Gerard Koskovich · CC BY 3.0

An American anthropologist whose 1975 essay The Traffic in Women reshaped feminist theory by arguing that gender oppression couldn't be explained through Marxist ideas of patriarchy alone, introducing the concept of a "sex/gender system" still used across the field. Her 1984 essay Thinking Sex is widely credited as a founding text of queer theory and sexuality studies, extending her analysis to pornography, sadomasochism, and urban sexual subcultures. She has taught anthropology and women's studies at the University of Michigan.