Gayle S. Rubin (born January 1, 1949) is an American cultural anthropologist, theorist and activist, best known for her pioneering work in feminist theory and queer studies.

Rubin has written that her experiences growing up in the segregated South has given her "an abiding hatred of racism in all its forms and a healthy respect for its tenacity."

Rubin first rose to recognition through her 1975 essay "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex",[13] which had a galvanizing effect on feminist theory.

[24][25] Arguing the need for well-maintained historical archives for sexual minorities, Rubin has written that "queer life is full of examples of fabulous explosions that left little or no detectable trace.... Those who fail to secure the transmission of their histories are doomed to forget them".

[30][31][32] Rubin was an important member of the community advisory group that was consulted to develop the designs of the works of art.

[30] In 1994, Rubin completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Michigan with a dissertation entitled The valley of kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960–1990.

[40] "Thinking Sex" then had its first publication in 1984, in Carole Vance's book Pleasure and Danger, which was an anthology of papers from that conference.

"[13] She takes as a starting point writers who have previously discussed gender and sexual relations as an economic institution which serves a conventional social function (Claude Lévi-Strauss) and is reproduced in the psychology of children (Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan).

[43] She argues that the reproduction of labor power depends upon women's housework to transform commodities into sustenance for the worker.

Rubin argues that historical patterns of female oppression have constructed this role for women in capitalist societies.

"[43] She cites the exchange of women within patriarchal societies as perpetuating the pattern of female oppression, referencing Marcel Mauss' Essay on the Gift[44] and using his idea of the "gift" to establish the notion that gender is created within this exchange of women by men in a kinship system.

She ultimately argues that, in the current moment, a genderless identity and a polymorphous sexuality with no hierarchies are possible if we break away from the "now functionless" sex/gender system.

[45] [43] In her 1984 essay Thinking Sex, Rubin interrogated the value system that social groups—whether left- or right-wing, feminist or patriarchal—attribute to sexuality which defines some behaviours as good/natural and others (such as homosexuality or BDSM) as bad/unnatural.

People feel a need to draw a line between good and bad sex as they see it standing between sexual order and chaos.

[47][48] Rubin was a featured speaker at the conference, where she presented "Blood under the Bridge: Reflections on 'Thinking Sex,'" to an audience of nearly eight hundred people.