The Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent, Prostitution and Pornography: The British Black Women’s Movement and Sex Work, 1970s-1980s

Abstract

In recent years there have been some noteworthy attempts to remedy scholarly silences on the Black women’s movement. The issue of sex work, however, is only mentioned in passing despite the so-called ‘sex wars’ preoccupying the white feminist scene at this time. Grappling with the methodological issue of silence on multiple interconnected levels, this this article attempts to fill this gap by interrogating how, and indeed whether, activists in the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD) approached issues of sex work. It asks why these activists rejected the interpretation of sex work as work taken by their contemporaries in the sex workers’ rights movement. It firstly proposes that Black woman activists made a conscious decision to remain silent on issues of commercial sex, dismissing prostitution, alongside other issues of sexuality, as the ‘luxury’ preserve of white middle-class feminists that were distinct from, rather than integral to, Black women’s ‘survival’. Piecing together activists’ increasing but piecemeal discussions of pornography from the early-mid 1980s, the second section of this article demonstrates how activists analysed pornography and prostitution as part of a historical tradition of the sexual exploitation of Black women. In doing so, it proposes that their approach to commercial sex was fraught with contradiction – they viewed prostitution, an issue with real-life implications, in symbolic terms. Overall, it argues that Black woman activists to turned a blind eye to the tangible implications of prostitution legislation for Black women as they navigated tensions and challenges around post-war British racism, respectability politics and the gendered legacy of colonialism. Together with work on the experiences of lesbian women, it raises questions about which women were welcome in the movement, reminding us of the need to push scholarship on Black women’s history beyond the act of recovery.