A sex strike, or a group of people refusing to participate in sexual activities as a means of enacting change, is an ancient and controversial tradition. Historically used almost exclusively by heterosexual women, sex strikes have an impressive record of bringing results in societies without much recognition for women’s rights and/or autonomy. Despite, or maybe because of, this, feminist activists have subjected sex strikes to much criticism in recent times, finding the very idea of them problematic and believing the strikes themselves to be ineffective.

How can both of those facts be true at the same time? To answer, we must look back at the history of sex strikes: where they came from, what they achieved, and how their relationship with women’s rights changed over time.

In 411 B.C.E., the Greek comedian Aristophanes wrote and produced the play “Lysistrata,” set during the Athenian-Spartan Peloponnesian War. Its plot followed titular protagonist Lysistrata, who, along with other Athenian (and later, Spartan) women, has become fed up with the endless casualties among young men sent to the battlefields and so decided to bloodlessly end the Peloponnesian War. The female characters refused to participate in sexual acts with their husbands for as long as the war continued, instead teasing them with oversexualized but distant behaviour until they agreed to stop fighting. The ploy succeeded and peace was achieved. The play ends with the Greek men dividing both the land and the now-accessible bodies of women amongst themselves.

Though it is by far the most prominent historical example of a sex strike, Lysistrata does not stand alone. Other, non-fictional, instances have been noted independently in multiple pre-modern societies, from pre-historic hunter-gatherers to pre-colonial Nigeria, where the women amongst the Igbo people were known to punish men for sexual violence and domestic abuse via organized suspension of maternal, domestic, and sexual activity.

As it is safe to assume that most of non-Greek strikes’ instigators were not in fact familiar with the work of Aristophanes, it becomes clear that the idea of negotiation via suspension of sexual life arises naturally amongst women living in heteronormative, patriarchal societies. As long as women’s traditional and majorly-enforced societal role is restricted to the home, with an expectation of sex informing the heterosexual marriage contract as a woman becomes a wife, refusing to perform sex (along with no longer fulfilling other household “duties” such as housekeeping, cooking, and cleaning) is among the most powerful forms of protest available to women en masse.

At the same time, however, this form of strike becomes questionable when women’s professional and public presence in society is equal or greater to that of men, as well as when heterosexual marriage is not recognized as the default state for an adult woman. In a society like this, where other forms of protest are available, the rationale behind a sex strike may become murky. Resorting to a sex strike in a less segregated society implies that the female role remains to provide sex to those in power, not merely because society demands it, but as a fact of nature.

In recent years, the topic of sex strikes has resurfaced in the West; not in the context of pacifism, but rather that of preserving women’s rights under far-right governments. In 2019, American actor Alyssa Milano called for women to go on a specifically sexual strike (not familial, professional, or maternal; that is, withholding only sex, not other forms of labour), in protest of the tightening of U.S. abortion law at the time. Although the support Milano received was not insignificant, the protest was subject to much criticism even within feminist movements. Many pointed out that the strike not only alienated protesting women (instead of bringing in supporters for a cause that should be universally shared), but also validated the conservative viewpoint portraying women as cold and manipulative individuals who use sex exclusively as a tool. Striking in this way affirmed that women could not act themselves, critics said, and rather have to rely on men’s superior ability to create change.

As common as this line of criticism is, it does not mean that modern sex strikes have become completely outdated or redundant. Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee was presented with a Nobel Prize in just 2011 in honour of her organization’s work in ending the Second Liberian War in 2003. The Women of Liberia Mass Actions For Peace organization united women from different economic, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, first to pray and sing together, and later to stage protests – including a sex strike which lasted several months.

Still, although it was the sex strike that put her on the front pages, Gbowee doesn’t credit it as the cause of the organization’s success success. The strike was “extremely valuable in getting media attention,” she wrote in her memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers, but “had little to no practical effect.” Gbowee was horrified by the description of herself as a Liberian Lysistrata, finding the comparison to a misogynistic, fictional comedy to be highly insulting towards her and the other women who put their lives on the line during the protests. Their courage and fortitude is forgotten, their efforts reduced only to the sexual, she wrote. “Until today … whenever I talk about the Mass Action ‘What about the sex strike?’ is the first question everyone asks.”

A similar issue arises with other modern protests which employ sex strikes. Apart from Liberia, sex strikes were also used during a 2001 campaign in Turkey to supply water to the rural village of Siirt and in Kenya in 2009 as a call for peace in civil conflict. However, the strikes risk endangering any future campaigns for women’s equal rights, tying women inextricably to the provision or refusal of sex. If the protests fail, the cause they oppose can even gain strength, as the protestors become associated with the Lysistratian, chauvinistically portrayed women. Such cases have been noticed, for example, in Japan, where 3,000 women went on a sex strike in 2014 to protest Yoichi Masuzoe’s candidacy for the governorship of Tokyo, due to his misogynistic views and policies. Masuzoe won the election despite the strike, with his platform using the protest to claim that women are emotionally unstable and cannot be trusted to make decisions.

What, then, is to happen to sex strikes? Should we declare them obsolete and allow them to fade away into obscurity, despite their potential utility in enacting change?

Well, yes and no. At the end of the day, what made early sex strikes effective was not so much the sex itself, but rather an organized protest of women collectively choosing to no longer perform their social function. Unlike Alyssa Milano’s proposed sex-exclusive strike, most earlier protests that used this technique included refusing to perform other ‘womanly’ duties, as well as sex. Applied in times and places where women are not just keepers of the household, but an essential part of the public, working sphere, this kind of protest only gains potency. Even if the women’s rights movement is in the process of outgrowing sex strikes in and of themselves, that does not mean that women-specific protests should not evolve into something new and more suited to the current era.

This brings us to women’s strikes, and, more specifically, the International Women’s Strike. Having begun in Poland in 2016 as a national protest against the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS)’s complete criminalization of abortion, the I.W.S. has since expanded to more than 50 countries all over the globe, protesting both local women’s rights violations and global, universal issues. Though the means employed by the protesters vary from country to country, these strikes are generally characterized by peaceful, women-specific marches and manifestations, as well as, in some cases, ceasing to work and/or provide other forms of contribution to society and their families. The most famous example of women’s total removal from the public sphere as a means of protest is perhaps the Day Without a Woman movement, which encouraged U.S.-based women to refrain from working and engaging in commerce, as well as wearing clothing which protested the misogynistic policies of the Trump presidency.

At the end of the day, what sex strikes showed in the past (and what other women’s strikes continue to show) is that issues which appear specific to women in reality affect all of society. Be it abortion, sexual assault, or gender-based discrimination, we cannot pretend that social ills which largely victimize women don’t deserve to be treated with the same seriousness as those which largely prey upon men. While it is important to avoid alienating non-female individuals who might want to give their support to the cause, as long as women are treated unequally, they should continue using all means at their disposal to protest, including forms specific to their place in the world.