#sex and war

Military recruitment parody posters by Masturbate For Peace, 2002.

Though it didn’t enter World War I until 1917, the United States produced more posters in support of mobilization and civilian service than any other country. The government established a Department of Pictorial Publicity with 300 artists who were ordered to “draw until it hurts.”

The backlash fifty years later against the Vietnam War included the co-opting by activists of propaganda posters. They substituted anti-military themes, often featuring the slogan, “Make Love, Not War.”

Joan Baez and her sisters Mimi and Pauline posed for a poster challenging the popular notion that refusing to serve was cowardly or unmanly. Their message, that liberated women would have sex with draft dodgers, perhaps recalls the heroine Lysistrata, who organized a chastity movement among Greek wives to force peace negotiations.