A campaigner is urging the women of Chicago to partake in a ‘sex strike’ in an effort to end violence and crime in the city.
April Lawson’s Change.org petition was inspired by the plot of Spike Lee’s upcoming film, Chi-Raq, in which women abstain from sex while attempting to end Chicago's gang violence.
“So I got to thinking, why shouldn’t life imitate art? Maybe these ladies are on to something,” Ms Lawson wrote on the petition's website.
The campaign was launched following the shootings of a nine-year-old boy and a 20-year-old woman just two hours apart on Chicago’s South Side.
Ms Lawson said the men in the city were "apathetic".
"[They] need to come out of the shadows of impotence and start protecting their women and babies. It’s time for a sex strike, girls.”
Although she was not in favour of using "sex as a weapon in relationships," she added: “In a patriarchal society, a problem will not be addressed until it directly affects men. Abstinence has been used as a means of nonviolent protesting throughout history.”
“Until an official treaty is signed and an actionable plan is in place by all black men who live in this city, I take a vow of celibacy. I vow to refuse sex to any man I’m dating, engaged to or married to until the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are brought to justice.”
Her petition has so far garnered 48 out of the 100 supporters needed.
The film Chi-Raq will be released in December in the US. Speaking to NY Daily News, Mr Lee said such strikes “would definitely work on campus of universities that have been plagued by date rape and sexual harassment".
When asked if he thought Ms Lawson’s plan would work, he said: “Chicago, I don’t know. But more power to her.”
From 1 January 2015 to 19 November 2015, 2,674 shooting victims were recorded in Chicago. This is already an increase from 2014 when 2,587 were recorded across the whole year, according to the Chicago Tribune.
