By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
Andy Beal, President of Waveshift Technologies, Inc., which developed my favorite software and maintains Michael Reagan's Website, called me up laughing yesterday and asked if I'd heard about Hillary and her proposed "worldwide housework strike." I hadn't and Andy had a hard time telling me about it because he was laughing so hard.
It seems that Hillary has proposed a "one day global domestic work stoppage" to show how important "domestic work" is, and how dependent the men of the world are on women who do "domestic work."
That jogged the recesses of my memory. Wasn't there an effort back in the 1960s to resurrect a story from the golden days of Greece about women stopping a war by refusing to have sex with their husbands? (Back in the dim and distant past, sex was an activity that took place in the covenant of marriage.) I called my advisor on ancient Greece - my eldest grandchild, Bryn Mawr College senior Catherine Lyon. She reminded me that I was thinking of the comedy written by Aristophanes in 411 BC during the Peloponnesian Wars.
Ah, yes! Now I remember! Aristophanes wrote a satire poking fun at Socrates' new fangled ideas. Lysistrata was based on a notion that clearly was as comical to Aristophanes as Hillary's notion of a worldwide domestic strike was to Andy Beal.
The title role character of Lysistrata was a bossy Athenian woman of the same name who approached the enemy camp, the Spartans, to devise a scheme to force their husbands to end the Peloponnesian War. To make the men agree to a peace treaty, the women seized the Acropolis, where Athens' financial reserves were kept, and prevented the men from spending any more money on the war. They then beat back an attack on their position by the old men who had remained in Athens while the younger men were out on campaign.
When their husbands return from battle, the women refused to have sex with them. This sex strike, which is portrayed in a series of exaggerated and blatantly sexual innuendoes, finally convinces the men of Athens and Sparta to agree to a peace treaty.
To modern feminists, Lysistrata shows women acting bravely and even aggressively against men who seem resolved on ruining the city-state by prolonging a pointless war and excessively expending reserves stored in the Acropolis. This in turn added to the destruction of their family life by staying away from home for long stretches while on military campaign. The men would come home when they could, have sex with their wives and and then leave again to continue the war. The women challenged the masculine role model to preserve the traditional way of life of the community. When the women become challenged themselves, they took on the masculine characteristics and attitudes and defeat the men physically, mentally but most of all strategically. Proving that neither side benefits from it, just that one side loses more than the other side.
Of course, in 411 BC when Aristophanes wrote the play it had no such connotation. It was a baudy comedy written by a man, performed by men, to ridicule the notion that women could ever be taken seriously in the world of politics. Women had the important role of caring for the home and children. Men had the important role of protecting the home, children and wife from the enemies who would sack the city. To think that men should care for the babies and women protect the City from ruffians who would sack the city and rape the women was a big joke.
Aristophanes comedy was a tongue-in-cheek role reversal. Women would save the city by making peace, and while they were doing that, the men would care for the children. It was an era when people didn't live very long generally and most Athenian women married in their teens.
Lysistrata announced early in the play that it is easier to untangle multinational politics, stop wars and fighting than to perform the work of women - sorting out, caring for children. After all, if you just stop war, it's settled, but with wool (and with children's problems) the tangles must be physically labored out by hand. Women's work is never done.
Does that sound familiar, somehow?
During the Vietnam war, a modern variation of Lysistrata was performed on college campuses as a serious commentary on the war. Originally composed 1963-1967 to be performed by the Wayne State University (Detroit) opera workshop, as a serious protest to the Vietnam War. It had characters depicting Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and others of the time.
What the characters in Lysistrata were protesting in 411 BC was the fact that the men did not take them seriously. At least, they didn't take them as seriously as the women took themselves. Ancient Athenian society thought that women were naïve and unreliable and so they should have no part in public life. Aristophanes' play was an illustration, in comedy, to the all male-audience as to WHY women were unreliable and naïve in political affairs. They didn't even suggest resolving the underlying problems between Sparta and Athens - which had two very remarkably different systems. Sparta was trying very hard to halt the dangerous spread of democracy that was being spread from Athens. The women, apparently, never did get the point of the war, even after they became rebels and worked to overturn the government of Athens by cooperating with the enemy, Sparta.
The women of Athens didn't get the point in 411 BC in the Peloponnesian war, and the women of America never understood the fact that the story of Lysistrata was meant be a comedy. They believed it was a feminist victory. They never understood that it was actually a horrible example of women who never understood or cared about the serious differences in political doctrine - the difference between freedom and slavery to the state. In the 1960's, the Lysistrata play, updated to include the male villains of the day - Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and company - was changed from a comedy that illustrated the silliness of women to a serious play - a play that simply ignored the reasons why the men were fighting - honor, courage, protection for their wives, children and nation. Indeed, the play reduced the complex issues of the day to the absurd - unraveling a ball of yarn.
Now we have some sort of 1990s version of Lysistrata proposed by the one who has become First Victim of male infidelity and perfidy. If Hillary proposed a Lysistrata sex strike in the current situation even the feminists would catch on. It's a comedy! It's not a tragedy! How could the First Victim propose traditional Lysistrata pressure to get a bit of appreciation? Her husband apparently has all kinds of other methods of sexual satisfaction besides his wife.
So, the feminists of the 1990s are reduced to a housework strike? Is she kidding? How could Hillary Clinton be the Lysistrata of housework? When has she ever done any of it? She had one child, who was raised mostly by others while she practiced law. If the people who actually DO the domestic labor for women - the women taking care of their children and cleaning houses for career women like Hillary Clinton decide to go on strike from their minimum wage jobs, it wouldn't be the husbands who'd be in big trouble.
I'm afraid Andy Beal's response to the announcement will be a typical reaction among the male population. They will laugh all the way to McDonald's to get their dinner.
Women of America, if Hillary is really the smartest woman in America and a role model for your daughters and granddaughters, I'm afraid Aristophanes may have been right. Women in politics are a joke. I think Hillary is getting desperate.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com