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You are here: Home / Archives for Leymah Gbowee

Sex Strikes and Birth Boycotts — No Laughing Matter

October 10, 2014 By Pam

15-Lysis-GraduateIn Lysistrata, that bawdy old Greek comedy, scantily clad women fed up with the Peloponnesian War lured their warrior husbands home, then slammed shut the bedroom doors, so to speak, promising to open up when peace was declared.

This week, writing a chapter about women’s use of sex strikes, I learned that, ever since Aristophanes’ heroine proposed the idea in 411 B.C.E., women around the world have occasionally withheld sex or childbirth for the purpose of making an impact on society.

Hysterically funny on stage, it’s not always so funny in real life. Here’s a sampling of actual Lysistrata experiments:

●  1530, Nicaragua — Indigenous women proclaimed a “Strike of the Uterus” after the Spanish governor established a slave trade, vowing to prevent children from being born into slavery.

15-Legs●  @1600, Iroquois Nation — Noting that they produced the warriors, women threatened to forego childbearing until men conceded some decision-making powers on the war council.

●  1919, France — Feminist socialist Nelly Roussel called for a “Strike of the Wombs” to counter post-war pro-maternity propaganda.

●  1940s, China — When women in one village were denied suffrage, the Women’s Association declared a sex strike. A second election was soon called, and women were allowed to vote. They promptly elected a woman as deputy village head.

●  1979, West Germany — On Mother’s Day in Lower Saxony, over 1,000 women joined in a nationwide antinuclear campaign, pledging not to bear anymore children until the ruling powers give up nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

●  1985, India — In New Delhi, female students at St. Stephens College vowed to avoid relations with men until the end of the semester, to protest harassment and frequent “panty raids” by male students.

●  1986, Finland — Women collected 4,000 signatures on a petition announcing, “No Natal for No Nukes” promising to withhold sex until the government of Finland changed its pro-nuclear policies.

15-Absurdistan

●  2001, Turkey — Women in rural Sirt endured months of inadequate water supply, forcing them to wait in long lines at a fountain. Fed up, they declared, “No water, no sex” and called for a Bedroom Boycott. The men soon petitioned the local governor for assistance and got the 27-year-old water system repaired. (Movie still: “Absurdistan” — see below.) 

●  2003, Liberia — In a successful campaign to end a 14-year civil war, Leymah Gbowee led a coalition of Christian and Muslim women in a variety of nonviolent tactics, including a sex strike.

15-Lysis-Project

●  2003, Global — As the Bush administration prepared to invade Iraq, Kathryn Blume and Sharron Bower organized the “Lysistrata Project: The First-Ever Worldwide Theatrical Act of Dissent.” On March 3, there were 1,029 readings of Aristophanes’ play in 59 countries — a megaphone for antiwar protest. Unfortunately, no one in the Bush administration was listening.

15-Crossed-Legs●  2006, Colombia — Proclaiming a “strike of crossed legs,” women in Pereira withheld sex to stop gang wars and drive home the point that violence is not sexy. The ten-day strike may have worked. By 2010, Pereira’s murder rate declined by 26.5 percent.

●  2009, Kenya — Thousands of Kenyan women called for seven days of chastity to force the President and Prime Minister to talk with each other, speed reform, and end months of stalled negotiations. WIthin a week, the leaders talked.

15-Anti-Republican●  2011, Philippines —  Women in a sewing cooperative on rural Mindanao Island were unable to sell their wares because violence between men in rival villages had closed the main road. They called for a sex strike. Within a few weeks, the road was opened and deemed safe for travel.

●  2011, Togo — Inspired by the successful nonviolent campaign by Liberian women in 2003, Togolese women vowed to abstain from sex for one week to protest the 45-year military rule of the Gnassingbé family, their use of torture, and the lack of human rights. It took courage to publicly condemn the ruling family, but the sex strike had little impact beyond making headlines.

15-Access-Denied●  2012, USA — The Texas-based Liberal Ladies Who Lunch set up a Facebook page urging women to withhold sex for a week, not as a weapon against men, but as a reminder that  “if women lose our hard won rights to medical care, birth control, and pregnancy choice, it won’t only affect women.” The strike proposal was made somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the demand that congress and insurance companies cover contraception was serious.

