Marguerite "Maggi" Rubenstein, Ph.D., a pioneering bisexual activist dubbed the Godmother of Sex Ed, died August 19 at her home in Red Bluff, California. The cause of death was not disclosed, but friends said her health had declined in recent months. She was 93.
After coming out as bisexual amid the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Rubenstein became a leading figure in the sex education community and the nascent bisexual movement.
"In 1980, when I came out as bisexual from within the San Francisco lesbian community, Maggi had already been an out and outspoken feminist and bi activist for more than a decade," longtime bisexual activist Lani Ka'ahumanu told the Bay Area Reporter. "Whether she was welcomed or not, she spoke up. The local and national bi+ community has lost a pioneer upon whose shoulders we are all standing."
Dr. Rubenstein, who was born and raised in the Bay Area, initially trained as a nurse. After two heterosexual marriages, she came out as bisexual in 1969 to fellow staff members at the Center for Special Problems, a San Francisco Department of Public Health mental health program serving sexual minorities and transgender people. Around the same time, she came out to her parents and children. "My mother said she wished I was a lesbian because all they do is hug ... which hasn't exactly been my experience," she recounted in a 1994 B.A.R. profile.
She also recalled the struggles between gay men and lesbians and between lesbian and bisexual women, including friction around bisexuals joining what was then known as the Gay Freedom Day Parade. "There is sexual fascism in this country, and we all have to get past the dichotomies and struggle together against people who want to kill us," she said.
Dr. Rubenstein earned a counseling degree at the University of San Francisco and maintained a private therapy practice for four decades. In the early 1970s, she worked with Glide Memorial Church's National Sex Forum and served on the board of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual. The National Sex Forum gave rise to the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, where Dr. Rubenstein received a doctorate and was a faculty member and dean. Working with the late lesbian pioneer Phyllis Lyon and others, she developed training standards for sexologists.
In 1972, Dr. Rubenstein was one of the co-founders of San Francisco Sex Information, which ran a volunteer phone hotline offering confidential information about sex and became known for its in-depth trainings covering all aspects of sexuality. Recognizing the importance of safer sex in the early years of the HIV epidemic, she and her colleagues with the Sexologists' Sexual Health Project held workshops and did outreach at bars and sex clubs. In 1984, she was one of the founding members of Mobilization Against AIDS, and she joined the Committee to Preserve Our Sexual and Civil Liberties, a group organized to oppose the closure of San Francisco's bathhouses.
In 1976, Dr. Rubenstein and Harriet Leve, Ph.D., co-founded the San Francisco Bisexual Center, which for a time was based at the Haight district home of her human sexuality institute colleague, the late David Lourea, Ph.D. The center offered counseling, discussion groups, social events, a newsletter, and a speakers' bureau; it closed in 1985. She also helped start BiPOL, the first bisexual political action group, in 1983, and the Bay Area Bisexual Network (now the Bay Area Bi+ and Pan Network) in 1987.
"Maggi was a bi+ leader and a trailblazer starting in the 1970s wave of activism," said longtime bisexual activist Robyn Ochs. "I think about what courage she must have had. I remember how hard it was when I came out to myself in the 1970s and how it took me five years to share this information with anyone else. It felt nearly impossible to be publicly bisexual. And yet Maggi was one of the brave people out there doing just that."
As the lesbian and gay community grew in size and influence in the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Rubenstein "became famous for going to meetings from the Castro to City Hall and shouting 'and bisexual!' whenever the L and G was not followed by the B," according to a remembrance by bi activist and sex educator Carol Queen, Ph.D., director of the Center for Sex and Culture.
"Maggi's legacy was hugely influential even before I met her, and she honestly helped make my life's path possible," Queen told the B.A.R. "Maggi's influence on San Francisco sex culture is comparable to the way Margo St. James and Carol Leigh impacted it. Her loss is enormous — but so were her contributions."
St. James, who died in 2021, was a sex-positive feminist and pioneer of the sex workers' rights movement. Leigh, who died in 2022, was a bisexual sex worker activist and artist.
Dr. Rubenstein was a proponent of numerous causes, including women's rights and sex workers' rights. She was active in the fight against the 1978 Briggs initiative, a state ballot measure to ban gays and lesbians from working in California public schools. (It was defeated.) She was a longtime member of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, which awarded her the Harry Britt Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. She was chosen as the community grand marshal for the 1992 San Francisco Pride parade, and she received the GLBT Historical Society's History Makers Award in 2020.
"Maggi was a Milk club stalwart and active in many progressive campaigns," said gay District 8 supervisor and former club president Rafael Mandelman. "She was a fierce voice for bisexual rights and definitely made her mark in San Francisco."
Dr. Rubenstein remained involved in the bi community as it expanded and evolved over the decades, becoming a mentor to successive generations of bisexual, pansexual, transgender, and gender-diverse advocates. She moved from her home in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood to Northern California in 2017.
"Maggi was always warm and funny and had a lovely sense of humor," recalled bi and trans activist Martin Rawlings-Fein, director of the BiCONIC Film Festival. "She co-founded everything under the sun. There's a Maggi-shaped hole in the community's heart right now."
A celebration of Dr. Rubenstein's life is being planned but does not yet have a date.
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!