Singer Bette Midler takes a page out of the story to encourage women to go on a sexual strike to protest the draconian Texas abortion law.
“I suggest that all women refuse to have sex with men until Congress guarantees them the right to choose,” Midler posted in a tweet.
The proposed action evokes Lysistrata, a play from ancient Athens where the women of Greece denied sex to men until they ended a war between nation-states. Some scholars believe that the main character is vaguely based on the real-life Athenian activist Lysimache.
Similarly, actor Alyssa Milano called a sexual strike in 2019 after a controversial anti-abortion law was passed against abortions in Georgia, but was later overturned by the courts.
Midler moved to push for action for Texas ’extreme new law, the country’s most restrictive, which criminalizes abortions after just six weeks, even before most realize they’re pregnant. The Supreme Court refused to take immediate action to block the law.
The statute also establishes a system of rewards for vigilantes who report people seeking abortion and can receive a $ 10,000 reward if they successfully sue those who “help and cause” an abortion.
Not everyone praised Midler’s protest. Some said it “underestimated” women’s rights as merely transactional by presenting them as “only” granted by men to “exchange of services“.
Another said the trick directly involves women have sex to please men, not themselves.
Many noted that Midler’s message stresses that it takes two to get pregnant, even though women are the ones indicated for shame and sanctions for an abortion, while men can easily dodge any responsibility or consequences.
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