::.；.人心 The Traffic in Women167 The realm of human sex,gender,and procreation has been Other names have been,proposed for the sex/gender subjected to,and changed by,relentless social activity for system.The most common alternatives aremode of repro- millenniaSex as we know it-gender identity,sexual desire duction and"patriarchy It may be foolish to quibble and fantasy;concepts of childhood-is itself a social product. about terms,but both of these can lead to confusion.All We need to understand the relations of its production,and three proposals have been made in order to.introduce a dis- forget,for awhile,about food,.clothing,automobiles,and tinction between "economic"systems and"sexual"systems, transistor radios.In most Marxist tradition,and even in and to indicate that sexual systems have a certain autonomy Engels book,the concept of the "second aspect of material and cannot always be explained in terms of economic forces. life"has tended to fade into the background,or to be incor- "Mode of reproduction,"for instance,has been proposed in porated into the usual notions of"material life."Engels'sug. oppositionto the more familiar "mode of production."But gestion'has never been followed up and subjected to the re- this terminology links the"economy"to production,and the finement which it needs.But he does indicate the existence sexual system to "reproduction."It reduces the richness of dof the domain of social life which I want to either system,since"productions"and "reproductions"take call the sex/gender system. place in both.Every mode of production involves reproduc- Among the Banaro,marriage involves several socially sanctioned sexual tion-of tools,labor,and social relations.We cannot relegate partnerships When a woman is married,she is initiated into intercourse all of the multi-faceted aspects of.social reproduction to the by the sib-friend of her groom's father.After bearing a child by this sex.system.Replacement of machinery is an example.of man,.she begins to have intercourse with her husband.:She also has an reproduction in the economy.On the other hand,we cannot institutionalized:parthership with the sib-friend of her husband.A limit the sex system toreproduction"in either the social or man's partriers include his wife,the wife of his sib-friend,and the wife of his sib-friend's son (Thurnwald,1916).Multiple intercourse is a more biological sense of the term.A.sex/gender system is not pronounced custom among the Marind Anim:At the time of marriage, simply the reproductive moment of amode of production." the bride has intercourse with all of the members of the groom's clan, The formation of gender identity is an example of produc- the groom coming last Every major festival is accompanied by a prac. tion in the realm of the sexual system.And a sex/gender tice:known asgtiv-bombari,in which semen is collected for ritual pur system involves more than the "relations of procreation," poses.A few women have intercourse with,many men,and the resulting semen is collected in coconut-shell buckets.A Marind male is subjected reproduction in the biological sense. to multiple homosexual intercourse during initiation (Van Baal,1966). .The term "patriarchywas introduced to distinguish the Among the Etoro,heterosexual intercourse is taboo for between.205 forces maintaining sexism from other social forces,such as and 260 days a year (Kelly,1974).In much of New Guinea,men fear capitalism.But the use ofpatriarchy"obscures other dis- copulation and think that it will kill them if they engage in it without tinctions.Its use is analagous to using capitalism to refer to magical precautions (Glasse,1971;Meggitt,1970).Usually,such ideas of feminine pollution express the subordination of women.But sym. all modes of production,whereas the usefulness of the term bolic systems contain internal contradictions,whose logical extensions "capitalismlies precisely in that it distinguishes between the sometimes lead to inversions of the propositions on which a system is different systems by which societies are provisioned and or- based.In New Britain,men's fear of sex is so extreme that rape appears ganized.Any society will have some system of "political to be feared by men rather than women.Women run after the men, economy."Such a system may be egalitarian or socialist.It who flee from them,women are the sexual aggressors,and it is bride- grooms who 'are reluctant (Goodale and Chowning,1971).Other in- may be class stratified,in which case the oppressed class may teresting.sexual variations can be found in Yalmon (1963)and K. consist of serfs,peasants,or slaves.The oppressed class may Gough(1959).· consist of wage laborers,in which case the system is properly
