The Reaches of Heteronormativity:An Introduction
Abstract
JaneWard University of California, Riverside BethSchneider University of California, Santa Barbara With the publication of the “The Traffic in Women” in 1975, Gayle Rubin posed a profound challenge to feminist theory by exposing the deep, historical interconnections between gender and compulsory het- erosexuality. Implied in Rubin's work was that the heterosexual impera- tive must become a centerpiece of feminist analysis, given that it was both cause and effect of a sex/gender system long used to structure and ratio- nalize men's subordination of women. Hence, for the Rubin of the 1970s, gender inequality and heterosexuality were inseparable forces, with gender referring not only to systematic identification with one biological sex but also to the routine enforcement of opposite sex desire. Close to a decade later, however, Rubin's thinking about sexuality underwent a marked transformation, one informed by raging feminist sex wars, the beginning of a devastating AIDS crisis, and her own engagement in queer leather/BDSM subcultures. In “Thinking Sex” (1984/1993), she sounded a call for a new body of theorizing on sexuality, one not subsumed under the study of sex and gender. Expanding beyond conceptualizations of the hetero-patriarchal, this later work famously argues that the force of sexual normalcy