The Role Of Female Power In Lysistrata And The Conference Of The Birds

Throughout ancient and medieval history, female power has rarely had a significant impact on the course of events. The lack of ability to hold public office or higher level religious positions was a result of women to be seen as the subordinate sex. Women in both Aristophanes’s Lysistrata and Farid Un-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds defy their structural roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers by making significant impacts in both genders’ lives and even the course of history. Female characters in Lysistrata and The Conference of the Birds leverage their sex as a way to change the course of events in the texts. In Lysistrata the use of sex has the goal of ending the Peloponnesian war. In The Conference of the Birds the exploitation

So they decide to act in order to end the war themselves. Calonice asks, “What thoughtful thing could women ever do?” (Aristophanes 42). Calonice’s lack of faith in the ability of women shows that Lysistrata is an exception to other women, due to her informal education. Lysistrata responds to Calonice’s comment that she wants all the women to walk around in “Those dresses, and perfume, and rouge, and shoes, / and little see-through numbers that we wear” (Aristophanes 47-48) but deny men sex. The plan to use sexuality to convince men to return home from war is a cunning one. Control over sexuality is one of the few things a woman could use at the time to enact change. By using sexuality as a unifying tool, the women become more confident in themselves and their ability to make an impact. The women compliment each other’s appearance and decide that men can’t resist the temptation of sex, even if it means staying home from war. In many ways, this can be seen as a first step for the women in the text towards overthrowing the societal structure of their

Lysistrata demonstrates how she thinks women are weak when she says, “Oh, gender fit for boning up the butt! No wonder we’re the stuff of tragedies” (Aristophanes 137-138). She tends to criticize women for being too weak because she is brave and isn’t afraid to go against the patriarchy of politics. Lysistrata acknowledges that she is a woman, but she distances herself from the expectations men have of women by having “a mind” (Aristophanes 1105) and a “first-class education/ Listening to Father and the elders year on year” (Aristophanes 1107-1108). Lysistrata received her education from men, which may be why she criticizes women frequently. Most women weren’t given the same opportunities that Lysistrata had, so she can’t be seen as just a common female character in the text. If there were more women who had been given the same opportunities as her, women would have been seen in a higher place in