Analyzing Equality Movements Through Aristophanes' Lysistrata

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Recommended: Roles of Women during WWI

Alaya Hubbard
ENG 025
Riots, Rebellion, Resistance
22 February 2018
A b c d e f g h I j k l m n o p
One or None
There have been countless movements throughout history for equal rights and fair treatment of all. From the Civil Rights Movement of 1960 to the fight for same sex marriage, countless groups have become tired of being overlooked by the government. With his work, Lysistrata, Aristophanes uses the main character’s purpose, prioritization of movements, and the bias of the main character to support a subliminal message. Although Lysistrata is fighting for the equal political agency in a government dominated by white men, she ignores the earned citizenship of Athenian and Spartan slaves. By placing women’s rights over the rights of all
In response, Lysistrata said, “We’ve given you sons, and then had to send them off to fight… We’re in the prime of our lives and how can we enjoy it, with our husbands always away and on campaign and us left at home like widows” (164). While it was the men who went off to fight the wars, it was the women who provided men. Women give birth, raise, and care for these men just to have them taken away by the government for an unnecessary war that may end in the death of these same men. If looking at this situation from an economical supply and demand point-of-view, the women supply the men that the government demands. Without women contributing or supplying, men for the war efforts, there wouldn’t be anyone to fight the wars. By pointing out the contributions of married women to the war effort, she leads into how unmarried women have come to a disadvantage because of war and implies how it could affect the future military. “And quite apart from us married women, what about the unmarried ones who are slowly turning into old maids” (164). The Magistrate attempts to refute the unmarried women argument by saying men age just like

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