No sex here please! As Belgium hits eight months without a government this week, a boycott on sex is being suggested as a way out of the nation’s longest political impasse.
“When a situation’s dire and nothing’s moving, either you become a cynic or you react with humour,” said Marleen Temmerman, the Belgian senator and gynecologist who threw up the notion.
Speaking in her Ghent office, Temmerman said her call for “no more sex until a new administration” dates back to a trip to Kenya last month where she got wind of another novel bid to break the deadlock — a boycott on shaving.
That was from actor Benoit Poelvoorde, star of early 1990s mockumentary Man Bites Dog and recent movie Coco After Chanel.
“Let’s keep our beards until Belgium rises again,” he urged on Belgian TV.
“The men loved it and that was when Kenyan women reminded us about their sex strike” in 2009 to demand a political solution, Temmerman said. “Within a month a deal was done there.”
Colombian women likewise in 2006 staged a strike “of crossed legs” to press gangsters to give up their guns. And in ancient Greece, Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata sees women boycotting the marital bed to end the Peloponnesian war.
In Belgium, feuding politicians from the Dutch-speaking north and the francophone south have been squabbling to strike a coalition government deal ever since elections on June 13 last year failed to produce an outright majority.
As fears mount of a lasting divorce between the two language communities, the figurehead sovereign, King Albert II, has named a succession of special envoys to bridge the divide, but all efforts have floundered.
“People are growing increasingly angry,” Temmerman said. “We had to act.”
Current caretaker Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders is due to end a mediation mission next week amid public anger and fears for Belgium’s economic future if no solution is found.
Temmerman, also involved in health projects in Africa, said she had been flooded with positive calls and e-mails over the sex ban.
Asked for response in a busy Belgian shopping mall, Florence Willems said: “Why not? We may as well! We don’t know what else to do to get a government.”
With policy at a dead end and projects put on hold as a caretaker government deals with daily business, citizens have taken initiatives, but see no response.
“Despite all these often novel forms of pressure, a solution seems a long way off,” political scientist Pascal Delwit said in the daily Le Soir.
Asked whether the sex boycott could have an impact, Temmerman said: “I don’t think many women are going to practice abstinence, or that it’ll have an effect, but it’s better to laugh.”
As for herself?
“My husband’s in Kenya at the moment so it’s easy,” she said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS