Sex strike

A sex strike, sometimes called a sex boycott, 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 is a form of temporary sexual abstinence. Sex strikes have been used to protest many issues, from water resources to employment equity.

The most famous example of a sex strike in the arts is the Greek playwright Aristophanes' work Lysistrata, 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 the Peloponnesian War.

Among the Igbo people of Nigeria, in pre-colonial times, the community of women periodically formed themselves into a Council, a kind of women's trade union. This was headed by the Agba Ekwe, 'the favoured one of the goddess Idemili and her earthly manifestation'. She carried her staff of authority and had the final word in public gatherings and assemblies. Central among her tasks was to ensure men's good behaviour, punishing male attempts at harassment or abuse. What men most feared was the Council's power of strike action. According to Ifi Amadiume, an Igbo anthropologist: 'The strongest weapon the Council had and used against the men was the right to order mass strikes and demonstrations by all women. When ordered to strike, women refused to perform their expected duties and roles, including all domestic, sexual and maternal services. They would leave the town en masse, carrying only suckling babies. If angry enough, they were known to attack any men they met'.

Citing similar examples of women's strike action in hunter-gatherer and other precolonial traditions around the world, some anthropologists argue that it was thanks to solidarity of this kind—especially collective resistance to the possibility of rape—that language, culture, and religion became established in our species in the first instance. This controversial hypothesis is known as the "Female Cosmetic Coalitions", "Lysistrata", or "sex strike" theory of human origins.

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