Aristophanes inspires sex-strike in America following controversial abortion ruling

Life is imitating art in the United States, Greek art to be precise, as many women are calling for a sex-strike following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ruling that previously guaranteed women the constitutional right to abortion.

It’s seems Greek culture still has an armoury of ideas and devices that prove their utility even now, 2500 years later, since in a similar call, Greek playwright Aristophanes in his comedy Lysistrata  performed in Athens in 411 BC saw Athens and Spartan women denying their husbands sex unless they put an end to the [Peloponnesian] War. That’s what inspired the ‘making love not war’ anti-war rallying call.

Lysistrata the heroine, persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes.

In New York on Saturday, abortion protestors were calling for a sex strike which started trending on Twitter reported the New York Post.

“If you’re a man who won’t get a vasectomy, even though it’s reversible, and you’re not out in the streets fighting for my rights, you do not deserve to have sex with me,” Brianna Campbell, a 24-year-old EMT, told The Post.

Caroline Healey, a 22-year-old event coordinator, also questioned why sex was more important than women’s rights.

“I think it’s absolutely valid for us to be withholding the Holy Grail that men seem to think is important,” she told The Post at an abortion protest in Manhattan’s Union Square.

“Why shouldn’t we withhold it if we’re always worried that they’re not going put a condom on, that they’re going take one off after we ask them to,” she added.

“If we can’t safely go out and have sex and know that we will have a choice after that, then why should we be expected to?”

Maya Demri, a survivor of rape, insisted that women need to “do everything in their legal power to get our rights back” after the high court struck down the landmark abortion ruling.

“I cannot sit here and imagine what my sisters in red states are going to do if they’re getting pregnant by rape and need to not just carry the tragedy of the worst thing that has happened to them, but also carry them in the body for nine months,” she told The Post.

[New York Post]

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