Invariably, whenever this notion comes up, someone will mention Lysistrata, a play by Aristophanes in which the women of ancient Greece swear off sex with their husbands until the men agree to cease fighting a bloody and fruitless war. But Lysistrata only passes for feminist empowerment in a world where sexual gatekeeping is the only power women possess; what was a potent expression of agency in the fifth century BCE hits rather differently in 2024. In the run-up to the election, Democratic Party messaging portrayed men as sniveling porn addicts, as creepy control freaks, as knuckle-dragging misogynists who needed to be hectored into electing a girlboss as president. 

One might hope that, after their resounding defeat last week, Dems might have recognized the political imprudence of demonizing men. Unfortunately, the resurgence of this extortive boy sobriety movement suggests that things will get worse on this front before they get better. Some guys—the 44 percent of male Zoomers who didn’t back Trump, perhaps—will not take kindly to being collectively punished for how other people voted. Others will simply observe that a woman who is willing to resort to sexual blackmail as a means of political manipulation is a woman they wouldn’t want to sleep with in the first place.