What diplomats!

LYSISTRATA: Good day, Lampito, dear friend from Lacedaemon! How well and handsome you look! what a rosy complexion! and how strong you seem; why, you could strangle a bull surely!
LAMPITO: Yes, indeed I really think I could. 'Tis because I do gymnastics and practice the 'kick dance.
LYSISTRATA: And what superb bosoms!
LAMPITO: La! You are feeling me as if I were a beast for sacrifice.
Lysistrata, Act I, Scene I

Lysistrata reminds us how to get a good start in terms of solidarity: a warm greeting that affirms strength and beauty (and also attracts the audience) but doesn't take offense at a smart retort. On this subject of solidarity --and attention, now that we caught yours-- various news agencies have been reporting on the week-long Kenyan women's political protest that is a "sex strike," organized by women's NGOs such as Women's Development Organisation. A male Kenyan legislator is reported to be upset. Moving on... International news media coverage of similar protests in the recent past highlights diverse agents and causes. Headlines have featured Cameroonian women angered by crop destruction (2003), Pereiran (Colombian) wives and girlfriends of "gang members" appalled by violence (2006), and Naples women opposed to men using dangerous fireworks (2008). Radical, longer-term activisms, such as the one based upon the booklet Love Your Enemy?, have taken their own place in history and the present. The anti-misogyny that roots such a (sub-)movement brings to mind the great risk some women assume to participate in attention-getting abstinence. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how changes in economic status and the general social construction of reality are reflected in the motivation, composition, strategy and achievement of these (in)actions that can be ever so diplomatic.