(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Women: Let's Conduct a Mass Sex Strike Against the Gestation Slavery Anti-Abortion War on Women [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-07 There has always been a war on women, in the same way there’s always been a war on Nature and non-human animals. These wars arise because humans, like other primates, organize societies based on vertical power structures. The most physically powerful who are most willing to use invasive violence and other intimidation are the apex predators. They gleefully enslave, plunder, rape, and kill those who aren’t strong enough to fight back. Note this is not the narrow definition of war such as what Putin is doing to Ukraine. Instead, the war on women includes deadly violence, along with “softer” wars of attrition. Wars of attrition include socioeconomic, political, and personal disenfranchisement. In America, the most damaging weapons in the war on women are wage inequality, rape, incest, domestic violence, and the attack on access to abortions and contraceptives. In Putin’s war, women and children are murdered by soldiers, artillery, bombs, starvation. In America’s war on women, victims are assaulted incrementally over time, causing physical, emotional, and psychological injury and even death. A raped woman in Texas, unable to access legal abortion, seeks an illegal abortion that injures or kills her. She might have to borrow money and/or transportation to get to a reproductive rights state. If she’s unable to end the pregnancy, she becomes a gestation slave, enduring nine months of pregnancy and the harms of childbirth to deliver the genetics of a rapist. Over a lifetime, lack of access to adequate health care, abortion, and contraceptives leads to decreased economic success and many other troubles. Women die because gestation slavery advocates interfere with their reproductive rights. And even if they don’t die, they’re injured physically, financially, and spiritually, as anyone would be when they’re treated like cows. They may not be physically dead, but they feel dead, because they know society devalues them, imprisons them in reproductive slavery, limits their socioeconomic opportunities, consigns them to the role of handmaid fetus chamber. The war on women in America is a national carnage, but also interpersonal. Soldiers in this war include anti-abortion members of SCOTUS and other judiciary, politicians, religious groups, and individuals who support anti-abortion candidates, organizations, and positions. Anti-abortion voters elect anti-abortion politicians who appoint anti-abortion judges whose rulings prevent females from getting adequate health care. The voter is (by proxy) physically harming women, forcing them to continue pregnancies they don’t want. It’s not the same soldierly act as shooting women on a battlefield, but the violence and results are the same—women suffer, are injured, sometimes die. Women are prisoners of this war. Hostages of Nature, which has assigned women 99% of human reproductive burden. Hostages of American society, which has allowed politicians and SCOTUS to take away female body autonomy. Wherever women go, they’re in occupied territory loaded with predatory males. They deal also with neighbors, friends, family members, employers who oppose their right to reproductive freedom. They’re spit on, assaulted, and worse when seeking reproductive health care. In Texas, like an escaped cow or slave, there’s a cash bounty on women who seek reproductive freedom! Our entire society is a war zone, and women are the target. Standard, feel-good approaches for fighting back don’t work in America. Voting has some value, but obviously not enough. Judicial remedies offer intermittent, minor victories, but with SCOTUS and many other federal courts stacked with Trump appointees, they don’t offer sufficient remedy. The Republican Party wants women treated as they were in the early 1800s. The Democratic Party, when they had the chance to make SCOTUS irrelevant by enacting legislation to codify Roe v. Wade, did not do it. I already published an article about how women can train themselves to fight back physically to defeat predators. But even our fiercest individual efforts won’t end the systemic war on women. Is there anything that could? Yes... The ancient Greek comedic tragedy Lysistrata gives us one answer. The author Aristophanes tells the tale of a woman who convinced many other women to engage in a sex strike. The women’s goal was to force men to stop waging the Peloponnesian War. They knew that their men loved war, money, and sex. They first deprived them of sex, then they seized the Acropolis, which held all the money. Men fought back, at one point trying to burn to death the women inside the Acropolis, but eventually the men realize they’re beaten. They negotiate a truce with the women, and with each other, ending the Peloponnesian War. Women fighting back by withholding sex isn’t just a Greek fable. In Nigeria, women formed gender solidarity affinity groups that openly battled abusive men. They don’t use only “sex strikes” that deprive men of sex, they also refuse to do domestic “duties.” Sometimes, they take their children and exile themselves away from males. They even go so far as to enact vigilante justice against male predators. In 1975, nearly 100% of the women of Iceland struck en masse to protest socioeconomic slavery. They boycotted their jobs and their domestic chores for an entire day. This one day of action forced the Icelandic government to enact socioeconomic equality legislation, and led to the election of the world’s first female head of state five years later. Colombian women in 2006 conducted a sex strike, aptly named “the strike of the closed legs,” targeted against rampant gang violence in the city of Pereira. Women knew that macho gangsters believed gang bling and violence were “sexy” to women. The women’s sex strike convinced them otherwise. Many gang members turned in their weapons and stopped engaging in violence. The sex strike worked: the city saw a nearly 30% decline in violent crime. Five years later, Colombian female activism was now called the “Crossed Legs Movement,” and a sex strike in the town of Barbacoas was activated to force men to demand that the town’s crumbling transportation infrastructure be rebuilt. The strike lasted three months, only ending when the government did the infrastructure repairs. Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize after her group, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, staged nonviolent protests and threatened a sex strike to end the country’s long-running civil war. Their actions worked—the war ended and the country elected its first female president. In Eastern European countries run by autocrats and religionists, the war on women is relentless. In 2015, anti-abortion gestation slavery advocates nearly passed a nationwide ban on all abortions in Poland, with no exceptions. A year later, an amended abortion ban was proposed, this time with exception for saving the life of the mother. Polish women who value reproductive rights rose up in mass protests, boycotting work, domestic duties, and sex with men. The Catholic Church, its papist adherents, and other right-wing “Christians” violently opposed the women. The women succeeded in blocking gestation slavery legislation, but the Polish government has continued pushing for gestation slavery. Poland has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Reproductive rights activists are stalked, harassed, jailed, discriminated against, fired and otherwise retaliated against. In 2020, when a group of Polish right-wing judges ruled that aborting braindead, mutated, non-viable fetuses should be illegal, tens of thousands of women and men protested in the street, at government centers, and in Catholic churches. In response, Poland’s prime minister threatened unlimited police powers and even the use of the military violence against reproductive rights activists. Like I said, this is a real war. In Ireland, where women had long been consigned to gestation slavery by the Catholic Church, citizens recently started mass protests against Ireland’s ludicrous gestation slavery laws, first enacted in 1861. These laws included the statutory claim that the life of a fetus and its mother were of equal value, thus blocking all abortions, even if it meant the mother died. In 2012, an Irish woman denied an abortion to remove a dead, miscarried fetus died of sepsis. This led women to do intensified activism, which caused liberalization of Ireland’s abortion laws in 2018. These kinds of valiant, effective actions, and the example set by female Ukrainian soldiers of all ages killing Putin’s invaders, offers a template for what American women could do. It should be obvious that voting and similar passive actions will not by themselves assure reproductive freedom for America’s women. The right-wing anti-abortion movement has long been waging a “hot war” against women and those who provide reproductive care. Murder of abortion doctors, clinic staff, the arsons and bombings at women’s health clinics, vile stalking, profanity, doxing, and physical threats against women visiting these clinics are potent evidence that one side is fighting this war with no constraints on tactics. What are those of us who oppose gestation slavery doing? Individual or collective sex strikes, boycotts, work stoppages would likely be just as effective here in America as they’ve been in Iceland and elsewhere. Here are some of the logistical, strategic concerns: Women should withhold sex from anyone who refuses to actively push for total reproductive freedom. Better yet, break off the relationship completely. Protesters should target the most dangerous gestation slavery advocates, such as Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito, using the most powerful methods possible, while stopping just short of breaking laws or using actual violence. Given that women have plenty more sexual options than having sex with anti-choice men, giving up sex with anti-choice men is not going to rob women of sexual pleasure. In fact, it will probably expand their sexual pleasure! Mass in-your-face boycotts and other actions against media pundits, politicians, wealthy political donors, businesses, schools, churches, and corporations that support gestation slavery policies and politicians should be staged immediately. For example, I don’t know how it is that Hobby Lobby has not been boycotted, site-protested, and put out of business. Especially compared to the women of Nigeria, Colombia, Ukraine, Iceland and elsewhere, American women are far too passive, disengaged, submissive, compliant. You don’t win a war by unilaterally disarming while the other side unilaterally uses every possible tactic. As I’ve said in previous articles, don’t wait for other people to help you. There’s a war against you. Don’t be a deserter. Step up and fight. Be like Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Be a woman warrior building cadres with other advocates to force society to ensure universal, legal, free, safe abortions and contraceptives. Fear is your biggest, disempowering enemy. When you fight back hard, not engaging in naïve hope that voting will be enough, you experience a tremendous burst of efficacy and actualization, leading to increased happiness, energy and strength for you, and a changed society. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/7/2151577/-Women-Let-s-Conduct-a-Mass-Sex-Strike-Against-the-Gestation-Slavery-Anti-Abortion-War-on-Women Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/