- Sex strike
A sex strike is a strike, a method of
non-violent resistance in which one or multiple persons refrain from sex with their partner(s) to achieve certain goals. It's a form of temporarysexual abstinence .In October 1997 the chief of the
Military of Colombia GeneralMañuel Bonnet publicly called for a sex strike among the wives and girlfriends of the Colombian left-wing guerrillas, drug traffickers, and paramilitaries as part of a strategy - along with diplomacy - to achieve acease fire . Also the mayor of Bogota,Antanas Mockus Civicas , declared the capital a women-only zone for one night, suggesting men to stay at home to reflect on violence. The guerillas ridiculed the initiatives, pointing at the fact that there were more than 2000 women in their army. In the end the cease fire was achieved but lasted shortly.In September 2006 several wives and girlfriends of gang members from Pereira (
Colombia ), started a sex strike called "La huelga de las piernas cruzadas" (the strike of crossed legs) to curbgang violence .Sex strikes have been used to protest many issues, from
water resources toimmigration policy to employment equity.In the arts
The most famous example of a sex strike in the arts is the Greek playwright
Aristophanes ' comedyLysistrata , an anti-war comedy. The female characters in the play, led by the eponymous Lysistrata, withhold sex from their husbands as part of their strategy to secure peace and end thePeloponnesian War .References
* [http://www.amrep.org/lysistrata/ages.html Sex strikes through the ages by Lucy Burns]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5341574.stm BBC news story on Pereira strike]
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