Sexual Traffic

Gaylen Rubin

ayle R ubin is an anthropologist who has written a number of

highly influential articles, including The Traf fic in W omen: Notes on the
Political Economy of Sex, Thinking Sex, The Leather Menace, and Misguided,
Dangerous and W rong: A n A nalysis of A nti- Pornography Politics. A
collection of her essays will soon be published by the University of Calif ornia
Press. She is currently working on a book based on ethnographic and historical
research on the gay male leather community in San Francisco.
R ubin has been a f eminist activist and writer since the late 1960s,
and has been active in gay and lesbian politics f or over two decades. She has
been an ardent critic of the anti- pornography movement and of the mistreatment
of sexual minorities.
Her work has off ered a series of methodological suggestions f or
f eminism and queer studies which have significantly shaped the emergence of
both fields of study.