Signing an e-petition, tweeting furiously, changing your Facebook profile picture to the “I Stand with Planned Parenthood” logo-will any of this impact the Republican push to defund Planned Parenthood? Probably not. There is, however, something we all have the power to do, in order to send a real message to members of the GOP: stop having sex with them.
If you think this form of protest is ridiculous or immature, that’s your prerogative; history has my back. The idea of the politically-motivated sex strike stretches back to at least 411 BC, when the female characters in Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata refused to sleep with their husbands in order to make a stand for peace. In 2009, Kenyan women organized a weeklong sex strike to pressure their government to stop in-fighting. Women in Sudan , in Turkey , and elsewhere have also withheld their lovin’ to make a point.
In the case of a possible defunding of Planned Parenthood, a sex strike seems to me the most obvious and appropriate means of protest. There’s a direct correlation between what’s being threatened and what we individuals can do to assert our cause.
As we’ve been reminded numerous times in recent days , Planned Parenthood’s most common services are providing contraception and testing services for STDs and STIs. If Planned Parenthood were to shut down as a result of the GOP’s efforts, it will be more difficult to find reasonably priced and easily accessible reproductive care and, in turn, sex will become riskier for all.
So if it’s going to become more difficult to engage in healthy sexual activity as a result of a certain political party’s actions, isn’t it only fair that we stop sleeping with members of that political party?
Send Republicans a message. They can’t have their sex and restrict sexual health too.
