The XX Factor: What women really think.

Abstinence Activism: Tacky or Tradition?

Discussions of the recent update of Joan Baez’s anti-draft poster have so far barely mentioned is that while Baez may have been coy when she suggested that she’d only sleep with anti-draft men, she wasn’t being original. The same goes for her imitators.

Women have used abstinence as political leverage throughout feminist history. The tactic dates back as far as ancient Greece, where Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” convinced Athenian senate wives to withhold sex until the end of the Peloponnesian War. Temperance Crusaders of the late 1800s were among the first American women to employ abstinence activism; compare the Baez poster and its remake to this turn of the century photograph of ladies in support of the slogan “Lips that touch liquor shall not touch ours.”  

So the pro-Obama postergirls aren’t hawking their politics with some “tasteless” message. Their efforts aren't "cute" or childish when you consider that they’re contributing to an ongoing tradition that’s been around for generations and required much more layered creativity and historical consciousness than say, the Obama Girl.