A Political Sexual Revolution: Sexual Autonomy in the British Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

In the 1970s and 1980s, women across Britain—particularly those in the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM)—took part in a distinct sexual revolution fuelled by a very specific question—who gets to determine the ways in which I am sexual? The active engagement by women with this question of sexual selfhood belies a historiography of sexual revolution—real or imagined—in which women were the passive beneficiaries (or victims) of technological, cultural, religious, social and/or, economic shifts. Drawing on the writing of women in the feminist press, mainstream media, books, and pamphlets, this article describes the specific contribution of the WLM to shaping new possibilities for a sexuality defined, and controlled, by women. I argue that the WLM combined a powerful political framework with an influential social network to significantly contribute to a far-reaching process of deconstructing and recasting female sexuality and sexual relations.