Empowerment Part 2: Lysistrata
So, here I am again! If I stopped writing, it is not because I was underwhelmed by the lack of response (exception: my friend PopeDover kindly commented on my last post. Thanks, brother!), but because I was overwhelmed by life events, some, unfortunately, very sad, and some…well, it’s just life.
As I promised, I wish to continue to write about empowerment in the broader context of empowerment of women (including female escorts). Summarizing what I wrote earlier, empowerment is not in an isolated act, but rather in the dynamic process aimed at taking control of one’s life. I remarked that once we (yes, people, not only women!) become conscious of our power and act to exercise it, the very logic of empowerment requires that we act collectively rather than in isolation. If we fail to do this, the initial elation for having gained a small battle, quickly evaporates and it turns against ourselves: we become cynical, isolated, bitter; we try to find again that initial bliss by having recourse to artificial means (e.g. excesses in the use of drug, sex and rock and roll!); or we find ways to ‘get out’ of the situation (religious ‘conversions’, changing job or country, and so on). This is human! May, whoever takes the trouble to read these lines, translate what I just wrote to the specific context of escorting.
So, let’s go back to ancient Greece, in particular Athens, around 450 B.C. From modern perspective, it wasn’t a paradise for women. However, minds were much less afflicted by what Marcuse called ‘repressive tolerance’—in my words, do and think whatever you like, but don’t be loud! Aristophanes, the author of ‘Lysistrata’, was one of these free spirits who would express very unorthodox opinions through comedy. And apparently he survived to a ripe old age! Indeed eleven of his thirty something plays have survived to this day, and a few of them are represented in remains of Roman amphitheaters during European summer festivals. I wish we could have ‘Aristophanes in the parks’ here in Montreal! Perhaps merb should sponsor it! Or, even better, the wonderful Indy Companion collective!
Lysistrata is an Athenian woman, happily married to a prominent Athenian alpha male, hence a war monger! But, like most Athenian women, she is concerned for the terrible losses in human lives caused by the permanent state of war in which the major Greek cities continued to subsist. She is also aware that her ferocious husband becomes a lamb when he wants to have sex with her. And then she has this marvellous idea: ‘What if I started denying access to my body to this guy?’ She consults her many women friends, and they all agree that they actually have in their hands—or, rather, in their sexual organs! —a powerful tool to stop all that senseless bloodshed. So, Lysistrata and (female) friends organize a very successful sex strike. All those Athenian warriors turn into a miserable bunch of sex starved lazy bums (interestingly enough, they do not turn to rape! I guess they were more civilized than modern men, after all.).
However, this first victory of our Athenian Women Collective for Peace (AWCP) is not a solution. All the other cities keep fighting and threaten to invade and destroy Athens! So, Lysistrata an her friends decide to extend their Collective to all Greek cities! They succeed very quickly to convince all Greek women, secretly just as tired as the AWCP of the senseless bloodshed, that a sex strike can stop all wars for good. The rest is (unfortunately) not history. But it is at least drama literature history!
So, here we have a wonderful, if only literary, example of the dynamic of empowerment: it is a spiral that cannot be stopped. If Lysistrata had only exercised her power on her husband, he will have become, perhaps, a sex starved lazy bum, but things would have stopped there, and Lysistrata and her husband would have turned into just another dysfunctional couple, ostracised (ostracism is an Athenian invention) by the rest of society: they would have ended their wretched lives in a haze of the antique version of ouzo! But collective action made the difference. Had the women stopped there, had they shared the view of their men that the enemy has to be destroyed rather than involved in an alliance, then the whole Athenian civilization would have been destroyed, and the hegemony would have passed to another group of blood thirsty, stupid alpha males.
Since I have already taken some liberties with Lysistrata’s story line, I will persist and imagine that after having won the war against war, the GWCP (replace Athenian with Greek in the acronym!) also convinced Greek men to found the GMAP (good merbites can effortlessly imagine the meaning of this new acronym). Then the GWCP and the GMCP became best allies, and stopped the war of the sexes forever…. Or at least for a very long time, during which men and women had great, uninhibited, joyful and loving SEX! Yet another example of the unstoppable dynamic of empowerment!
Well, all this is literature! But just today I read the ad of a new lady advertiser who says that she believes that the world can be made better. More power to her! More power to the wonderful bunch of Indy Companion! More power to feminist who, without compromising on true feminist values and priorities, refuse to turn into men haters, but become men’s best allies! And, above all, let’s make Peace and not war!
Orgone
Don't get me wrong, I love my job. I meet amazing people and I feel I'm part of a great really supportive community.
