Discussion Topic

Gender Roles and Stereotypes in Lysistrata

Summary:

In Aristophanes' Lysistrata, gender roles and stereotypes are explored through the portrayal of women as powerful and strategic. The women unite to end the war by withholding sexual favors, using their sexuality as a tool for political influence. While the play humorously exaggerates women's roles, suggesting they have the power to influence major decisions, it also highlights their intelligence and unity. Although some argue the play objectifies women as mere sexual beings, it ultimately depicts them as the heroes, challenging traditional gender norms and questioning the masculine notion of heroism tied to war.

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How did Aristophanes exploit gender stereotypes in Lysistrata?

There are several definitions of "exploit," most of them having good denotations and good connotations. I'm assuming though that you mean "exploit" in its negative meaning since you couple it with "gender stereotypes."

  • exploit: to use selfishly for one's own ends. To make use of selfishly or unethically. [T]o take advantage of, esp unethically or unjustly for one's own ends. (Random House, American Heritage, and Collins Dictionaries)
  • stereotype: A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image. Sociology--a simplified and standardized conception or image (American Heritage and Random House Dictionaries)

"Stereotype" has negative denotation and connotation. It was originated, therefore unknown until, between 1790 and 1800. 

Consequently, to suggest that Aristophanes exploited gender stereotypes in any way is without foundation. In ancient Greece, people were seen as having specific functions to perform. To elaborate, Robin Lane Fox, in Pagans and Christians, makes it clear that gender roles in ancient...

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Greece were far greater than stereotypically believed. He presents clear evidence that women had significant power as benefactresses and city planners.

It is a universal fallacy that because works like the comedies of Aristophanes discuss certain social or ethical problems, they are inspired by them. (Jack Lindsay, Forward, Lysistrata)

The question you are really asking is: What gender stereotypes can we recognize from our own cultural orientation as being present in Aristophanes Lysistrata, recognizing that Aristophanes' perspective would not have concurred with ours and that we don't even yet have an adequate picture of ancient Greek society?

In the opening of the drama, we might perceive a gender stereotype in the very premise of the play: the men have been at war for twenty years and the women at home keeping the home fires burning (and the city running). The conflict of the play, which is embedded in a plot devised by Lysistrata, the main character, may also be perceived as a stereotype: the women choose not to do what the men demand of them to do causing a social battle divided along gender lines of he against she. Lysistrata's plan itself might be seen as representing gender stereotypes although the plan is meant to sabotage and reverse the gender stereotype: women intend to withhold sexual favors. This anti-gender stereotype plan has a specific cultural objective: sexual activity will be withheld until the ongoing twenty year war is brought to a permanent end.

Another example of what might be perceived as gender stereotypes is the occupations the women protest a need to return to with some urgency. One must go home to tend her "Melisian wool" to save it from moths; another, her unstripped flax, and she must "flay it properly"; another has an urgent pregnancy that she is on the verge of delivering (it is miraculous in that it sprang up in one day and turns out to be a helmet in disguise).

1ST WOMAN
I must get home. I've some Milesian wool
Packed wasting away, and moths are pushing through it.

LYSISTRATA
Fine moths indeed, I know. Get back within.

1ST WOMAN
By the Goddesses, I'll return instantly.
I only want to stretch it on my bed.

LYSISTRATA
You shall stretch nothing and go nowhere either.

1ST WOMAN
Must I never use my wool then?

LYSISTRATA
If needs be.

2ND WOMAN
How unfortunate I am! O my poor flax!
It's left at home unstript.

LYSISTRATA
So here's another
That wishes to go home and strip her flax.
Inside again!
...
3RD WOMAN
I'll drop it any minute.

LYSISTRATA
Yesterday you weren't with child.

3RD WOMAN
But I am today.
O let me find a midwife, Lysistrata.
O quickly!

LYSISTRATA
it's Athene's sacred helm,
And you said you were with child.

3RD WOMAN
And so I am.

LYSISTRATA
Then why the helm?

3rd WOMAN
[As] a laying-nest in which to drop the child.

LYSISTRATA
More pretexts! You can't hide your clear intent

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It's been awhile since I've read this play, but I don't know if I would use the word "exploitation" when discussing the women in this play.  The women are not exploited in my opinion, since they come up with the plan themselves.  The men's war was never-ending, so the women on both sides of the conflict get together to decide to hold their own war by withholding sexual intimacy with their husbands until the war is concluded for good.  The result?  It worked.  The men quit fighting, and the women were successful in their own battle.  They used the only weapon they had...their sexuality. 

