When Roe vs Wade was overturned—giving states the ability to regulate or ban abortion—women announced on social media they were going on a sex strike, encouraging other women to do the same. A Twitter user posted, “We will not have sex with any man—including our husbands—unless we are trying to become pregnant #sexstrike” (AJ). The response to this post was negative, to say the least. The comment section was filled with insults: “Gee, maybe you sluts should have thought of this in 1973?” (Scicluna). “Like the STD infested scum mattresses walking around protests will practice abstinence… Let’s be real” (Ives). They didn’t support her choice to engage in a sex strike, they supported the idea of oppressing women with the concept of abstinence. One woman responded, “That’s a good idea then you won’t have to kill your babies” (DeGidio). The people who “supported” the sex strike, in effect, denied women’s sexual agency, choice, and bodily autonomy. Why are people so obsessed with controlling women?
The obsession with female sexuality has raged for centuries. In Ancient Greece, Aristophanes wrote a play vividly detailing female sexual acts and women’s duties to their husbands. Their sexuality was the only thing that gave them political and societal power. While it is empowering to own your sexuality, when it is your only recourse to gain political power, it becomes oppression. In the novel Frankenstein, the protagonist Victor feared female sexuality and autonomy so much that he damned his wife’s life and risked his promising future. While these texts are works of fiction, both Lysistrata by Aristophanes and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley show us that choice is imperative to the well-being of women, and how their choice or lack of it affects society as a whole. Lysistrata demonstrates how—in reclaiming power over their own bodies and, consequently, in society—women can change the course of their lives and of history. Frankenstein lays out the consequences of fearing a woman’s sexuality and taking that choice away from her. Reading these books can help shed light on the abortion debates today.
Women throughout history have actively exhibited what it means to have control over one’s body, which is reflected by the works of fiction written during these time periods. The women in Lysistrata illustrate how they took back power over their bodies to achieve a unified goal. In the play, an Athenian woman takes control of her body—and encourages the women of Athens and Sparta to do the same—by engaging in a sex strike to convince their husbands to end the war in Greece. At first glance, the play appears ahead of its time and seems to advocate for women’s empowerment. But just like the arguments around abortion, it has complex layers. Aristophanes actually wrote this play as a comedy, to poke fun at women and to mock their audacity in staging a sex strike in disobedience against their husbands, and in believing they have the power to stop the war.
In today’s fight for the right to an abortion, Lysistrata’s game plan may not be the winning one, though some women already declared a sex strike. In the play, women of all nationalities band together to fight the common enemy: men. Today, men are not the enemy per se — with 52% of men and 33% of women identifying as “pro-life” (Gallup). Some organizations fighting for women’s welfare, such as Feminists For Life, are rejoicing in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Women are declaring proudly on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court they are the #postroegeneration. How can women band together, if we can’t even agree with each other?
Whether united or on conflicting sides, women have generally been pushed to the sidelines and blamed for society’s problems. In Lysistrata, during the civil war between Sparta and Athens, the women are blamed for wreaking havoc and disrupting the “natural” balance of their culture. They are portrayed as deceitful for plotting to defy their wifely duties to provide sex whenever the husband wished. It is not only women in general who are villainized, it is their control over their wombs.
Though women have often been pushed aside, they’ve always been valued for their reproductive abilities. So why has their sexuality been disgraced when their bodies are responsible for the creation of humankind? In the novel Frankenstein, the mad scientist protagonist Victor Frankenstein creates a male humanoid creature from deceased body parts during a manic, frenzied fit. Victor values women only for their reproductive abilities, and by playing God and creating a creature of his own he bypasses the need for women in society altogether. Victor’s ultimate goal denies the value of women, and of female sexuality.
Why is Victor so obsessed with controlling women’s bodily autonomy and taking that power for himself? It is the society of powerful gender roles that influences his mindset. In this novel, the men exist in the public sphere while women are placed in the domestic sphere, much like the society that Lysistrata faces. Victor’s father, Alphonse Frankenstein was a public servant, his best friend Henry Clerval was a merchant, and even Walton, the man he meets while hunting down his creature, was an explorer. All these men work outside the home and contribute to the public society. While the women in this novel, when they are mentioned, are housewives, nurses, and servants.
In Lysistrata, the women are confined to the domestic sphere of society as well. In a fight for power, they blur the lines of these spheres by taking on the masculine roles of civic involvement with the goal of using their knowledge in the domestic sphere to solve political problems. Lampito, a Spartan woman referred to as the “manliest of women” for being the first to participate in the sex strike, declares, “Is definitely hard for women to sleep alone without the penis. But nevertheless we must. We need the peace” (Aristophanes 145, 142-144). Later in the play, in an argument with the Magistrate, Lysistrata compares controlling society and ending the war to spinning a ball of yarn. She uses this powerful metaphor to show the men that feminine acts in the domestic sphere are similar to masculine acts in the public sphere.
