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Sex strike was mentioned in passing as a strategy they incorporated. I
could not help but laugh hearing it, and I wondered how it worked (Leymah
Gbowee says that it is the first thing a reporter would ask her.)
It turns out that
"sex strike" is a very old idea. In Wikipedia, Sex Strike
lists historic, prehistoric and modern incidences and tales of sex strikes.
Perhaps the most famous is a Greek comedy called Lysistrata
(411 BC
Greece), in which the
leader, Lysistrata organizes women to go on sex strike and withhold sexual
privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to
negotiate peace. In 1953, a movie was made based on it. In Nigeria, not very far from Liberia, there was an old tradition of
Women's Council which held a power to order mass strikes and demonstrations by
all women against men. So, some of the leaders of Liberia's women's peace
movement might have known those traditions and stories. Or, it may be an idea
any woman would come up with when it is called for, since it can be traced back
to pre-human days, as part of the behavioral repertoire we share with monkeys (Chris Knight 1991).
In any case, Leymah
Gbowee, the leader of the women's peace movement received Novel Peace Prize in
2011, and her book MightyBe Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War; a Memoir is also available. I finally had a chance to listen to the
audio version of the book.
I love audio books. Were it not for the
audio book version, I would not have read/listened this book. I process text
all day long as part of my work, I have very little appetite left for reading
at the end of the day, especially for English. With audio books, I can close my
eyes and just listen (Just one problem. I frequently find myself fallen a sleep
and have to rewind to find the place to restart.)
In Lysistrata, women take over Acropolis
and barricade themselves in it. They take over the war chest kept in there too.
Some women make up excuses to see their men, but Lysistrata manages to keep
women united. Men try to break the barricade by force at the beginning, then try
to talk them out of it, while women pretend to seduce and toy with them. In the
end, men break down and accept women's demand for peace talk.
In Liberia, the condition
was very violent. The warlords and their men, practically thugs with guns,
knives, explosives, etc. marauding and destroying villages and neighborhoods,
killing, raping, kidnapping, steeling as they pleased. In that kind of
condition, what good does it do to declarer a sex strike? It would be an
invitation for more violence, unless the women can hide themselves in a safe
place. Sure enough, one woman was reportedly beaten and raped by mentioning sex
strike. The strike wasn't just targeting the men fighting, but it was also
targeting the men who were doing nothing to stop the violence and destruction.
In some rural villages where the old custom of women only gathering places were
still in use, they could carry out the strike successfully and persuaded men to
cooperate.
It is a common theme of
ancient myths that a goddess gets angry and goes on strike (hide herself in a
cave, for example) because of the violent and destructive behaviors of a male god.
In Japanese mythology, it's the sun goddess Amaterasu against her brother god Susano-o. In Greek mythology, it's the goddess of the harvest Demeter against her
brother god Poseidon. The devastation that ensues the goddess's wrath during
her strike is an acknowledgement of women's power.
The similarity between this part of the Japanese mythology and the Greek mythology may not be coincidental, according to some researchers. These mythological themes can be found through out the Eurasian continent and the surrounding areas influenced by herding culture. There are too many matching detail to be coincidental, down to the final event that triggered the goddess's wrath, a rape involving a horse (horse is the source of military power, the defining feature of herding culture).
Before the herding
culture swept across the world with its horses, large cattle, horse led carriages,
metal tools and weapons about 5,000 years ago, there was a period when "Venus
figurines" were created all around the world. The oldest known is Venus of Hohle Fels, discovered in 2008 in Germany,
carbon dated to at least 35,000 years ago. In Japan, countless such figurines
have been unearthed from Jomon period (16,500 ~ 3,000 years ago). It was the
period of the hunter-gatherers and the early farmers.
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4,000~5,000 years old
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However, after being taken over by herding culture, those figurines have disappeared, and the images of powerful animals such as lions, eagles, and horned bulls and rams started appear as symbols of power.
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| Deir ez-Zor Museum, Syria |
At the same time, burial became
more elaborate with valued possessions buried along with the dead, reflecting
the wealth and the status of the buried, such as pyramids and burial mounds
found all around the world. Then, some how they have gone out of style, it
seems. Instead, more elaborate temples were built in dedication and as a memorial
to the dead. I've not heard of any explanation why this change occurred,
though.
Getting back to the
herding culture, it is a culture that swept the world with horses, horse led
wagons, chariots, metal tools/weapons, and large cattle, and with each invention and innovation of more efficient transportation method and more powerful weaponry, men repeated and expanded invasion, pillage,
plunder, rape, and murder to hoard the riches, land, and slaves. That is pretty
much how the wealth has been built and lost during the last 5000 years of human
history, and still is albeit in more sophisticated forms (although, some Africans and Chinese are still doing it the old way).
The successful peace
movement we have witnessed in an African country gives me a hope that the period
of human history dominated by the herding culture might finally be in its final
chapter. Leymah
Gbowee received 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, and expanding the women's peace
movement not just in African, but all around the world, and Liberia is now governed by a
woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
just like Himiko once did in Ancient Japan.
If I were to pick the
most impressed part of Leymah
Gbowee's MightyBe Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War; a Memoir, it is the dream she had that told her to pray for peace. Carl Jung made
an observation that a great leader has a capacity to receive a "big dream"
when faced with a big decision that determines the fate of the group. It has often
been referred as revelation, divine message, or god's voice. Leymah Gbowee was
working as a counselor at the time to help heal the minds and the community
torn by the violence and destruction that had been going on for 14 years and no
end in sight. The situation was so deteriorated that she had to move her family
to a safer place in Nigeria. As a woman, her heart was with women victimized in
every imaginable way and more, yet resilient survivors. She believed those women were
the key to end the violence. She was working day and night, often sleeping in
her office searching for a way to build a women's network for peace. It was one
of those nights that she had the dream. She thought she heard the voice of god,
and woke up shaking.
Now, if I hear someone
say that you can bring peace by just praying for peace, my reaction would be "how
naive". Leymah Gbowee, however, took that voice seriously, and consulted
her colleagues and elders at her church, where she could get the support she
needed to make the "Pray for Peace" movement the symbol of people's will
and solidarity the warring factions could not ignore. Soon the movement gathered
a momentum and forced the president Charles Taylor and the opposing warlords to
the negotiating table.
What she did to get the negotiation moving was also very impressive, but you need to read the book or watch the movie to find out how she handled it.
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