Alyssa Milano is doubling down on her call for a sex strike and, really, I can’t think of a stupider idea.
It all started with a tweet.
“Our reproductive rights are being erased,” the actress tweeted Friday. “Until women have legal control over our own bodies we just cannot risk pregnancy. JOIN ME by not having sex until we get bodily autonomy back. I’m calling for a #SexStrike. Pass it on.”
That didn’t go well.
Conservatives praised her on Twitter for finally coming around to their way of thinking. (“Yes!!! You know how many problems we would solve with abstinence before marriage? Unwanted pregnancy, STDs, among others.”)
Progressives rejected her call.
“A #SexStrike won’t bring back our rights — voting, supporting women candidates, running for office, and fighting like hell will,” Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, tweeted.
But Milano remains unbowed.
In a CNN op-ed published Monday, she and activist Waleisah Wilson reiterated their call for no sex until … well, it’s not clear, exactly. The strike is inspired by abortion bans being passed or voted on in several states — Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Ohio, etc. It would presumably end when the various laws or proposed laws are overturned or voted down?
“A #SexStrike is a way to target straight, cisgender men so they may feel the physical consequences of our reproductive rights being systematically eliminated,” Milano and Wilson wrote in the CNN op-ed. “This form of protest has the potential to raise the issue far beyond the usual groups engaged in debates about reproductive health. It’s a way to ignite conversation and help everyone understand the gravity of the situation and the immediate need for swift action.
“Our vision is a world where people can all thrive,” they continued. “We want everyone to live healthy lives and have control over their sexual and reproductive choices. Join us by not having sex until we achieve full bodily autonomy for all.”
Full bodily autonomy for all is a wonderful goal. We don’t get there by telling women what to do — and not do — with their bodies.
We’ve had this conversation before. In Spike Lee’s 2015 “Chi-Raq,” women on Chicago’s South Side go on a sex strike to protest gang violence. It’s an adaptation of the ancient Greek play “Lysistrata,” which is appropriate because a sex strike is ancient thinking.
Sex is not a heterosexual male endeavor — something men do and women have done to them. It’s not a treat that women are in charge of hoarding and rationing out when a man has earned it, like dessert after you eat your vegetables.
Women crave sex. Women enjoy sex. Women initiate sex.
We have done a terrible job at acknowledging and, yes, celebrating this.
We teach young women — through haphazard, incomplete sex education, through terrible movie plots, through our own fumbling messaging as parents — that male sexual desire is something, all their lives, they’ll be in charge of monitoring and policing.
Never mind their own desire.
We don’t spend nearly enough time talking about enthusiastic consent — the kind where it’s clear that both parties are game — because we saddle young women with the job of seeming fun and open, but not slutty.
We ask young men — the vast majority of whom have no desire to harm young women — to make sense of this landscape.
We carry this all into adulthood.
We’re getting better, slowly, at understanding and framing sex as a mutually enjoyable pursuit, rather than something a woman will give a man once he’s worn down her defenses.
This is progress. It benefits everyone.
You know what doesn’t benefit everyone? Or anyone, really?
Turning political and legal debates with lasting, widespread ramifications — these abortion bans — into yet another call for women to put the brakes on men and their sex drives.
Enough.
If sex with men is your thing, you should have it. If advocating for reproductive rights is your thing, you should do that too. The two are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, all sorts of entangled.
I’m grateful to Milano for her early role in helping spread the word about #MeToo. I appreciate her using her platform to advocate for girls and women.
This sex strike idea, though? It’s time to relegate that to the dustbin of history.
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