%e 得深 168 Gayle Rubin labeled"capitalist."The power of the term lies in its implica- when he located the subordination of women in a develop- tion that,in fact,there are alternatives to capitalism. ment within the mode of production.*To do this,we can Similarly,any society will have some systematic ways to imitate Engels in his method rather than in his results:Engels deal with sex gender,and babiesSuch a system may be approached the task of analyzing the:"second aspect of mater- sexuallyegalitarian,at least in theory,or it may be "gender ial life"by way of an examination of a theory of kinship stratified,as seems to be the case for most or all of the systems.Kinship systems are and do many things.But they knownexamples.But.it is important-even in the face of a are made up of,and reproduce,concrete forms of.socially depressing history-to..maintain a distinction between the organized sexuality.Kinship systems are observable and em- human capacity and necessity to create a sexual world,and pirical forms of sex/gender systems. the empincally oppressive ways in which sexual worlds have been organized Patriarchy subsumes both meanings into the Kinship same temgender system,on the other hand,is a neutral term which refers to the domain and indicates that oppres- (On the part played by sexuality sion is not inevitable in that domain,but is the product of 2 in the transition from ape to man" the specific social relations which organize it. To an anthropologist,a kinship.system is not a list of .Finally there are gender-stratified systems which are not biological relatives.It is a system of categories and statuses adequately described as patriarchal.Many New Guinea soci- which often contradict actual genetic relationships.There are eties (Enga,Maring,BenaBena,Huli,Melpa,Kuma,Gahuku- dozens of examples in which socially.defined kinship statuses Gama,Fore,Marind Anim,ad nauseum;see Berndt,1962; take precedence over biology.The Nuer custom of "woman Langness,1967 Rappaport,1975;Read,1952;Meggitt, marriage"'is a case in point.The Nuer define the status of 1970;Glasse;1971;Strathern,1972;Reay,1959;Van Baal, fatherhood as belonging to the person in whose name cattle 1966;Lindenbaum,1973)are viciously oppressive to women. bridewealth is given for the mother.Thus,a woman can be But the power of males in these groups is not founded on married to another woman,and be husband to the wife and their rolestas fathers or patriarchs,but on their collective father of her children,despite the fact that she is not the adult malenessembodied in secret cults,men's houses,war inseminator (Evans-Pritchard;1951:107-09). fare,exchange networks,ritual knowledge,and various initia- In pre-state societies,kinship is the idiom of social inter- tion procedures Patriarchy is a specific form of male domi- action,organizing economic,political,and ceremonial,as nance,and the use of the term ought to be confined to the well as sexual,activity.One's duties,responsibilities,and Old Testament-type pastoral nomads from-whom the term comes,o grops like them.Abraham wasa Patriarch-one Engels thought that men acquired wealth in the form.of herds and, wanting to pass this wealth to their own children,overthrew "mother old man whose absolute power over wives,children,herds, right"in favor of patrilineal inheritanceThe overthrow.of mother and dependerts was an.aspect of the institution of father- right was the world historical defeat of the female sex.The man took hood,as defined in the social group in which he lived. command in the home also;the woman was degraded and reduced to Whichever:term 'we use,what is important is to develop servitude;she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production.of children"(Engels1972:120-21;italics in original).As concepts toadequately describe the social organization of has been.often pointed out,women do not necessarily have significant sexuality and the reproduction of the conventions of sex and' social authority in societiespracticing matrilineal inheritance gender.We need to pursue the project Engels.abandoned (Schneider and Gough,1962). t
170 Gayle Rubin The Traffic in.Women171 privileges vis-a-vis others are defined in terms of mutual kin- biological procreation.It is permeated with an awareness of ship or lack thereof.The exchange.of goods and services, the importance of sexuality.in human society.It is a descrip- production and distribution,hostility and solidarity,ritual tion of society which doesnot assume an abstract,genderless and ceremony,all take place within the organizational struc. human subject.On the contrary,the human subject in Levi- ture of kinship.The ubiquity and adaptive effectiveness of Strauss's work is always either male or female,and the diver- kinship has led:many anthropologists to.consider its inven- gent social destinies of the two sexes can therefore be traced. tion,along with the invention of language,to have been the Since Levi-Strauss sees the essence of kinship systems to lie in developments which decisively marked the discontinuity be- an exchange of women between men,he constructs an im- tween semihuman hominids and human beings (Sahlins, plicit theory of sex oppression.Aptly,the book is dedicated 1960;Livingstone,1969;Levi-Strauss;1969) to the memory of Lewis Henry Morgan. While the idea of the importance of kinship enjoys the status of a first prineiple in anthropology,the internal work. ings of kinship systems have long been a focus for intense Vile and precious merchandise controversy.Kinship systems vary wildly from one culture to -Monique Wittig the next.They containall sorts of bewildering rules which govern whom one may or may not marry.Their interal The Elcmentr)S on the origin and nature of human society.It is a treatise on complexity is dazzling.Kinship systems have for decades pro- the kinship systems of approximately one-third of the ethno- voked the anthropological imagination into trying to explain graphic globe.Most fundamentally,it is an attempt to discern incest taboos,cross -cousin marriage,terms of