Gayle Rubin
Gayle Rubin is a cultural anthropologist, known for queer, feminist, and pro-sex work. With Pat Califia and other SF women, she co-founded Samois, the first lesbian SM group, in San Francisco, in 1978. After Samois broke up, Rubin co-founded a successor organization, "The Outcasts." Rubin holds a faculty position at the University of Michigan.
Significant works
- "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex" (1975 essay; available in Anthropology and Women, ed. Rayna Reiter)
- "The Leather Menace: Comments on politics and S/M" (essay; first published April 1982
- 1982 Barnard Conference paper on legal regulation of sexuality
- "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality" (1984 essay; available in Pleasure and Danger, ed. Carole Vance)
- The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960 – 1990 (1994 dissertation)