Being as early as the 1980s, feminist began to centre on sexuality. With this new focus, came the sex war debates. The sex war debates centred around two main concerns, pornography and lesbian sado-masochism. Pornography was of main concern due to many feminist believing that pornography operated on patriarchal sexual relations that only pertained to the enjoyment of the male’s sexuality. Lesbian sado-masochism, which pertains to any sexual acts where gratification is achieved through pain, humiliation, bondage or torture, was also of main concern to the sex war debate due to many feminist, mostly those who identified as lesbians, believing that such acts resembled those of male sexuality. Thus, many feminists resisted lesbian sado-masochism,…show more content… Gayle Rubin (1984) described the two sides as, “two strains of feminist thought” (Rubin, 1984, p.301). These polarized sides of the debate, as noted by Rubin and Catharine MacKinnon (1989), stem from the question of where sexual oppression originates from and how to solve it. Rubin (1984) provides deeper insight on the two sides stating, “one tendency has criticized the restrictions on women’s sexual behaviour and denounced the high costs imposed on women for being sexually active” (Rubin, 1984, p.301) and “the second tendency has considered sexual liberalization to be inherently a mere extension of male privilege” (Rubin, 1984, p.301). In other words, one side sought after sexual liberation for both females and males, in opposition to the other side, which sought after anti-pornography movements pertaining to an anti-sexual discourse (Rubin,…show more content… In fact, Rubin (1984) suggests that the anti-sexual discourse acts in hierarchical ways, as it implies there is such thing a moral and deviant sex. Rubin (1984) addresses this as an “imaginary line between good and bad sex” (Rubin, 1984, p.282) that is maintained by systems that “attempt to determine on which side of the line a particular act falls” (Rubin, 1984, p.282). This leads many feminist such as Rubin, to question why such systems have the authority to determine what sexual acts and sexuality are good and bad. Resulting from questions such as this, Queer Theory emerged in an attempt to deconstruct notions of moral sexuality. Another key point made Rubin (1984) and those opposed to the anti-sexual discourse is that the anti-sexual discourse opposes sexual acts that are not regarded as ‘routine’, instead of opposing the greater issues of every day oppressive acts such as violence or exploitation. Thus, reflecting the notion that it is not sexual acts themselves, which are oppressive, but the sexism present in our collective societies that these sexual acts