descent,rela- the structural principles of kinship.Levi-Strauss argues that tionships of avoidance or forced intimacy,clans and sections, the application of these principles(summarized in the last taboos on names the diverse array of items found in descrip. chapter of Elementary Structures)to kinship data reveals an tions of actual kinship systems.In the nineteenth century, intelligible logic to the taboos and marriage rules which have several thinkers attempted to write comprehensive accounts perplexed and mystified Western anthropologists.He con- of the nature and history of human sexual systems (see Fee, structs a chess game of such complexity that it cannot be 1973)One of these was Ancient Society,by Lewis Henry recapitulated here.But two of his chess pieces are particu- Morgan It was this book which inspired Engels to write The larly relevant to women-the "gift"and the incest taboo, Origin of the Family,Private Property,and the State.Engels' whose dual articulation adds up to his concept of.the ex- theoryis based upon Morgan's account of kinship and mar- iage.季 change of women. The Elementary Structures is in part a radical glosson In.taking up Engels'project of extracting a theory 'of sex another famous theory of primitive social organization, oppression from the study of kinship,we have the advantage Mauss'Essay on the Gift (See also Sahlins,1972:Chap:4).It of the maturation of ethnology since the nineteenth century. was Mauss who first theorized as to the significance of one of We also have the advantage of a peculiar and particularly the most striking features of primitive societies:the extent to appropriate book,Levi-Strauss'The ElementaryStructures which giving,receiving,and reciprocating gifts dominates so- of Kinship.This is the boldest twentieth-century version of cial intercourse.In such societies,all sorts of things circulate the nineteenth-century project to understand human mar- in exchange-food;spells,rituals,words,names,ornaments, riage.It is a book in which kinship is explicitly conceived of tools,and powers. as an imposition of cultural organization upon the facts of
172 Gayle Rubin The Traffic in Women 173 Your own mother,your own sister,your own pigs,your own Levi-Strauss adds to the theory of primitive reciprocity the yams that you have piled up,you may not eat.Other people's idea that marriages are a most basic form of gift exchange,in mothers,other people's sisters,other people's pigs,other people's which it is women who are the most precious of gifts.He yams that they have piled up,you may eat.(Arapesh,cited in argues that the incest taboo;should best be understood as a Levi-Strauss,1969:27) mechanism to insure that such exchanges take place between In a typical gift transaction,neither party gains anything.In families and between groups.Since the existence ofincest the Trobriand Islands,each household maintains a garden of taboos is universal,but the content of their prohibitions vari. yams and each household eats yams.But the yams a house- able,they cannot be explained as having the aim of prevent- hold grows and the yams it eats are not the same.At harvest ing the occurrence.of genetically close matings.Rather,the time,a man sends the yams he has cultivated to the house; incest taboo imposes the social aim of exogamy and alliance hold of his sister;the household in which he lives is pro. upon the biological events of sex and procreation.The incest visioned by his wife's brother(Malinowski,1929).Since such taboo divides the universe of sexual choice into categories of a proceduresappears to be a useless one from the point of permitted and prohibited sexual partnersSpecifically,by view of:accumulation or trade,its logic has been sought else forbidding unions within a group it enjoins marital exchange where. Mauss proposed that the significance of gift giving is between groups. that it expresses,affirms,or creates a social link between the The prohibition on the sexual use of a daughter or a sister com- partners of an exchange.Gift giving confers upon its partici pels them to be given in marriage to another man,and at the same pants aspecial relationship of trust,solidarity,and mutual time it establishes a right to the daughter or sister of this other aid.Onecansolicit a friendly relationship in the offer of a man..The woman whom one.does not take is,for that very gift:acceptance implies awillingness to return a gift and a reason,offered up (Levi-Strauss;1969:51) confirmation of the relationship.Gift exchange may also be 5一 the idiom:of competition and rivalry.There are many ex- The prohibition of incest is less a rule prohibiting marriage with amples in which one person humiliates another by giving. the mother,sister,or daughter,than a rule obliging the mother, sister,or daughter to be given to others.It is the supreme rule of more than can be reciprocated.Some political systems,such het-bid:481的 ” as the Big Man systems of highland New Guinea,are based on: exchange which is unequal on the material plane.An aspiring The result of a gift of women is more profound than the Big Man wants to give away more goods than can be recipro- result of other gift transactions,because the relationship this cated.He gets his return.in political prestige. established is not just one of reciprocity,but one of kinship. Although bothMauss and Levi-Strauss emphasize the soli- The exchange partners