2003-03-05 8:17 p.m.
No Nukes, No Nookie
So some Danish actresses are calling for women worldwide to pull a Lysistrata and withhold sex until their men speak out against war:
"Actress Anne-Marie Helger told BBC News Online: 'Mrs Blair, Mrs Bush and (the wife of the Danish PM) Mrs Rasmussen should stay out of their husbands' beds until they call their dogs off.'"
Now, I like that activists are using humor to further their goals, and Lysistrata is a good choice for this particular project. But the hidden assumptions of those who are taking this literally really irk me.
First off is the idea that all women are nurturing and peaceloving. (Yeah, tell that to Pauline Nyiramasuhuko.) It may be that most of the people making decisions about this war are men, but that doesn't mean that all men support the war and all women are against it. What if Mrs. Blair and Mrs. Bush actually support the war? Should they stop putting out in an act of gender solidarity anyway?
Second is the implication that 25 centuries after the play takes place, women's best form of power is still sex. With the exception of the Spartans, women in ancient Greece not only couldn't vote, but they weren't even citizens. They couldn't represent themselves in court, couldn't get an education, couldn't dress extravagantly, and couldn't even mourn equally with men. In the 4th century BC, withholding sex was the only power women had. Why are rich, privileged women from a Western democracy not insisting that we take advantage of that privilege? Why aren't they calling for women to vote or write their Congress(wo)man instead? At best it comes off as naive. At worst it looks like disregard of the plight of women in some of the very countries the US has been attacking lately.
I'm not sure if I'm taking this too seriously or not seriously enough, but I wish people would think these things through. Is that too much to ask?