Gayle S. Rubin's Thinking Sex

This week, I was assigned to present about Gayle S. Rubin’s Thinking Sex in class for the discussion facilitation. Hence, I got a chance to read her writing in depth and really soak in what he was trying to say. The first chapter, which I was assigned to, mostly talked about how politics, sex, and the Western society are all connected. He talked about how the issue of sex can crucially affect the way people govern the society. Because sex was considered as something embarrassing and negative (unless it was justified with a certain reason), the government restricted the sexual freedom of not only women but also children. In addition, the author talked about what people thought was the ‘good’ sex and what they thought the ‘bad’ sex was. The ‘good’ sex was basically sex for justified reasons, such as love, marriage, reproduction, etc. The ‘bad’ sex, on the other hand, was unjustified sex, such as masturbation, homosexuality, etc.

As I was reading the author’s reading, I really was disturbed by the diagram demonstrated. That specific diagram demonstrated the division of the ‘good’ sex and the ‘bad’ sex. It does not seem right for people to determine and draw a limiting line between the good and the bad. People are not able to break away from negative stereotypes of homosexuals because of the drawn distinction line that divides the good and the bad. Who has the right to draw that line? I don’t think that anyone has the right to draw the specific line and isolate the people that are considered unique. That line that divides the good and bad sex therefore makes the society more unwilling to accept homosexuals, therefore making the society political more unstable. I strongly think that this types of definition should not be hastily made and should be reconsidered as time goes on because people’s ways of thinking are changing radically. Thus, people will start to be more willing to break off from the considerably limiting definition and be more accepting.