Rubin argues that L-S's insights suggest that women are more constrained by the kinship system than men. A system based on an exchange of women means that preferred female sexuality would be a passive rather than active one because the girl who is exchanged will have little say about who she has sex with. In addition, homosexuality in women will be suppressed to a greater extent than it is in men as long as men have rights in women that they do not have in themselves. To summarize, L-S provides some basic generalities about the organization of human sexuality. Psychoanalysis and its Discontents Anthropology can describe kinship systems, but it can not explain the ways children are engraved with socially determined ideas of sex and gender.
Psychoanalysis is a theory about the reproduction of kinship.
The Oedipus Hex Freud had reservations about making conclusions about women based on data collected from men. The pre-oedipal phase allowed Freud and others to create a theory of femininity. In the pre-Oedipal phase, boys and girls are psychically indistinguishable, or bisexual with the mother as the primary object of desire. So, the pre-oedipal female challenged the idea of innate heterosexuality. The feminine development could not be simply a biological reflex.