The word "exploitation" gives the impression that the women are made to do something against their will-- it has a negative connotation.  In this case, however, the women were in complete control.  They held all the cards, and their gender-driven war plan or siege if you will, succeeded.  If anything, they exploited the men's inability to live without physical pleasure while on leave from their war.

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How are women portrayed in Lysistrata?

The role of women is complex in Lysistrata. They are portrayed to fit the stereotype of homemakers. As Lysistrata waits for the other women to gather, she is told,

Oh! They will come, my dear; but it's not easy, you know, for women to leave the house. One is busy pattering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep on washing the brat or feeding it.

The women seem to embrace this role, and even when they do become involved in the politics of the war, they allow the men to take over again in the end. However, one of their household duties is managing finances. This shows that the women are intelligent.

Lysistrata also talks about her intelligence:

Now listen to what I have to say. It's true I'm a woman, but still I've got a mind: I'm pretty intelligent in my own right, and because I've listened many a time to the conversations of my father and other elders, I'm pretty well educated too. Now that you're my captive audience I'm ready to give you the tongue-lashing you deserve—both of you.

The women use their intelligence to come up with a plan. They know they have a sexual power over the men by teasing them and then withholding sex, so they use this to their advantage. This is displayed in the scene between Myrrhine and Cinesias. The women take charge of their sexuality, but some might argue that this propels the idea of women as sexual objects. Furthermore, the women are portrayed to be just as sex-crazed as the men; when Lysistrata first suggests abstinence, the women resist and claim they will do anything "but not to give up SEX—there's nothing like it!”

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The original question had to be edited.  Through his work, Aristophanes shows how women display a sense of unity with amongst one another.  The solidarity that women show in the work is seen as a part of their character.  Whereas men are shown to be driven by splitting the bonds of connection that exist between them, women are shown to cherish connection and uphold the connective threads that exist between one another.  Lysistrata and the Greek women display one aspect of this. Yet, when Lysistrata is able to secure Lampito's help in doing the same with the Spartan women, it brings out the solidarity that is intrinsic to the portrayal of  women in the drama.  The Greek and Spartan women display solidarity with their own people and with one another.  The idea of consensus in consciousness is what the drama defines as what it means to be a woman.

I think that a fundamental sharpness of mind is included in how women are portrayed in the drama.  The women being able to construct a plan to withhold sex from men, as well as asserting control over financial affairs of the state are two conditions that Aristophanes displays, showing an intelligence within women.  This same sharpness of mind is what drives the women to seek a plan to stop the impact of the war, in the first place.  Women are shown to be critical thinkers who go outside what is into what can be, a quality shared by individual women in the drama so as to see it as how the drama portrays women, in general.

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How is female sexuality exploited in Aristophanes' "Lysistrata"?

Concerning your question about Lysistrata, there is plenty of female sexuality in the play, but I'm not sure "exploited" is the best word to explain how it is used.

Exploited has a connotation that suggests someone or something is being used.  The women in the play use their sexuality to protest the war themselves.  They are not really being used by anyone.

The enotes Study Guide on the play says the following:

It is sex that permits the women to seize control. The men are held captive to their carnal desires and are unable to deal with the women as they had previously. Sex is both the women’s weapon and their prize to withhold. Sex gives the women a power they would not ordinarily hold; and with the simple banding together of the women, the desire for sex leads the men to capitulate. One of the women, Myrrhine, uses her sexuality to tease her husband, and to assert her power over him. Near the end of the play, as Lysistrata tries to negotiate a peace, she uses sex to motivate the men, by parading a nude representation of reconciliation in front of the sex-deprived males. When this maneuver fails to work, Lysistrata plies the men with wine, in a ironic reversal of the traditional male effort to seduce a woman. When the men begin drinking they become even more desperate for sex, and finally agree to a truce.

If you could establish with evidence that the other women do not really feel about the issue as Lysistrata does, you could make an argument that they are exploited by her.  Otherwise, the only other possibility of exploitation is that the writer, Aristophanes, exploits female sexuality to write his play.  But that seems like a weak argument. 

As the passage from the Study Guide above mentions, sex is the women's weapon.  They may be doing some exploiting, but they are not exploited. 

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How is the role of women exaggerated in Lysistrata?

