as bad/unnatural. In this essay she introduced the idea of the “Charmed Circle” of sexuality, that sexuality that was privileged by society was inside of it, while all other sexually was outside of, and in opposition to it. The binaries of this “charmed circle” include couple/alone or in groups, monogamous/promiscuous, same generation/cross-generational, and bodies only/with manufactured objects. The “Charmed Circle” speaks to the idea that there is a hierarchical valuation of sex acts. In this essay, Rubin also discusses a number of ideological formations that permeate sexual views. The most important is sex negativity, in which Western cultures consider sex to be a dangerous, destructive force. If marriage, reproduction, or love are not involved, almost all sexual behavior is considered bad. Related to sex negativity is the fallacy of the misplaced scale. Rubin explains how sex acts are troubled by an excess of significance.
Rubin’s discussion of all of these models assumes a domino theory of sexual peril. People feel a need to draw a line between good and bad sex as they see it standing between sexual order and chaos. There is a fear that if certain aspects of “bad” sex are allowed to move across the line, unspeakable acts will move across as well. One of the most prevalent ideas about sex is that there is one proper way to do it. Society lacks a concept of benign sexual variation. People fail to recognize that just because they do not like to do something does not make it repulsive. Rubin points out that we have learned to value other cultures as unique without seeing them as inferior, and we need to adopt a similar understanding of different sexual cultures as well.[citation needed]
Within the last 40 years, sex-positivism has been remarkably successful within academia and the media, to the point that it is now the dominant ideology among liberal feminists, who are themselves the dominant feminist sect. The moral minimalism that comes from holding only to the principle of consent results in certain policy positions.
Download: _Feminist Sex Wars_ in_ The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies Online