Withholding Sex the Key to Political Reform?

Seems like Kenyan women are recycling a strategy first pioneered in ‘Lysistrata’.

In the classic comedy by Aristophanes, first performed in 411 B. C.:

 Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace, a strategy however that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for its exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society and for its use of both double entendre and explicit obscenities.

Which brings us to 21st Century Kenya:

Activists in the East African nation are urging women to withhold sex for a week to protest the growing divide in Kenya’s coalition government.

“We are asking even sex workers to join the cause, even if we have to pay them ourselves,” said Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya.

The campaign was organized by G-10, an umbrella group for women’s organizations. It called on the wives of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to join the cause.

Odinga’s wife, Ida, told CNN on Thursday that she supports the campaign “100 percent.”

“I will not get into what my husband thinks,” she said, chuckling, “but I will say leaders need to focus on the things that affect our people, and I hope the publicity from this campaign will raise awareness on those issues. “

 This campaign has met with a mixed response from the menfolk:

“This will accomplish nothing other than embarrass us,” said Martin Kamau, a resident of Nakuru, a major city northwest of the capital. “We are being punished, and yet we are not the ones causing the problems.”

Kamau plans to plead his case with his wife. “Seven days is just too much,” he said.

Others were not so worried. “Seven days is nothing,” one man told KTN, a Nairobi television station. “I can wait a year.”

Lest ‘bulo’s wife or his coterie of female admirers be tempted to employ this strategy, please be advised that El Somnambulo is a reformer. A passionate reformer.