Women, War, and Sex

I recently read Lysistrata. It's about how women end a war by engaging in sex strike, which of course drives the men crazy. I think this play speaks to three things: 1. The power of women as peace-makers 2. The power of sex 3. The power of the female body.

The concept of women as peace-makers, those who prevent people from killing each other, makes sense, since their bodies are life-givers that produce children. It is interesting that in ancient Greece, Aphordite, the goddess of romantic love, is often paired with Ares, the god of war, for in some ways the two are opposite: female and male, love and hate, sex, which produces life, and combat, which produces death - and yet, visually, sex and hand-to-hand combat have much in common. This similarity is played upon in Greek art.

In a sense, Lysistrata is the opposite of "The Illyiad", in which a woman's body and sex cause men to go to war. No doubt, many blamed Helen, and medieval culture often used the story of Troy as an example of the sinful power of woman's body, and its ability to bring man death (as indeed, Eve was beleived to have brought man death in medieval Christian theology).

What interests me however, in addition to the power given to sex and the female body - a power that can be seen from sexual cult religious practices and the use of preistesses in temples* - is the relationship between war and a woman's body, which is often compared to earth: Like earth, it produces life, and like earth, it must be conquered. Lysistrata at one point even refers to a girl's genitalia as her "garden", and in Haiti today sometimes women will refer to their vagina as their "feild" - like a feild, it produces new life, must be tended to, and provides a sustenance (women in Haiti often have arrangements where they offer men the feild of their bodies, in exchange for which men till their plot of land and make sure they have food).

The male fear of a sex strike* is also apparent. That fear is negated by turning the entire concept of a female sex strike into something so carnivalesque that it is impossible for it to ever be true.

Reading Lysistrata, I could not help by think how in so many communities, women are on the front lines of peace and reconciliation efforts, and do all sorts of outreach into their communities, but generally are not given the credit they are due. This changed a bit this year, when the Noble Peace Prize was given to women.

One of those women, Leymah Gbowee, organized other women, and they used a sex strike as part of their peace-acheiving strategy in Sierra Leone. Also, at one point, when Gbowee was going to be arrested, she threatened to strip right there, in public, and it stopped the officers from taking her. This is an ancient African tradition - in Kenya, in the Mau-Mau uprising, elder women bared their privates to shame young men, and in the 1600s-1800s, female slaves from Africa would sometimes bear their privates in protest of their treatment, in order to shame the white men around them, who just didn't get it, because it is the phallus, not the cunt, that has power in Western society.

Of course, this is why Lysistrata does not really "work" in a post-Christian world: Women's bodies have been devalued, seen both as places devoid of sexual desire and as places full of a sexual desire that is fraught with sin, and sex in the modern world is not an act of power: It is a negotiation of two bodies in a world fraught with peril, an act of pleasure surrounded by so much nervous discourse that it has been both over-sensitized and sanitized at the same time. Until we get back to a healthier image of our bodies and their sexual nature, such comedy simply won't be as amusing. I think for men especially, the sexual mores of this world can be hard to navigate - today's young men are not being taught confidence, which not only harms them, but also harms the women who want to sleep with them. Feminism must help guide culture to develop a positive male identity that is one of equality, and not domination, if they wish to be succesful. Leopold Von Massoch said that without equality, men will dominate women or be dominated by them. I think that is true, but at the same time, without equality, women will either dominated men or be dominated by them - and that's something we as women must keep in mind. Yes, there is more work to be done on the front of women's rights - but that doesn't mean we can forget about men, who are left to negotiate a new post-feminist world in which the confident tropes of the patriarchal male identity are starting to shift beneath their feet.

Anyhow, this entire episode also reminded me of a midrash I heard that when Ahashverosh's advisors tell him he must get rid of Vashti lest the other women follow her example, they mean as follows: Vashti refused to sleep with the king. Other women might follow her example and form a sex strike. If so, this would mean the midrash-writers were familiar with the fear of a female sex strike: Was this a generalized ancient fear? Had they come into contact with the story of Lysistrata in some way - probably not by reading it, but by hearing of some random Greek tale about a woman who organized a sex strike to end a war? What did the midrash writers think about the power of the female body - a power that bears none of the negative connotations that came into being in medieval times?***

These are all questions worth pondering, just as this interview with Leymah Gbowee is worth watching: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-november-14-2011/leymah-gbowee?xrs=share_copy

*Their work often included sex, and temples sometimes served as glorified brothels. Milgrom posits that a major goal of Leviticus is to completely separate the sexual realm from the religious realm, as opposed to surrounding cultures that fused the two.
* Some say Lysistrata was actually written by a woman
*** Many of the medieval Ashkenazic writings that seem mysogynistic were actually taking their cue from the Catholic culture that surrounded them; pre-medieval Jewish writings are much more women friendly. For more on this see "Carnal Culture" by Daniel Boyarin.