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Women stage sex strike for paved roads

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Who says women shouldn’t use sex to get what they want?

In the far-away Colombian town of Barbacoas, female residents are making international headlines by withholding sex until the government provides a safe passageway from their village to other towns in the province. The “crossed legs movement” has been going on for the better part of the summer.

Barbacoas’ roads in and out of the town are not paved, making travel hazardous, access to medical care difficult, and commodities prices five or six times higher than other areas of the country.

“I personally had to see a 23-year-old pregnant woman die along with her unborn baby just because the ambulance got stuck on the road,” Marybell Silva, a spokesperson for the “crossed legs movement,” told Semana.com. “That’s when I knew we had to do something.”

Ruby Quinonez, one of the movement’s leaders, explained that with their isolated town in the middle of a violent region it is incumbent upon the government to see that they have have safe passage and access to basic necessities.

“We are being deprived of our most human rights and as women we can’t allow that to happen … Why bring children into this world when they can just die without medical attention and we can’t even offer them the most basic rights?” she said. “We decided to stop having sex and stop having children until the state fulfills its previous promises.”

No longer just in the pages of GQ, sex bartering is currently driving political decisions, at least in Colombia.

 

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