Start with queer theory, the academic discipline born in 1984 with the publication of Gayle S. Rubin’s essay “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality.”
Beginning in the late 1970s, Rubin, a lesbian writer and activist, had
immersed herself in the subcultures of leather, bondage, orgies,
fisting, and sado-masochism in San Francisco, migrating through an
ephemeral network of BDSM (bondage, domination, sadomasochism) clubs,
literary societies, and New Age spiritualist gatherings. In “Thinking
Sex,” Rubin sought to reconcile her experiences in the sexual underworld
with the broader forces of American society. Following the work of the
French theorist Michel Foucault, Rubin sought to expose the power
dynamics that shaped and repressed human sexual experience.
“Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a
hierarchical system of sexual value,” Rubin wrote. “Marital,
reproductive heterosexuals are alone at the top erotic pyramid.
Clamouring below are unmarried monogamous heterosexuals in couples,
followed by most other heterosexuals. . . . Stable, long-term lesbian
and gay male couples are verging on respectability, but bar dykes and
promiscuous gay men are hovering just above the groups at the very
bottom of the pyramid. The most despised sexual castes currently include
transsexuals, transvestites, fetishists, sadomasochists, sex workers
such as prostitutes and porn models, and the lowliest of all, those
whose eroticism transgresses generational boundaries.”
Rubin’s project—and, by extension, that of queer theory—was to
interrogate, deconstruct, and subvert this sexual hierarchy and usher in
a world beyond limits, much like the one she had experienced in San
Francisco. The key mechanism for achieving this turn was the thesis of
social construction. “The new scholarship on sexual behaviour has given
sex a history and created a constructivist alternative to” the view that
sex is a natural and pre-political phenomenon, Rubin wrote. “Underlying
this body of work is an assumption that sexuality is constituted in
society and history, not biologically ordained. This does not mean the
biological capacities are not prerequisites for human sexuality. It does
mean that human sexuality is not comprehensible in purely biological
terms.” In other words, traditional conceptions of sex, regarding it as a
natural behavior that reflects an unchanging order, are pure mythology,
designed to rationalize and justify systems of oppression. For Rubin
and later queer theorists, sex and gender were infinitely malleable.
There was nothing permanent about human sexuality, which was, after all,
“political.” Through a revolution of values, they believed, the sexual
hierarchy could be torn down and rebuilt in their image.
There was some reason to believe that Rubin might be right. The
sexual revolution had been conquering territory for two decades: the
birth-control pill, the liberalization of laws surrounding marriage and
abortion, the intellectual movements of feminism and sex liberation, the
culture that had emerged around Playboy magazine. By 1984, as
Rubin acknowledged, stable homosexual couples had achieved a certain
amount of respectability in society. But Rubin, the queer theorists, and
the fetishists of the BDSM subculture wanted more. They believed that
they were on the cusp of fundamentally transforming sexual norms. “There
[are] historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested
and more overtly politicized,” Rubin wrote. “In such periods, the domain
of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.” And, following the
practice of any good negotiator, they laid out their theory of the case
and their maximum demands. As Rubin explained: “A radical theory of sex
must identify, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and
sexual oppression. Such a theory needs refined conceptual tools which
can grasp the subject and hold it in view. It must build rich
descriptions of sexuality as it exists in society and history. It
requires a convincing critical language that can convey the barbarity of
sexual persecution.” Once the ground is softened and the conventions
are demystified, the sexual revolutionaries could do the work of
rehabilitating the figures at the bottom of the hierarchy—“transsexuals,
transvestites, fetishists, sadomasochists, sex workers.”
Where does this process end? At its logical conclusion: the abolition
of restrictions on the behavior at the bottom end of the moral
spectrum—pedophilia. Though she uses euphemisms such as “boylovers” and
“men who love underaged youth,” Rubin makes her case clearly and
emphatically. In long passages throughout “Thinking Sex,” Rubin
denounces fears of child sex abuse as “erotic hysteria,” rails against
anti–child pornography laws, and argues for legalizing and normalizing
the behavior of “those whose eroticism transgresses generational
boundaries.” These men are not deviants, but victims, in Rubin’s
telling. “Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boylovers are so
stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil
liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation,” she explains.
“Consequently, the police have feasted on them. Local police, the FBI,
and watchdog postal inspectors have joined to build a huge apparatus
whose sole aim is to wipe out the community of men who love underaged
youth. In twenty years or so, when some of the smoke has cleared, it
will be much easier to show that these men have been the victims of a
savage and undeserved witch hunt.” Rubin wrote fondly of those primitive
hunter-gatherer tribes in New Guinea in which “boy-love” was practiced
freely.
Such positions are hardly idiosyncratic within the discipline of
queer theory. The father figure of the ideology, Foucault, whom Rubin
relies upon for her philosophical grounding, was a notorious sadomasochist
who once joined scores of other prominent intellectuals to sign a
petition to legalize adult–child sexual relationships in France. Like
Rubin, Foucault haunted the underground sex scene in the Western
capitals and reveled in transgressive sexuality. “It could be that the
child, with his own sexuality, may have desired that adult, he may even
have consented, he may even have made the first moves,” Foucault once told an interviewer
on the question of sex between adults and minors. “And to assume that a
child is incapable of explaining what happened and was incapable of
giving his consent are two abuses that are intolerable, quite
unacceptable.” (Read more.)