The futility of the sex strike

Progressives spent decades telling conservatives how harmful sexual restraint was. Yet our open-minded friends on the left now seem to have discovered a new appreciation for the benefits of abstinence.

Take the ‘#SexStrike’ led by the actress Alyssa Milano.

The message is simple: no sex for men until new limits on abortion are rolled back. In particular, activists and their mainstream media allies are incensed about a new ‘heartbeat’ bill in the state of Georgia which would ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy.

This isn’t the first sex-strike aimed at female empowerment. As recently as 2016, readers might recall widespread encouragement among liberals for women to withhold sex from partners who were planning to vote for Trump in 2016. That campaign does not appear to have been a success. But, as Einstein said, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’ Or as Cypress Hill put it, ‘Insane in the membrane! / Insane in the brain!’

Heralded by progressive icons like Milano, the new turbo-charged #SexStrike is all about absolutely no nookie for vile, penis-having men unless and until they stop trying to make it harder to end unborn life.

Presumably the invitation to join the #SexStrike extends to married women and women with boyfriends and, generally, all those cursed with being attracted to ‘cis’ men and their evil women’s-body-controlling ways.

The whole business is almost perfectly wrongheaded. Perhaps Milano and her crowd are secretly pro-life saboteurs trying to usher in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, since the less sex is going on the less abortion there’s going to be. Moreover, if progressive women start withholding sex from partners that will leave more pro-life couples who may have sex with the openness or even intention – gasp of horror – of having children and forming a family.

Related fallout from Georgia’s abortion restrictions also has various film production companies pulling out of the state in outrage. Sadly, this means that all the upcoming heartwarming Hollywood films about respecting women and puppies that were being made in Georgia may never be released. Even worse, the industry may start setting almost all their films in Los Angeles and New York and only using the South and flyover country as a hackneyed trope for ignorant rubes and lowlifes. Imagine if that were to happen!

Milano and her Beverley Hills buddies have a strong message for women-haters everywhere: stop trying to control women’s bodies and let us get back to titillating audiences with grotesque murder, twisted psychological scenarios and sexual perversion in our films. For his part, Ed Krassenstein just wants you to know that it’s ‘your vagina, your choice!’ Where would everyone be without our brave male feminist allies? Just remember: all 300 genders have unalterable human rights, unless the baby otherkin are still just a developing fetus – in which case to hell with Xem.

So, conservative men, your liberal wife won’t give you sex until you agree she can terminate the potential outcome of that act without your input. This sounds like a move bound to increase respect and bring anti-abortion men over to the pro-choice side, no? To be fair, there is an element of hypocrisy in any man who opposes abortion but who nonetheless engages in sexual intercourse purely for pleasure and in which pregnancy is not even a remotely acceptable outcome to him or the woman. But that just points to the fact that sex divorced from reproduction – and often from marriage – poses far deeper ethical challenges than awoken members of society would like to admit. It will still pose these ethical challenges (at least on an emotional level) even after all men become vaguely asexual cyborgs living in Google smart homes, surviving on a steady diet of internet pornography.

The #SexStrike is all about showing disgusting, phallus-waving men who’s boss. You’re trash unless you agree with us (and even if you do, let’s face it, you’re still men). We’ll use your attraction to us as a weapon to bludgeon you into compliance. Is this the kind of loving message through which the compassionate Democrats hope to counteract the tweeter-in-chief?