In Lysistrata, a Greek play of early 5th century, Aristophanes, Greece's preeminent comic writer of the Classic Age and perhaps the "Neil Simon" of ancient Greece, entertains us with a play about women who turned the tables on men--exposing the ills and hypocrisy of a strictly male-dominated society. Aristophanes' most famous play "Lysistrata" appeared in Athens in 411 BC and relates the comic tale of how one Athenian woman, Lysistrata (her name in Greek means "war-plan-'breaker-upper'") organizes the women of Greece into a pact in which the fair sex all agree to abstain from carnal relations to force their husbands and lovers away from war and into negotiating a peace to end the interminable conflict between Athens and Sparta. The strategy works in part, but ends up inflaming that other interminable war--the war between the sexes--and permits Aristophanes to expose the underlying injustice and structure of the Greek, male-dominated paternalistic society.
Today nothing much has changed---the war between the sexes goes on--and male paternalism has it seems in some circles been little altered over the millennia. In our modern age, we see the same paternalism and hypocrisy and in a new war on women which has been launched by the Republicans.
This is exemplified most notably in the recent (interminable) Republican primaries. Led by Rick Santorum, a professed Catholic--right out of the Middle Ages, and foolishly parroted by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the GOP field have abandoned the issues that most Americans are rightly concerned about, jobs..jobs jobs, ending the wars, and the economy stupid--and taken us on a 1950s-era sexual and gynecological tour of women's issues. Republicans have turned back the clock fifty years or more to focus on: a cheap alternative-Republican-prescription for contraception (keep an aspirin between the knees), the hows and whys of abortion, the instant when life begins in the womb, a Republican sponsored law which would mandate intra-vaginal sonic evaluation of a fetus prior to abortion, Rush Limbaugh terming a young female law-student a "slut" over the air, because she supports government expenditures for female health and contraception; and whether a well- known woman's organization is spending funds on breast cancer or abortions and how much? Apparently, Mr. Santorum who has led the pack in this area, is getting "traction" in these dear-to-the-Republican-heart issues of its rabid far right wing-- issues which are "red meat" for what has become the Republican party in the early 21st century.
From Santorum's "rich-old-man" PAC-sponsor and supporter, Forster Freiss, who suggested that modern women should go back to the "aspirin between the knees" contraception method, and Santorum himself urging "abstinence" and "the rhythm method", to Republican legislators redefining rape to favor the attacker, and to a Republican-proposed change of the term used to describe a rape-victim as an "accuser" rather than "victim" the party which would take the Presidency from Obama are driving over a cliff of gender issues. All-in-all over the last few months--(since the Great Recession has shown signs of improvement and the "economy" issue may be less useful as a club to attack the President with in the coming election) the GOP has launched a Quixotic attack on women (and on the men who love, respect and support them). They are using a scatter shot of old wedge-issues, perhaps in desperation. The issues are the mental flotsam which apparently continually rattles around in the reactionary minds of those who live in the dark crannies and under the rocks of the nether world of this nation, and which each quadreenial year are revived by the GOP and poked into life for the elections.
With this foolish strategy, the GOP has cast itself as a male-dominated, paternalistic party of old men poking their noses under women's skirts and into women's bedrooms with male nostrums for the fair sex's very personal health issues. These matters are best left out of the public and political forum. Perhaps it's time for a new Lysistrata, a women's revolt against male stupidity and paternalism such as which occurred near the end of the long Peloponnesus War, between the Athenians and Spartans.
Time for you women to come out fighting!
Hit them where it hurts!
Get the picture?
Rjk
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