The controversial director has also commented on this week’s Black Lives Mater protests over Laquan McDonald’s murder at the hands of a White police officer.
“I think a sex strike could really work on college campuses where there’s an abundance of sexual harassment or date rapes,” Lee told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “Second semester it’s going to happen. Once people coming back from Christmas and some stuff jumps off, there’s going to be sex strikes in universities and college campuses across this country.
Lee made the comments while discussing his new film Chi-raq, a satire that follows a group of women of the south side of Chicago who withhold sex from their men in an attempt to initiate a decrease in gun crime in the notoriously troubled city. The film is a retelling of the classic Greek comedy Lysistrata.
Lee’s comments provoked controversy, with critics hitting back at his remarks and claiming that his suggestion place a responsibility on women to combat sexual harassment and violence, while also perpetuating ideas that women dole out sex as a form of currency.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Lee fired back, saying, “As a feminist, you should want, I think correctly, that you should want for murders to stop,” he told the paper. “As a feminist, you don’t want your daughter, or your son, or any mother to have their children murdered. That’s not part of feminism? I would like to hear the argument from feminists why they should not be asked to do that. In the black community, it’s all hands on deck. It’s all hands on deck. That’s nothing. We get sidetracked into arguments about feminism, or this or that. That’s a distraction.”
Lee also addressed this week’s protests in Chicago over the shooting of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old black Chicago resident who was killed by Jason Van Dyke, a white police officer, in October 2104. Van Dyke, who shot McDonald 16 times, has since been charged with McDonald’s murder, but the police department and the city Mayor have come under widespread criticism for failing to release the video of McDonald’s death for over a year. Spike Lee praised the belated decision to release police dashcam footage of McDonald’s killing, despite fears that it would prompt violent protest.
“They’re worried because they think Black folks in Chicago are going to run amok,” Lee said. “I think there’s a way to have peaceful demonstrations without tearing stuff up. I’m glad the tape was released. This is democracy. I sometimes think we pick and choose what America should see”.