 

●  2014, Japan — A website threatening a sex strike against men who voted for Yoichi Masuzoe, reportedly received 75,000 hits a day. Despite objections to his misogynist comments, Masuzoe was elected governor of Tokyo.

15-Ukrainian-t-shirt

●  2014, Ukraine — After Russia annexed Crimea, Ukrainian women went online to launch the “Don’t Give It to a Russian” campaign, encouraging their sisters to say “Nyet!” to having sex with Russian men. They wore T-shirts bearing a logo of two “praying” hands held to resemble female genitalia. The group’s Facebook page immediately got over 2,300 “likes” and made headlines in Russian newspapers.

To Go Deeper

15-Lysis-JonesMusical & Theatrical Sex Strikes:

Modern adaptations of Lysistrata include the Western musical The Second Greatest Sex (1955), another musical The Happiest Girl in the World (1961), and Broadway’s recent sports-themed musical Lysistrata Jones (photo). While literary and theatrical treatments of the story are almost always comedic, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia rock band song “Lysistrata” concludes with the refrain, “I won’t go to war no more.”


15-Absurdistan-posterThe 2001 Turkish sex strike inspired two modern films. The 2008 award-winning German-French comedy Absurdistan, directed by Veit Helmer and filmed in Azerbaijan, tells about two young lovers in a remote Soviet village, caught up in a sex strike for repair of a water pipeline. Absurdistan (2 min trailer)

 


15-The-SourceThe 2011 French film, The Source, directed by Radu Mihāileanu, is set in a small Arab village in North Africa, where women go on a “love strike” to protest their hard labor carrying water from the mountains. (2-minute trailer) 

 

Real Life Sex Strikes:


2011, Philippines — Women’s sewing collective in 2 villages used a sex strike to stop men from fighting and open a much needed road. “Sex Strike Brings Peace” (3.5 minutes United Nations film)

 


2011, Colombia — News report on women’s “crossed leg strike” to demand a useable road after a woman and her baby died in labor because the ambulance couldn’t get to her. The report also touches on other recent strikes. (4.5 minutes)

 


2003, Liberia — Clip from Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the sex strike in Liberia (1 minute)

 


2009 Kenya — News report about women’s 7-day sex boycott protesting poor leadership and demanding a national discussion of crucial issues. (2 minutes)

Credits

Featured poster by Shayna Pond for the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma’s theatre arts production, March 2013

Lysistrata meets The Graduate by okhanorhan for the Dawson Theatre Collective, March 2012

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Absurdistan, Aristophanes, birth strike, crossed legs strike, Kathryn Blume, Leymah Gbowee, Liberal Ladies Who Lunch, Lysistrata, sex strike, Sharron Bower, The Source

It All Began at the Fish Market …

August 20, 2014 By Pam

9-GboweeQUOTEThis is not a fairytale. One woman came from a world of talking mice and sleeping beauties, the other from 14 years in the hell of a civil war, with the devil himself on the loose. When Abigail Disney, (Walt’s grandniece) visited Liberia, she was shocked to learn about Leymah Gbowee and the thousands of women who had successfully and nonviolently brought an end a long civil war three years earlier. She hadn’t heard anything about it.

For 14 years, the women of Liberia had held their families together the best they could, while men waged war with rape, terror, and automatic weapons. Over 200,000 died in the war; thousands more wished they had. In the capital city of Monrovia, women, children, and the elderly, forced to flee from their homes, barely managed to survive in camps for the “internally displaced.”

The Women Step Up and Sit Down!

9-LiberianWomenOne day, Leymah Gbowee, a social worker who counseled ex-child soldiers, decided enough was enough. Women had to take on both the warlords and the corrupt regime of President Charles Taylor and demand peace. She turned to the women in her church, asked them to dress all in white, bring a friend, and meet her at the fish market to pray. A call was issued over the radio, and the women showed up. They sat where President Taylor could see them from his office window.

When Assatu Bah Kenneth, a police officer, heard what the Christian women were doing, she mobilized her Muslim sisters, and they, too, went to the fish market.

