Feelings on sex strike

[VampireSlayer19]

Have people seen the #sexstrike thread on twitter?

A respected actress calling on a sex strike to protest strict abortion law passed in Geogia.

What are people’s thoughts personally I just can’t see the affect? The men getting a sex ban are likely to be partners of liberal pro choice women.

The men being anti abortion have pro life people not getting pregnant- where is the win in this?

*pro abortion not pro life!

I think it's an excellent point of principle. Don't want to give me the choice of terminating a pregnancy I don't want? Then I can't risk pregnancy.

Men see sex as a recreational activity without consequences for them, all the more so since contraception and abortion. This move re-links it very firmly to the natural consequence if you remove those options for women.

Other than the point of principle, what I suppose it might do is get those those male partners feeling the effect to speak up in order to get their shags back. Men have a tendency to listen to other men more than women.

Some men...

It worked for Lysistrata!

It says to me that sex is something women do to get something else from men. That it's work for pay.

Against. Sex is not a gift.

What Antibles said.

I would certainly be denying myself something enjoyable too so I don't see that it's an unequal trade from that point of view. Just a sacrifice I would be prepared to make if it helped me get an important right back.

The actual point is that I the woman am the person at risk of being criminalised if I seek to end a pregnancy. Hence giving up any sex that would get me pregnant and put me in that position. A position no man will ever find himself in.

So it's not about sex being a gift, it's highlighting the inequality for women that results from sex.

I agree that it's not withholding it from men because they're the ones that want it, it's protecting bodily autonomy the only way left available. Contraception isn't failsafe and in the States not always cheap or free.

Actually the men too should be holding a sex strike in solidarity.

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

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

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.

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.

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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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’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.

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.

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.

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.