Spike Lee’s sex strike: right solution, wrong problem

Last updated on: November 28, 2015 at 9:49 pm by Jane the Actuary

Spike Lee’s sex strike: right solution, wrong problem 2015-11-28T21:49:30-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Spike Lee’s new movie, Chi-Raq, models itself after Lysistrata and its “sex strike” plotline, except that instead of ancient Greek women trying to put an end to the Peloponesian War, it’s inner-city black Chicago women trying to end a gang war. And in that context, Lee said, in an interview, “I think that a sex-strike could really work on college campuses where there’s an abundance of sexual harassment and date rape.”

Here’s an article from The Atlantic, by who else but Ta-Nehisi Coates, that cites Lee’s comments and then points out that a sex-strike wouldn’t really do anything to penalize or change the behavior of sexual harassers and, especially date rapists, because they are, after all, committing acts of violence. Yeah, he then goes on to throw in all the usual social justice buzzwords, but never mind that. And also never mind that we’re learning that those who claim that date rape is epidemic on campus derive their unchanging 1 in 5 statistic from self-selected surveys which cast a wide net in their definition of Sex-Related Bad Stuff.

But there is a problem for which a “sex strike” seems like a pretty good solution: the hook-up culture at universities. It’s been suggested, credibly I think, that the hook-up culture at universities is a result of the growing imbalance of men vs. women at universities. For example, Time.com says, based on the author’s research,

when men are in oversupply, the dating culture emphasizes courtship and monogamy. But when women are in oversupply—as they are today at most U.S. colleges and universities—men play the field and women are more likely to be treated as sex objects.

In other words, the oversupply of women means that they’re willing to accept hook-ups and other uncommitted sexual interactions with men, in order to have any kind of approximation of a relationship at all. If an individual woman decides not to “put out” she loses to all her competitors for male affection who are willing to do so, in a culture in which women are more likely to prefer relationships, and men, the sex.

When there’s an oversupply of workers bidding their wages down, to get the job, is when a union, and a strike, can be an effective tactic. Looks pretty analogous to me.

And this is a solution that is, in the end, far better than that being proposed by the Experts during Sex Weeks, that is, that women should be “sex-positive” and be just as happy with hook-ups as men, though following tightly-prescribed consent rules.

Incidentally, there’s another group who would do well to go “on strike” — that is, to reject the “hook-up” culture. I’m speaking, of course, of the men themselves, who are at risk of having their own lives turned upside-down, both through the age-old risk of getting a girl pregnant (the consequence no longer being a shotgun wedding, but the risk of paying 18 years’ worth of child support), and the modern risk of being accused of sexual assault, and being expelled, and publicly branded a rapist, without due process, much less a criminal trial. I applied the favorite instapundit.com phrase to this a while back, writing “On campus sexual assault: I’ll believe there’s a due-process crisis when . . .” — that is, when the people who say it’s a crisis act like it’s a crisis; in this case, when the men at risk of accusations stop seeking out casual sex, and when those protesting the unfairness of it all, advise them not to. At the time I griped that I didn’t seem to be seeing this counsel anywhere, though lately Robert Stacy McCain of theothermccain.com, has off and on been promoting the idea that male college students simply shouldn’t date on-campus at all. But strictly speaking this doesn’t fit the concept of a “strike”: any individual man can decide, “enough of casual sex, I want a girlfriend with whom I go out on dates,” and will, from all reports, have no trouble finding a willing partner. He is not dependent on other men to act in concert with him.

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