Through an umbrella organization called Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET), women’s groups had worked tirelessly for a negotiated peace. Now, they came by the hundreds for a sit-in at the fish market. They held up banners, sang, and prayed for peace — Christians and Muslims together. (Photo from Pray the Devil Back to Hell.)

When the violence around them escalated, the women didn’t get discouraged. Instead, they erected an in-your-face billboard which read, “THE WOMEN OF LIBERIA SAY PEACE IS OUR GOAL, PEACE IS WHAT MATTERS, PEACE IS WHAT WE NEED.”

9-Women-WAR-PeaceThey wrote a position statement and marched through the streets of Monrovia to present it to the president and demand a meeting. The women had their first victory on April 23, 2003, when Taylor finally met with a women’s peace contingent, while other women sat outside the office, holding hands and praying. He agreed to attend peace talks in Ghana if the women could find the warlords and get them to come.

The women sought out the rebel warlords at the hotel where they were meeting in Sierra Leone. They lined the streets and held a sit-in, blocking the hotel doors, demanding to be heard. The warlords realized the women meant business and finally agreed to attend peace talks in Ghana.

Not willing to take anything for granted, the women raised money to travel to Ghana. They were ingenious and relentless in their nonviolent campaign for peace, using a variety of tactics — sit-ins, blockades, a sex strike, singing, prayer, marches and demonstrations, candlelight vigils, a threatened nude action. The women were tired of war. They’d had enough.

Even after a peace agreement was announced and Taylor resigned and went into exile, the women stayed involved. They registered voters, set up polling stations, and helped do the work of rebuilding a nation. On November 23, 2005, the people of Liberia elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female head of state in Africa.

A New Kind of Disney Film


When Abigail Disney visited Liberia, she was astonished to hear this remarkable story. Why didn’t the world know about what the women of Liberia had done? She decided to make their victory visible with the tools fate had given her. In an interview with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now,” Disney recounted a discussion she had with her filmmakers:

We had a conversation as we were making that film about how hard it was to find footage of the women, and it was so striking how absent they were from any discussion of war in general, not just in the news but in the literature and popular culture, and so we decided it was time to make women visible in the landscape of war …

The result was the award-winning 2008 documentary, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. In 2011, Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Abigail Disney went on to make a five-part PBS documentary film series, “Women, War, and Peace,” about courageous women in various “hotspots” around the world. She also founded Peace Is Loud, an organization that inspires action through media focus on women peace-builders.

I love collecting, retelling, and celebrating stories like this one. After a summer of so much suffering and sad news (including the tragic Ebola outbreak in Liberia, while they were still trying to rebuild the broken medical infrastructure after so many years at war), it’s crucial that women’s voices are heard and creativity recognized in doing the hard work of waging peace.

To Go Deeper:

Articles

9-BookCOVER“Liberian Women Act to End Civil War, 2003” on Global Nonviolent Action Database

 Books

Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee with Carol Mithers

This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

9-artArt

 Olaf Hajek Illustrations for film Pray the Devil Back to Hell 

YouTube


Watch this amazing 3 minute clip from Pray the Devil Back to Hell and you’ll want to see more!

For more information and to book the film.

Credits

Photo of Gbowee and Disney by Gabrielle Revere

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Abigail Disney, Charles Taylor, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, Liberia, Nobel Peace Prize, peace, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, WIPNET, Women in Peacebuilding Network

Pam McAllister

In 1982, I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence and then wrote two books about women’s use of resistance and action: You Can't Kill the Spirit and This River of Courage.

I've spent a lifetime compiling stories of courageous, creative actions, categorizing them (a la Gene Sharp), writing books and articles, speaking at university forums, church retreats, feminist conferences. I’ve also joined in the action -- antiwar protests in the '70s, Take Back the Night marches in the '80s, prison reform rallies in the '90s, and Occupy Wall Street actions in recent years.

I am currently researching more examples of nonviolent action for peace and justice around the world for two new books -- one for/about children and another about women (whose actions are still so often left out or overlooked).

Here I am with Barbara Deming, my mentor and friend, in Sugarloaf Key in the early ‘80s. The photo has faded, but the memories and love have not.

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