Transformations Of The Sex/Gender System

Since World War II, various groups dissatisfied with the social relations of sex and gender have become political subjects and have mobilized

to redefine the social relations and norms that regulate gender and sexuality. It is not possible to understand this history without referring to the ensemble of discourses, practices, and institutions that structure and regulate the social relations of gender and the varieties of sexual behavior. This ensemble of discourses, practices, and institutions—which Gayle Rubin calls the sex/gender system—maps biological capacities onto the symbolic and social patterns that constitute our lives as gendered and sexual human beings.^[3]

The sex/gender system operates through different types of social structures. Among the most important are forms of domination , which privilege certain groups of people and restrict the rights of others. For example, men exercise power over women and children in the patriarchal nuclear family, stigmatized sexual activities are allowed to take place in urban back regions, and women and minorities earn less than white men in a segmented labor market. Another set of structures is normative regulations : these include the sexual double standard, which establishes different standards of sexual behavior for men (casual or extrarelationship sex is okay) and women (who are denigrated if they engage in casual or frequent sexual activities); the heterosexual presumption, which enforces the assumption that everyone is heterosexual, thus putting the socially awkward burden on homosexuals to identify themselves; and the male breadwinner ethic, which promotes the male as the sole provider of a family's economic support. A third group of structures is symbolic codes , which are ideological formulations such as the idea of romantic love, the Christian conception of marriage, biological reproduction as an evolutionary responsibility, and the belief in children's sexual innocence.^[4]

Sexual identities result from historical struggles between groups (for example, prostitutes' conflict with the state) and from social relations in the sex/gender system. As forms of subjectivity and agency, sexual identities are continually in the process of forming. They are not uniquely determined by the economic, political, normative, or symbolic aspects of the sex/gender system—the outcomes and meanings of this process are reconstituted at each moment of history. Historically, the politicized struggles of sexual identities have modified the conditions under which the identities initially formed. The sex/gender system is

not an isolated system of institutions and practices. Rather, it interacts with the economy, the state, and other social ensembles, such as those devoted to racial formation, class structure, or generational differences.^[5]

Beginning in 1940, the massive mobilization of civilians and armed services during World War II transformed the American sex/gender system. This transformation is immense and contradictory (very much as the Industrial Revolution was). The process of changing the sex/gender system should not be understood as necessarily coherent or "progressive," but as involving antagonistic movements and ideologies that contend for their own visions of possible sexual and gender arrangements. This dynamic process of historical change—with its moments of rupture and periods of stability—is what I mean by "sexual revolution."

The postwar sexual revolution underwent, I believe, three politically and analytically distinct "moments" (which are not strictly chronological). The first occurred when Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues discovered a gap between sexual norms and sexual behavior. On the basis of this discovery, Kinsey critiqued sexual norms.

The second moment emerged during the highly contradictory period of postwar prosperity, which Keynesian economic policies created. This period involved marked reactionary tendencies toward gender roles (the attempt to keep women in the home) and extreme pronatalism (the baby boom). The consumption ethos of the times, however, tended to undermine the repressive measures toward women and sexual minorities. In this period, a number of intellectuals critiqued sexual repression and its power to enforce norms of gender and sexuality. The works of these intellectuals helped to develop the sexual revolution's political identities.

In the third moment, the gay liberation movement emerged in the wake of the women's movement. As the male-dominated family declined and as women reacted to the sexism they discovered in the student movement and the New Left, they mobilized politically. Inspired by the women's movement, and building on a gay urban subculture that existed since World War II, gay people forged a collective sexual culture and thus, to some extent, reinterpreted the symbolism of sexuality and gender.

Before we can examine these developments in the post-World War II period, we must abandon the assumption that the social regulation of sexuality operates only through repression.^[6] Transforming the sex/gender system means not only eliminating repressive strictures on sexual behavior but also continually and affirmatively establishing new forms of gender and sexuality. These transformations affect economic and political relations, attitudes, and laws, and in turn influence the symbolic and cultural meanings of gender and sexuality.

Historical and anthropological research has shown that homosexual persons (i.e., people who occupy a social position or role as homosexuals) do not exist in many societies, whereas homosexual behavior occurs in virtually every society.^[7] Therefore, we must distinguish between homosexual behavior and homosexual identity . One term refers to one's sexual activity per se (whether casual or regular); the other word defines homosexuality as a social role, with its emotional and sexual components. Such a distinction is consciously rooted in historical and cross-cultural comparisons between homosexuality in advanced industrial societies and homosexuality in other cultures or eras. For instance, in ancient Greece, homosexual relationships between older men and younger men were commonly accepted as pedagogic. Within the context of an erotic relation, the older man taught the younger one military, intellectual, and political skills. The older men, however, were also often husbands and fathers. Neither sexual relationship excluded the other. Thus, although ancient Greek society recognized male homosexual activity as a valid form of sexuality, the men involved in these relationships rarely defined themselves as primarily "homosexual."^[8]

Another institutionalized form of homosexuality existed in many American Indian societies. Girls and boys in these societies could refuse initiation into their adult gender roles and instead adopt the social role of the other gender. For example, men who dressed and acted in accordance with the adult female role were known as "two-spirit" or berdache (originally the French term for these Indians). The berdache often married Indian men. The partners in these marriages did not define themselves as "homosexuals," nor did their societies recognize them as such, but their marital sex life consisted of homosexual sexual relations.^[9]

This theoretical distinction between behavior and identity is crucial to the histories of homosexuality, and, frequently, to the histories of the gay and lesbian emancipation movements.^[10]