Hollywood actress Milano calls for sex strike, ignites social media
Actress Alyssa Milano ignited social media with a tweet calling for women to join her in a sex strike to protest strict abortion bans passed by Republican-controlled legislatures.
The former star of Charmed and current cast member of Insatiable, which is filmed in Georgia, urged women in her Friday tweet to stop having sex “until we get bodily autonomy back”.
Her tweet came days after Georgia became the fourth state in the US this year to ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.
“We need to understand how dire the situation is across the country,” Milano told The Associated Press on Saturday.
“It’s reminding people that we have control over our own bodies and how we use them.”
She noted that women have historically withheld sex to protest or advocate for political reform.
She cited how Iroquois women refused to have sex in the 1600s as a way to stop unregulated warfare. Most recently, she noted that Liberian women used a sex strike in 2003 to demand an end to a long-running civil war.
Milano received support from fans and fellow actress Bette Midler joined her in also calling for a sex strike with her own tweet. But both liberals and conservatives also lampooned her idea, with conservatives praising her for promoting abstinence and liberals saying she was pushing a false narrative that women only have sex as a favour to men.
Milano said the criticism didn’t bother her and that her tweet was having her desired effect, “which is getting people to talk about the war on women”.