Unlike Lysistrata who chooses to fight against the spheres, the women in Frankenstein stay passive in this manner and continue to follow the societal expectations for women. It is the passiveness and lack of determination to fight against these societal expectations that cause the destruction of most of the women in the novel. Caroline Beaufort dies from scarlet fever she caught when she took care of Elizabeth, Victor’s cousin. Justine, who is unable to prove her innocence in the death of William Frankenstein is sentenced to death by Victor’s refusal to take responsibility for his creature’s actions. And finally, Elizabeth, Victor’s wife, is murdered on her wedding night.
Although these examples are extreme, they allow us to view the consequences of taking choice away from women, specifically their choice to an abortion. In both Lysistrata and Frankenstein women are forced to remain in the household. Their misogynistic society differs from ours, as now the spheres are blurred and people have the choice to decide what they want to do in their lives. Both women and men are not forced to participate in the traditional roles of society, but this mindset still lingers. The obsession with denying women’s bodily autonomy is a result of the continued impact of these forced gender roles. Contraception and control over their bodies are what led women to lead more independent lives, without this, history is destined to repeat itself, forcing women into gender roles once again.
In Frankenstein, the creature learns these very gender roles when observing the Delacey family: “The patriarchal lives of my protectors caused these impressions to take firm hold in my mind” (Shelley 121). The creature believes that a companion who would follow these gender roles and be obedient to him would solve all his problems. In the creature’s own words, “The love of others will destroy the cause of my crimes” (139). After explaining his whole life story, full of abuse and despair, to Frankenstein, Victor agrees to make a female companion. Victor quickly and deeply grew fear of this creation, because she is to be a female. He is afraid that this female creature will have desires, beliefs, and opinions that cannot be controlled by the male creature. She might refuse to comply with the plan that was invented before her very existence. She may determine what is best for her own life and decide to take control of her body—how dare she!
Victor is moreover fearful of her reproductive powers, her ability to reproduce and give birth to new monsters and destroy humanity: “Yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror” (Shelley 160-161). Victor places blame on the female creature for potentially bringing new life into the world, similar to how society places the blame on women for getting pregnant. The burden of birth control, in most cases, falls on women. Many people argue that women should just “keep their legs closed” and that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy should not have gotten pregnant in the first place. Yet, they fail to remember that men are required to have a child as well. When a woman walks into an abortion clinic, protesters yell horrid remarks and harass them, yet they do not seem to blame the man who got her pregnant. Similarly, Victor believes that the destruction of mankind falls on the female creature, not on the male creature.
What Victor truly fears is female sexuality, a woman who is sexually liberated, free to choose her own life and her own sexual partner. It is this fear of female sexuality that leads to Victor’s demise, if he had just created the female creature then maybe the male creature would not have made it his mission to destroy Victor’s life and kill his wife. Perhaps this is the fear that exists in society today, with the rise of birth control and reproductive medicine, women have been given the option to choose their life path. We have entered a revolutionary era of sexual liberation with the rise of hookup culture, the destigmatization of sex, and women not placing as much importance on the concept of virginity. Yet some men still believe that this freedom women have been given has all been an illusion. In another response to the sex strike announced on Twitter, JP wrote “Lol, this is what it took for you to reclaim your agency? Have you figured out that men have played you girls for decades? The pill, abortion on demand, sexual liberation. What does it all lead to? More pussy for single guys.” This view denies that the grip men have historically had over women has loosened, allowing her to make her own decisions.
To Victor, this female creature is more monstrous and horrid than the male creature, because she would defy the societal expectation that displays women as small, delicate, sexually pleasing, and submissive to her partner, in this case, the male creature. Horrified by this image of uninhibited female sexual desire and power, Victor violently reasserts control over the female body, mutilating the creature in a way that vividly pictures a situation similar to rape, a very violation to the female frame: “trembling with passion, [I] tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged” (Shelley 161). The next morning, when he returned to his laboratory, “The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being” (Shelley 165). The only time Victor refers to the creature as a human being is after she was violently destroyed and mangled. Like the creature, women have faced all forms of violence from men, not all of them surviving it. The ones who do survive were left with scars both visible and invisible.
Those with a similar mindset to Victor, the ones who fear female sexuality and seek to control and even destroy women, may choose to take away her choice in a far more violent way than the Supreme Court has. A scar that some women face from this violation is pregnancy. While many states have exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape, while many pro-lifers support these abortions under the premise of their “morals,” essentially what they are saying is that the only way for women to gain control of their bodies is to have their choice taken away from them. What kind of society are we to tell women that to have rights over their reproductive health, they need to have their agency taken away?
Women should not only have control over their own bodies but also over whether to bring children into this world. Unlike many women in this post-Roe era, Victor was not forced to bring a creature into this world, he chose to and only afterward regretted it. The story of Frankenstein shows the consequences of bringing a creature into this world without providing the support it needs. This novel answers the question: What will happen if you save a child and do not give it resources to thrive? Immediately after the creation of this creature, Frankenstein runs away and leaves the creature to fend for itself, and does not provide the emotional and psychological care that this creature needs: “… now that I had finished, the beauty of my dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I created, I rushed out of the room” (Shelley 45). Many people who oppose abortion are so driven to stop abortion to save the child but actively go against many of the resources that a child needs to thrive. Existing on this planet and in this life should not be about surviving, it should be about thriving.
