168 Gayle rubin The Traffic in Women 169 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 capitalis 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 babies. Such a system may be approached the task of analyzing the"second aspect of ma 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 syslems. Kinship systems are and do many things. But they known examples. But it is important-even in the face of a depressing history-to maintain a distinction between the p of, and reproduce, concrete forms of socially organized sexuality. Kinship systems are observable and em- ty to the empirically oppressive ways in which sexual worlds have pirical forms of sex/gender systems. been organized. Patriarchy subsumes both meanings same term. Sex/gender system, on the other hand, is a Kinship term which refers to the domain and indicates that (On the part played by sexuality sion is not inevitable in that domain, but is the product of 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 syslem of categories and statuses equately described as patriarchal. Many New Guinea soci which often contradict actual genetic relationships. There are eties(Enga, Maring, Bena Bena, Huli, Melpa, Kuma, Gahuku dozens of examples in which socially defined kinship statuses Gaa, 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 womer bridewealth is given for the mother. Thus, a woman can b But the power of males in these groups is not founded on married to another woman and be husband to the wife and their roles as fathers or patriarchs, but on their collective father of her children, despite the fact that she is not the adult maleness, embodied 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- ction, organizing economic, political, and ceremonial, as nance, and the use of the term ought to be confined to the as sexual, activity. One's duties, responsibilities, and Old Testament-type pastoral nomads from whom the term comes, or groups like them. Abraham was a Patriarch-one Engels thought that men acquired wealth in the form of herds and old man whose absolute power over wives, children, herds nd dependents was an aspect of the institution of fath right" in favor of patriline right was the world historical defeat of the fer hood, as defined in the social group in which he lived Whichever term we use, what is important is to develop servitude: she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument f concepts to adequately describe the social organization of production of children"(Engels, 1972: 120-21: italics in original). As exuality and the reproduction of the conventions of sex and der. We nced to pursue the project Engels abandoned ocial authority in societies practicing matrilineal inheritance Schneider and Gough, 1962)