Kenyan Sex Strike

Kenyan women have organized a "sex strike" as a protest against the power struggles between that country's President and Prime Minister, according to the Associated Press (2009). The AP calls sex strikes "rare worldwide", but one Kenyan critic of the strike calls it "un-African" as well as "shameful and bizarre" (Voice of America, 2009). The BBC (2009) reports that the Kenyan Prime Minister's wife has supported the ban, but that the President's wife has not responded.

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I don't know why we as a species seem to be in love with the idea of a sex strike, from Aristophanes' Lysistrata (411 BCE) to Absurdistan (2008). Despite the fact that I've only written about it once (6/23/08), "withholding sex" is the third most common search term leading to hits on differenceblog.com. But why? Why is it so titillating? Is it just schadenfreude? Is it the double standard forbidding women from talking about sex at all? The VoA article linked above sure makes it look that way. Does it actually ever work? It might: a BBC (2001) article suggests that the "no water, no sex" plot in "Absurdistan" is actually based on real events in Turkey.

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