ABSTRACT
In this paper, I will try to draw out some of the ways in which the economic sphereespecially the division oflabor berween the sexes-has contributed to the construction of sexuality during the past century and a half in the United States. I will show how economic forces have helped create both heterosexual and homosexual relationships-with emphasis on the latter, which have received very little attention from economists. I will also argue that the late rwentieth century emergence of a lesbian and gay political movement-and of a feminist movement in which lesbians have played key roles-constitutes a direct challenge to the sexual division of labor and gender. Since I cover a broad sweep of history, this analysis will be, of necessity, sketchy. In particular, I will not be able to address adequately the class and racial-ethnic variations in sexuality. Nor can I integrate the many noneconomic factors that have contributed to the changing construction of sexuality. However, I hope to be able to show that the economy has played an important part in shaping and transforming sexuality.l
This paper builds predominantly upon the work of historians of sexuality, and on basic feminist theory. There is little recent work on sexuality written from a Marxist
or radical economics perspective. Marxist economic theory essentially ignores the family and sexualiry; when necessary, it assumes heterosexualiry. Marxist-feminist theory has focused on the institution of heterosexualiry as key to patriarchy; it has shown how the sexual division of labor, and in particular the exclusion of women from high-paying jobs, has forced women into unequal marriages with men, which include the provision of unpaid domestic labor to their husbands.2 However, these analyses essentially equate sexuality with marriage, and usually ignore homosexuality. 3 Furthermore, as Ann Ferguson (1989, 1991) has pointed out, these analyses have utilized a "rational self-interested" view of the individual, which cannot comprehend either "unconscious libidinal motivations" or the motivations of individuals by "symbolic definitions of gender, racial, sexual and family identity," all of which are key to understanding gender and sexuality (Ferguson 1989: 32). Rhonda Gottlieb's path-breaking article, "The Political Economy of Sexuality" (1984), examined some of the basic aspects of sexuality in capitalism, including the male-centeredness ofheterosexual sex, the grounding of heterosexuality and male-defined sexuality in the sextyping of jobs, and the egalitarian aspects of many homosexual relationships. Unfortunately, there has been no response to it (not one citation in the Social Science Citation Index!). Here I will try to address the topic of economics and sexuality from a radical economics framework, as does Gottlieb, but with a more historical focus.
