Feelings on sex strike

Back to the OP

This action, has been used successfully in countries like Iceland and Liberia where all unpaid Women's Work is withdrawn. It has been a very successful action, hope it succeeds in US and should be used here too.

If there is a manipulative misogynistic narrative that says women withhold sex because we are mean and its so unfair to men, then we just have to keep on saying loudly saying "NO, we don't want to have sex in case we get pregnant and we care about the consequences for ourselves and the possible child", not be manipulated or intimidated into taking another reaction. We have to stop letting men control us and control the agenda.

I can't handle the side effects of the pill so sex has never been without the risk of pregnancy for me and DH. Its something we take seriously.

Sure to have loads of good sex without any negative consequences would be great, just like calorie free pizza and cake, but they don't exist either.

Men need to grow the fuck up.

Sex can be a gift. Sometimes I'm not particularly up for it but may choose to do it as I want to do so for my husband's sake (he never pressures me,) like I may choose to cook him a meal or make a cuppa.

It's still my choice so what's wrong with that?

A lot of women voted for Brexit

I am referring to funders and organisers, not voters.

Follow the money.

Look who organised the anti abortion rally.
It wasn't pro EU campaigners.
Trumpbrexit funders are one and the same; they hate Women's Rights and Women's rights to abortion.

A lot of women voted for Brexit, though. I don't really see why it's necessary to drag that into this.

There was an anti abortion rally in central London yesterday, organised by the usual suspects.

I'm surprised it's taken this long for women to advocate this. This has been a successful action over the millenia to oppressive patriarchal regimes.

An International Women Strike was always the obvious repsonse to trumpbrexit.

Well a sex strike might actually happen inadvertently. Im in the UK and was on the Mini Pill and using a condom the last time i tried to have sex. It couldnt happen because i went into spasm a bit like vaginismus. Im child free by choice and i was still nervous id get pregnant despite taking precautions We are always hearing how contraception is not 100%

If IM nervous and this happened to me this could certainly happen to women in Georgia

Their body might make the decision for them to protect them.

Wouldn't he just not have sex with you MrsTerryPratchett if this was the law?

I can't imagine us staying there TBH.

This law won’t just apply to abortions though, so isn’t just about birth control.

Women who have sex to get pregnant are even more at risk because they can be criminalised for miscarriage.

And your partner is never as at risk as you in those circumstances. It is the woman who will be held responsible.

There are far more women having miscarriages than abortions.

It gives society and doctors the opportunity to consider everything you eat, drink, every exercise, every doctor’s visit or wish not to visit, every choice you make while pregnant as potentially criminal and murderous.

It isn’t primarily about recreational sex.

Wouldn't he just not have sex with you MrsTerryPratchett if this was the law? It would be such a risk to take with you or any woman. You're the one risking an unwanted pregnancy and life imprisonment. He would be risking...?

If this becomes law in Georgia, every time a man has sex with a woman he'll be putting her in an unacceptably dangerous position.

I don't like the reinforcement of sex as currency with women as reluctant providers.
I also don't understand the logic behind it. People who are anti-abortion, already advocate that you shouldn't have sex if you're not willing to live with all the possible consequences of that including pregnancy. A sex strike is what they recommend. The sex strike is like the purity rings campaigns but with hashtags rather than jewellery.

I’m not sure this doesn’t play entirely into the hands of pro-lifers, particularly Catholic’s who promote abstinence as the only moral form of birth control.

unless these women would otherwise be having sex with the men who have the power to overturn the law?

And there's the rub. DH would be just as outraged as me at this law and would totally smuggle me out of state therefore risking his freedom too. So it seems a little silly for couples like us to stop shagging.

I would understand it as a self-protection move, but not as a protest, unless these women would otherwise be having sex with the men who have the power to overturn the law? I just don't see how that works.

The miscarriage element would scare me more.

There will be men who report their partners for having a miscarriage, risking her ending up in prison for life.

Who would feel safe getting pregnant knowing you have a one in 5 chance of miscarriage, which can then be investigated as a murder?

Some of us actually enjoy sex

I enjoy sex that doesn't put my health, employment, well-being and even life at risk. Which is what forced birth does.

It isn't really withholding sex. It's making the only bit of the decision making process women in Georgia will be allowed. If that, since rape and sexual assault aren't prosecuted particularly vigorously.

Sex strike? Me? You must be bloody joking, mate. Bugger that.

Some of us actually enjoy sex and don’t regard it as an imposition, a duty, a currency, a method of barter, a chore or a political act.

A woman’s right to bodily autonomy should not be a thing men can give or take from a woman in the first place.

It’s not about saying that I will only sleep with you if you give me x, it’s about saying I have no desire to have sex with any man while they think x is something they have a right to give or take.

Against. Hard to avoid the impression then that sex is something for men to enjoy and women to grudgingly dole out. I understand that the point isn't to punish but that is how it will be construed.

There have been good points made here. I understand that sex should not be used as currency that a woman can give out or deny in order to get what she wants but as others have said, the lawmakers have made it dangerous for women to have sex now. No way would I be having intercourse in a State like that with its ideals akin to Shariah Law!

I would like to imagine certain women talking to their partners saying, "I'm sorry Mr Senator, I cant sleep with you anymore because it's too dangerous for me, you'll have to ask your wife for that now"

If I lived in Georgia I'm afraid I would seriously consider relocating to a neighbouring state. As all right minded women should.

5 movie production companies have vowed not to shoot movies in Georgia and hopefully they are not the only industries to take such action. It would be wonderful to see women leaving the state in droves and businesses pulling out.

I'm with the commenters saying that idea buys into the crappy patriarchal frame: sex as something women trade for something else they actually want.

A better parallel to prod the anti-choicers is to push for mandatory vasectomies at 12. There are new techniques that are reversible (tested in animals, not humans, so far). If as men they're ever mature enough to be allowed to have children, then with their wife's permission, they can get it reversed.

(Medically, that's plausible, unlike the recent US Congresscritter who figures you can just transplant an ectopic pregnancy.)

You'll get a lot of "but that's not the same at all!" and then they won't be able to explain how using men's biology to control their reproduction is different from doing the same to women. Except, of course, that men are real people and you can't just go forcing pregnancies operations on them.

This is from 2012 but highlights some of the difficulties women in the USA have getting contraception.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, in the UK where contraception is free and readily available via family planning clinics and GPs we take it for granted.

It's time to redress the balance and make men step up and take responsibility for their half of the action instead of just penalising women who get pregnant unintentionally.

www.good.is/articles/birth-control-costs-more-than-you-think-even-for-the-lucky-ones

If I lived in Georgia ... I'd be leaving, never mind a sex strike. Despicable law-making.