A Black Feminist Perspective on Pornography

This is a really interesting article by Chitra Nagarajan.

There was interesting research done a couple of years ago asking communities in eastern Congo about the causes of sexual violence. One of the points people raised was the impact of pornography, especially given community methods of sex education had fractured due to the conflict. Porn – a lot of it produced in America – was the primary way young people learned about sex. We need to look beyond where we live and see the impact that this Euro-American capitalist exploitative industry has in other countries…

…I was invited to come and speak today because the voices of black women are not often in the debate on pornography so I want to end with talking about why. I wonder whether it is because we do not believe pornography is as important as white feminists do. That is not to say that we do not think that pornography is not important – we do – but the realities of our lives are different.

We have so much that we need to fight against – the sexist, racist, heteronormative immigration and asylum system, negotiating that line between not playing into racist assumptions of black communities and violence while speaking out about violence against women and girls in our communities, police brutality, the racism and sexism our children experience and trying to find ways to build their sense of possibility while reflecting the reality of British society, the hyper visibility of black women in the public sphere as objects for discussion and debate – by black men, by white men, by white women but not by black women and of course the poverty that black women continue to disproportionately experience.