Just Say No to Sex Strikes

In response to the increasing number of anti-choice and anti-contraception laws popping up all over the United States, a group called the Liberal Ladies Who Lunch are proposing a sex strike from April 28-May 5.

Do I need to explain why this is a bad idea? Because this is a bad idea.

Trust me, I sympathize with the group’s intentions – to call for more attention to the constant attack on women’s reproductive health, to reframe the issue as one that can affect both women and men. I also share the reluctance to get romantically involved with anyone who doesn’t support reproductive health, and as a rule, I don’t date anti-choicers.

But let’s say that, like me, you’re dating a pro-choice man or married to a man who already supports your right to do what you want with your body. What are you supposed to say? “Sorry, honey, no nookie for a week, because even though YOU agree with me on this issue, abstaining from sex with you will somehow send a larger message to the world.”

Am I alone in thinking that this strike doesn’t make a whole lot of sense?

A few spokespeople for this group have said that the strike isn’t a literal one, that it’s just a joke to make a point. Okay, fine. But look at the FAQ page and you’ll see a problem in the very first sentence:

“The only reason that American men can enjoy their customary free, regular and safe sex with women is because those women have access to the contraceptives of their choice.“

The way this is written implies that sex is something for men to enjoy and for women to give, not as something that (straight) men and women enjoy together.

I’m sure this is not what the Liberal Ladies Who Lunch meant to imply, but it comes across that way anyway. The same problem exists in the mere title of the strike. A “No Access” sex strike turns our bodies into these things or places that we allow or don’t allow men to enter.

Do we need more ways to objectify our own bodies?

Do we need to play into the stereotype of women withholding sex as a weapon to punish men, or coerce men into doing what we want?

All those complaints aren’t even touching the fact that a lot of these anti-choice, anti-contraception people are the same people who don’t think unmarried folk should be having sex of any kind to begin with, and would probably clap with glee if they saw a bunch of godless liberal hippies become abstinent. A sex strike would only threaten them if all of the strikers were married Christians.

Again, I sympathize with the intent behind this strike, but I don’t think it works, even symbolically. You can’t say it’s an abstinence pledge for couples to take together and call it an “Access Denied” and “No Access” strike.

I am, however, entirely supportive of the use of satire and comedy for activist methods. I think knitting a uterus to a Congressman in need or giving detailed vagina updates to pro-ultrasound lawmakers are better ways to do it.