This week, Spike Lee joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show to discuss his upcoming film, Chi-Raq.
Spike said he’s confident his film will inspire sex strikes on college campuses. Lee said he thinks the strikes, which is a main thread in Chi-Raq, would help combat date rape and sexual assaults.
It would also raise awareness to the “abundance” of these issues, according to Lee:
I think that… a sex strike could really work on college campuses where there’s an abundance of sexual harassments and date rapes. A College campus [or] university…I think that’ll work. Second semester, it’s gonna happen. Once people come back from Christmas and some stuff jumps off, there’s gonna be sex strikes on universities and colleges across this country. I believe it.
Spike’s upcoming film examining gun violence in Chicago is based on the Greek comedy Lysistrata. In the play, women across Greece organize a sex strike until war ends and peace is achieved.
Spike cited Leymah Gbowee as evidence a sex strike could actually work in Chicago. Gbowee won a Nobel Peace Prize for organizing a sex strike to help end a civil war in Liberia.