I guess I would say it does that by implying that the women of the time actually had enough power to influence something as important as a decision to go to war.

But is that what you mean?  That kind of role?  Or are you asking about how sex roles are exaggerated in the play?

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Women in Lysistrata are presented as strong, assertive, and, in some respects, dominant over their menfolk. Very much the protagonists of the play, they drive the plot forward at every turn, making things happen simply by their resolute refusal to satisfy their husbands' physical needs until they stop going to war.

Women, such as the eponymous heroine, are given to us as having a much broader perspective on state affairs than they are often thought to have had in Ancient Greece. Although women were systematically excluded from Greek political life, Lysistrata shows us that they still had more than enough native intelligence to be able to see the bigger picture, as it were.

They understood all too well the horrors of war, particularly the catastrophic impact of war on family life, but instead of just weeping and lamenting, like the women of Troy in The Iliad, they actually resolve to do something; they put aside their distaffs, venture out of the home, and organize themselves into a formidable group.

Much of the comedy in Lysistrata arises from the women of Athens taking on the traditionally male role in society. It is this role-reversal which Aristophanes' original—all-male—audience will have found both shocking and amusing.

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In Lysistrata, are women portrayed as objects rather than humans?

I think that the reason for editing the question was that I am not sure anything in Aristophanes' work is so clear cut.  On one hand, the women are shown to be in the position of power over the men.  This becomes one of the driving forces of the drama.  The fact that the women are in power and are shown to have power makes it challenging to see them demonstratively shown to be objects.  Yet, if one were to make a case for the women to be shown as objects, it would be shown in the idea that women are only seen as sexual objects.  Lysistrata's plan is rooted in the idea that if women withhold sex from men, the men will capitulate and acquiesce.  It is not rooted in the idea that men will suffer from the absence of women companionship or in the fact that men will feel lessened by the spiritual experience of being denied their mates.  Women are objectified in their singular association with sex. Little else seems to be defined by the element of being a woman other than sex.  It might be here where a potential case can be made for women to be seen as objects.  Even if they are in the position of power regarding it, their being is reduced to one of sex.  In this, they can be seen as being objectified.

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How does Aristophanes' Lysistrata challenge earlier Greek authors' definitions of masculinity, femininity, and heroism?

Aristophanes Lysistrata, like many of his other plays, exists in the realm of the fantastic. Just like his farmer flying to Olympus on a dung beetle or talking birds, the women in the play are not meant as realistic characters, nor is this meant as a feminist drama. It is not intended as a challenge to female gender roles, but rather a suggestion that the males of the Greek city are failing so badly in their civic duties by pursuing senseless wars, that even mere women need to intervene. It also suggests that heroism does not consist of pursuing war at all costs, but can consist of refraining from them. Thus gender roles are not really being undermined in the play except in so far as Aristophanes is suggesting that war is not a necessary attribute of masculinity.

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Why and how does Aristophanes make women the heroes in Lysistrata?

Remember that Aristophanes is a comedic author. This being said, to have women as the main characters--as heroes and as soldiers taking the acropolis--is indeed most ridiculous. Examine this quote from Lauren Taffe, "Whenever any element of femininity is present in an Aristophanic production, an opportunity arises for humor based on theatricality, costume play, or language play". Women are the most comic in this sense. Beyond just giving the major roles to women, you must keep in mind that in that day and age, men would have had to play the roles of the women, which makes it all the more hilarious.

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What gender stereotypes are evident in the play Lysistrata?

The original question had to be edited down.  Valid or not, one of the most resounding stereotypes to emerge from the drama is how men are viewed as fairly singular one dimensional in their attitude towards sex.  Lysistrata is successful in her movement because she predicates it upon how the withholding of sex to men will drive them to become mere pawns.  This can be seen as a stereotype because it reduces the complexity of a human being to one element.  In this case, that element is sexual gratification.  Lysistrata's analysis makes the argument that if sex is denied from men, all else will fall into place.  It does not take into account that men, like women, can be complex and possess primary motivations that exist outside the realm of sexual desire and appropriation.  This reduces men to a singular construction.  At the same time, I think that an argument could be made that the women in the drama are stereotyped to embrace a world without war.  While the depiction might be valid, I sense it to be a stereotype in that it depicts women as wanting to avoid war at all costs.  In these conditions, stereotypes enables the drama to advance, one that displays the genders in reductive capacities.

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