Sex strikes won’t win the midterms
https://unherd.com/2022/10/sex-strikes-wont-win-the-midterms/
American culture will sexualise anything in order to sell it to young people: cars, hamburgers, and for decades now, voting. In 1990, the awareness-raising non-profit Rock the Vote sought to bring youths to the polls with a TV spot featuring a flag-draped Madonna: “Doctor King, Malcolm X, freedom of speech is as good as sex,” she raps, before throwing open the stars ‘n’ stripes to reveal a red string bikini. The ad ended with a threat, or perhaps a promise, delivered in Madge’s trademark breathy lisp: “If you don’t vote, you’re gonna get a spanking!”
Thirty-two years later, with the 2022 midterm elections looming, these attempts to promote civic engagement have changed their medium but not their message. Youth voter turnout is still seen as a matter of national urgency — only half of people under 30 voted in the most recent presidential election — and multiple organisations are now attempting to follow the Rock the Vote model to lure them to the polls. This brings us to a slick music video entitled “No Voting, No Vucking”, which was released last week. In it, rappers Trina and Saucy Santana narrate the story of a young black woman who matches with a promising-looking man on the dating app BLK. There’s just one, critical red flag: he doesn’t vote!
This relationship, per the video, is a non-starter: like the song says, no voting, no vucking. (At the risk of stating the obvious, the word “vucking” is phonetically indistinguishable from another, naughtier word.) This withholding — combined with plenty of no-holds-barred dancing — is enough to get the gentleman in question to change his ways. The song ends with an exchange of looks at the ballot box, then cuts to a shot of the awestruck man falling back on a bed, naked from the waist up.