Throughout the novel, the creature expressed how he wished he was never created, “Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you have so wantonly bestowed” and throughout the novel Victor showed immense regret in bringing this creature to this world, “Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear” (Shelley 128, 83). Though this does not apply to every situation, we need to acknowledge that forcing women to give birth is not always in the best interest of the child. Even if the child is put into foster or adoptive care, they may face a lifetime of abuse and struggles. It is apparent that when people stop an abortion solely to save the life of a child and do not continue to support them after they have been born, they are doing it for selfish reasons and to appease their own beliefs, not for the benefit of the child.
The reason that those who defend the right to abortion are referred to as pro-choice is because this is about choice. It is about the right to make decisions about your body and about the course of your life, this is not an argument about “murdering an unborn child”. To have or not to have an abortion is one of the most difficult decisions that a woman may make in her lifetime, a decision that should only be hers. A feminist pro-life group, Feminist For Life, argues that “women deserve better choices,” but while their arguments may seem correct, they are misguided (Foster). Yes, women deserve better choices. Yes, maybe more women would choose to have children if they had better financial stability or better healthcare. Maybe Lysistrata and the Grecian women would not have had to go on a sex strike if they were given a platform to speak about their opinions about the war, if they allowed women to participate in politics and society. But, it is the choice, the option to participate in a sex strike, and their ability to do whatever they want with their bodies, that should never be taken away from them. While it might be true that most women choose abortion because they have no resources to support continuing a pregnancy, the solution should not be to take away one of the few options she has. We can provide better options to women, while still giving them a choice to abortion if they want it.
Words are powerful, that is why the argument of “pro-choice” vs “pro-life” is misleading. It subconsciously favors you to the side of pro-life regardless of any prior knowledge of the argument—I mean, who wouldn’t want people to live? Mary Shelly creates a similar moral dilemma within the reader in her book Frankenstein. By not naming the creature that Victor created, it forces the reader to call it something and to make a moral judgment. People who refer to it as a “Monster” holds him responsible for his murders and the decisions he made, while the people who refer to it as a “Creature” tend to sympathize with him. If you described the book to someone without any prior knowledge about it, they would have a very different reaction to Victor’s creation if you called him Monster rather than Creature. Labels are more powerful than you can imagine. People may believe that pro-choice is actually anti-life because that’s the opposite of pro-life; this subconscious use of language is as dangerous as the organized protestors outside Planned Parenthood.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, a woman’s right to her body was put at risk because of the decision of six overly powerful people. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley illuminates the fear of female sexuality through the protagonist, Victor, and how he denies their agency by taking their reproductive powers for himself. Lysistrata by Aristophanes shows us how women took back power over their bodies and the consequences of not giving women a choice in society. In the words of Lysistrata herself, “What contribution do these old men make? They never seem to give, but only take. We pay for their laws, their wars, their theft. And they’ll keep taking till there’s nothing left” (Aristophanes 650). Both these texts show us how oppressive gender roles impact not just societies but individual women themselves, and the consequences of not fighting against them. As Focus Liberty said on Twitter, “A woman’s body is not the government’s property to govern.” The discussion around abortion is very complex and has many ethical and moral layers to it, but the bottom line is when it comes to decisions about your body, it is your choice and your choice only.
Works Cited
AJ (@HopeOverFear99), Twitter, 24 June 2022 https://twitter.com/hopeoverfear99/status/1540445567893086213
Aristophanes. Four Plays: Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, Women of the Assembly. Translated by Aaron Poochigian.
Liveright, 2022.
DeGidio, Kathy (@kathyd55056), Twitter, 26 June 2022 https://twitter.com/kathyd55056/status/1541226756966912000
Foster, Serrin M. “Pro-Woman Answers To Pro-Choice Questions.” Feminists for Life, 2020, https://www.feministsforlife.org/pwapcq/.
Focus Liberty (@Focus_Liberty), Twitter, 16 August 2022 https://twitter.com/focus_liberty/status/1559593882391904263
Gallup. “‘Pro-Choice’ or ‘pro-Life’ Demographic Table.” Gallup.com, Gallup, 3 June 2022, https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018-demographic-tables.aspx.
Ives, Burl (@RnegadesOfEndor),Twitter, 26 June 2022, https://twitter.com/rnegadesofendor/status/1541112140987355139
JP (@jp0037), Twitter, 26 June 2022 https://twitter.com/jp_0037/status/1541117271543873538
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Penguin Books, 2018. First published 1818.
Scicluna, Baron (@baron_Scicluna), Twitter, 26 June 2022 https://twitter.com/baron_scicluna/status/1541111477456732161