have become affines,and their de dary aspects of gift exchange,the other purposes served by scendents will be related by blood:"Two people may meet in gift giving only strengthen the point that it is an ubiquitous friendship and exchange gifts and yet quarrel and fight in means of social commerce.Mauss proposed that gifts were later times,but intermarriage connects them in a permanent the threads of social discourse,the means by which such manner"'(Best,cited in Levi-Strauss,1969:481).As is the societies were held together in the absence of specialized case with other gift giving,marriages are not always so simply govermental institutions."The gift'is the primitive way of activities to make peace.Marriages may be highly competi- achieving the peace:that in civil society is secured by the tive,and there are plenty of affines who fight each other. state....Composing society,the gift was the liberation of Nevertheless,in a general sense the argument is that the culture'”(Sahlins,.1972:169,175). taboo on incest results in a wide network of relations,a set of
174 Gayle Rubin The Irafjic in women 175 people'whose connections withone.another are a kinship union,she precipitates or allows the exchange to take place,she structure.All other levels,amounts,and directions of ex- cannot alter its nature....(Levi-Strauss in.ibid.:115)* change-including hostile ones-are ordered by this structure. The marriage ceremonies recorded in the ethnographic litera- To enter into a gift exchange as a partner,one must have ture are moments in a ceaseless and ordered procession in something to give.If women are for men to dispose of,they are in no position to give themselves away. which women,children,shells,words,cattle names,fish,an- cestors,whale's teeth,pigs,yams,spells,dances,mats,etc., “What woman,”mused a young Northern Melpa man,“is ever pass from hand to hand,leaving as their tracks the ties that strong enough to get up and'say,Let:us make moka,let us find bind.Kinship is organization,and organization gives power. wives and pigs,let us give'our daughters to men,let us wage war, But who is organized? let us kill our enemies!No indeed not!...they are little rubbish If it is women who are being transacted,then it is the men things who stay at home'simply,don't you see?"(Strathem, 1972:161) who give and take them who are linked,the woman being a conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it.*The What women indeed!The Melpa women of whom the young exchanige of women does not necessarily imply that women man spoke ean't get wives,they are wives,and what they get are objectified,in the modern sense,since objects in the are husbands,an entirely different matter.The Melpa women primitive world are imbued with highly personal qualities. can't give their daughters to men,because they do not have But it does imply a distinction between gift and giver.If the same rights in their daughters that their male kin have, women are the gifts,then it is men who are the exchange rights of bestowal(although not of ownership). partners.And it is the partners,not the presents,upon whom The "exchange of women"is a seductive and powerful reciprocal exchange confers its quasi-mystical power of social concept.It is attractive in that it places the oppression of linkage.The relations of such a system are such that women women within social systems,rather than in biology.More- are in no position to realize the benefits of their own circula- over,it suggests that we look for the ultimate locus of tion.As long as the relations specify that men exchange women's oppression within the traffic in women,rather than women,it is men who are the beneficiaries of the product of within the traffic in merchandise.It is certainly not difficult such exchanigesocial organization. to find ethnographic and historical examples of trafficking in The total relationship of exchange which constitutes marriage is women.Women are given:in marriage,taken in battle,ex- not established between a man and a woman,but between two changed for favors,sent as tribute,traded,bought,and sold. groups of men,and:the woman figures only as one of the objects Far from being confined to the"primitive"world,these prac- in the exchange,not as one of the partners....This remains true tices seem only to become more pronounced and commer- even when the girl's feelings are taken'into consideration,as, cialized in more"civilized"societies.Men are of course also moreover,is:tsually:the case.In acquiescing to the proposed trafficked-but as slaves,hustlers,athletic stars,serfs,or as *"What,would.you like to marry your sister?What is the matter with you?Don't you want a brother-in-law?Don't you realize that if you This analysis of society as based.on bonds between men by.means of. marry another man's sister and another man marries your sister,you women makes the.separatist responses of the.women's movement will have at least two brothers-in-law,while if you marry your own thoroughly intelligible.Separatism can be seen as a mutation in social sister you will have none?With whom will you hunt,with whom will structure,as an attempt to form social groups based on unmediated you garden,whom will you go visit?"(Arapesh,cited in Levi-Strauss, bonds between women.It can also be seen as a radical denial of men's 1969:485j: "rights"in women,and'as a claim by women of rights in themselyes. …