The Marriage of Racism and Misogyny in the Sex Trade

This was originally published here for REST | Real Escape from the Sex Trade.

On June 12, 1967—just 53 years ago this month—the United States Supreme Court struck down the remaining laws forbidding interracial marriage, including Virginia’s, in the Loving v. Virginia case. June 12 is now celebrated as “Loving Day.” 

That decision came over 300 years after interracial marriage was made illegal through colonial antimiscegenation laws. These laws vastly expanded a racist system of sexual exploitation—and we still see their impact in the sex trade today. 

When we look at the demographics of the sex trade here in King County, we see an enormous disparity—one that reflects the commodification of Black women’s bodies. 41% of the victims and survivors who engage with REST identify as Black—starkly disproportionate to the 6.2% Black and African American population of King County. When we also look at the arrest data for sex buyers in King County, the disparity grows—80% of sex buyers are white males. We see this in the porn industry as well, where sites like PornHub promote and benefit from overtly and extraordinarily racist content, including video themes such as master/slave rape.

As we look to dismantle present-day systemic racism, we must understand its roots to be able to begin to unravel the centuries of legal oppression. The inception of antimiscegenation laws, specifically in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, are largely viewed* as the beginning of codified, and therefore systemic, racism in North America. These laws, beginning in the 1660s, were a Mt. Everest-sized slippery slope, leading to the legal, but undeniably wicked and uniquely brutal chattel slavery system in the United States of America. 

Prior to the 1660s in American colonization, “slavery” was better articulated as “indentured servitude”—people of any race or ethnicity could be indentured servants. The expectation was that they would serve for a predetermined amount of time, and then become free. There were distinct class lines—and there were certainly more British and European members of the elite class (wealthy, land-owning)—but there is little evidence of widespread social stratification on the basis of race among the poor and working class. 

Throughout the 1640s, we see some inklings of social change coming, for example, people of African descent were prohibited from owning firearms. But it was a 1662 law that started the devastating landslide of a massive social shift toward racially-based social stratification.

“The rule of law in England, partus sequitir patrem, made the status of the child dependent upon the condition of the father. In 1662 the General Assembly of the Virginia Colony made a “mulatto” child’s status as free or slave dependent upon the condition of the child’s mother, marking a dramatic shift from British law.” 

- Jacqueline Battalora, The Birth of a White Nation

This shift created a system wherein the landowning men of the elite class could sexually assault their African servants as a means to grow their labor force through offspring. This was just the beginning. 

Two years later, the first antimiscegenation law was introduced in Maryland. This new law punished any “English or freeborn” woman for marrying a black slave—the wife would become a slave with her husband as punishment for her “crime”. Any children in that marriage would then be born into servitude. Even though it was illegal, this type of intermarriage was encouraged—because, again, it was a means to grow a labor force. 

During that same era, as Britain had reduced their sending of poor and homeless people to the Americas as indentured servants, elite colonists departed from their British heritage in another way—they began violating the terms of indentured servitude, abusing servants, and failing to free servants who had completed their contracted service. They began to look elsewhere for free and cheap labor. Working conditions for indentured servants became harsher—and workforces were grown through the sexual exploitation of African women, and the enslavement of their “mulatto” offspring. 

In 1676, tired of the abuses they faced as increasingly disenfranchised servants, a group from the poor class banded together—across race lines—to rise up and confront the elites. We know this uprising as Bacon’s Rebellion. The broad focus was on the corrupt practices of Governor of Virginia, William Berkely, but it is worth noting that the rebellion was particularly violent towards Indigenous peoples.

“Bacon’s Rebellion represents the unification of laborers of African and European descent, freed servants, and small landowners. The threat of a united labor force to the capitalist plantation system was clear. The response by the governing elite was a divide and conquer approach. They separated laborers by creating one group with the authority to rule over and oppress the other.”

- Jacqueline Battalora, The Birth of a White Nation

It became quickly apparent that dividing the uprising mass would be most effective if the means of the division was visible. Quickly, during and immediately following the rebellion, African-Americans were stripped of their rights to testify before a court (so they could not object when they were not freed at the end of their time of service, or when their wives were assaulted), to participate in the economy, to own property, to participate in the political process, to gather without permission, and to engage in legal marriage or parenthood. The divide took root, separating the “European-born” working class from the African working class. 

In 1681, as they continued to codify this divide, we see the first instance of “white” as a class descriptor (rather than a physical descriptor)—again—in a Maryland antimiscegenation law. Virginia followed suit in 1691. 

Depending on which colony she was in, a white woman found guilty of marrying a man of African descent would either be enslaved—and her children also enslaved—or be banished from the colony. And while it was also illegal for white men to marry or engage in sex acts with women of African descent, the laws were rarely enforced for the wealthy and elite white men—just the women.  

“As African laborers began to be synonymous with live-service or slavery at the end of the seventeenth century, the law worked to render the children of women of African descent human capital. Black women were transformed into a machinery of capitalistic production. The law permitted and encouraged the sexual violation of black women as a means of increasing plantation wealth.”

- Jacqueline Battalora, The Birth of a White Nation

Throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, the rights of all women, and men of African descent—were stripped—intentionally consolidating power among the wealthy, land-owning, elite, white men. For both African American and white women, albeit most assuredly more violently for African American women, their bodies were commodified for the production of and maintenance of wealth and power for the wealthy, white, elite men. African women’s bodies were used to produce wealth through labor force growth, and white women’s bodies were used to maintain wealth through “pure” heirs. We also see the shame in this nascent form of purity culture, as white women were relegated to being keepers of the “pure” bloodline—and could be banished or enslaved for “tainting” that “purity”.  This system harmed African American women more, but it was not without harm for white women too.

“Sexuality was devalued in English women in the process of relocating it in the bodies of African women. That is, by validating the violation of African woman as the cultural site of sexuality itself, in the name of and in the interest of plantation wealth, sexual being was in the same gesture withheld from English women. English women became instead the desexualized site of validated motherhood as the concomitant of the commodification of African motherhood as capital. Motherhood was functionalized for English women in the process of appropriating motherhood as production in the African.” 

- Steve Martinot, author of The Machinery of Whiteness: Studies in the Structure of Racialization

356 years after that first antimiscegenation law, and 339 years after the first instance of “whiteness” as a codified class descriptor, we still see the impacts of the legal devaluation of women in the sex trade today. While people of all genders and races experience exploitation in the sex trade—and there are exploiters from all backgrounds—the sex trade disproportionately exploits Black and African American women at the hands of white men. 

It is time to ask ourselves—what do freedom, safety, and hope look like after centuries of exploitation? How can we contribute to the undoing of the old systems, and the creation of an equitable future? 

We are asking these questions of ourselves at REST, as we listen, learn, and act, and we invite you to ask them of yourselves as well. What can we do together to dismantle this centuries-old marriage of misogyny and racism? 

*If you’d like to read more about the topic presented in this blog, we recommend Jacqueline Battalora’s book, which we quoted numerous times: The Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and its Relevance Today.