April 29, 2024


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Justistrata

by Maggie Van Ostrand




For 100 years, republican men have sought revenge against women for the 19th Amendment. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was President when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote. Since then, we can vote men in, or we can vote them out.




 




Are you watching the news? Men are still disrespecting women in every way they can. Lately, their unveiled contempt is directed toward Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in order to shove through the SCOTUS nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. If successful, it's possible, even likely, that Roe v Wade will be overturned and women for generations to come will be denied freedom of choice.




 




We don't have to stoop to McConnell's below-a-snake's-belly level, Ryan's cowardice, or Nunes's treachery, to force justice. We can each take inspiration from the plot of a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of a woman's mission to end a war by denying all the men of the land any sex, the only thing they truly and deeply desired. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace. We can do the same to negotiate fair-minded judges be nominated for the lifetime position of a Supreme Court Justice.




 




Or we can simply vote the republicans out in November.


 





©2013 Maggie Van Ostrand, all rights reserved.

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