'Meu Corpo Igual': Black Women, Power, and the Defence of Choice in the Putafeminista Movement in Brazil

My PhD will rethink the incompatibility of prostitution and feminism embedded in Global North
academic scholarship by revising the analytical concept of choice feminism through an exploration
of Brazilian putafeminismo. Choice feminism declares women are empowered through the active
choices they make, a key tenet for Brazilian putafeministas. A focus on Brazilian forms of
putafeminismo not only offers broader conceptualisations of choice feminism through Global South
perspectives but enables a more inclusive framework that critically engages with Brazil's vibrant
LGBTQIA+ activism, colonial legacies of racial sexual slavery, and pervasive systematic racism that
deepen disparities in access to healthcare, education, and income-generating opportunities.
Since the late 1960s and the start of second-wave feminism in the Global North, scholars have been
divided over the compatibility of feminism with prostitution. Sociologist Julia O'Connell Davidson
and philosopher Carole Pateman, for example, cannot reconcile prostitution with empowered
feminist action and argue it must be due to a lack of alternative options or coercion (Davidson:
1998; Pateman: 1983). Contrastingly, other scholars recognise sex workers can be active decision
makers who freely choose prostitution (Ericsson: 1980; Simmons: 2018). Historiographical
treatments of prostitution have explored these debates on coercion, consent, and moral panics
surrounding sex work in various historical contexts (Wyers: 2017). Blanchette and Silva's work
examining the historical trajectory of putafeminismo's ideologies has been formative in directing
nascent scholarship on the movement (Blanchette and Silva: 2018). By blending the ideologies of
putafeminismo with broader historiographical and conceptual research, I will historicise
putafeminismo's philosophies of prostitution in ways that draws the movement into wider conceptual debates and enables a revision of vital analytical tools used across different disciplines.
Global South voices are key to driving more inclusive understandings of prostitution and feminism,
which to date have been produced predominantly in the Global North.