Almost 2,500 years after the first performance of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, the Greek comedy about women withholding sex in order to stop a war, the tale has sort of come true in the southern Philippines. The threat of a sex strike by local women has brought peace to a violence-ravaged village there, according to a U.N. refugee agency.

The AFP says life has improved for the 102 families of rural Dado village on “the often lawless southern island of Mindanao” since the sex strike in July. This drastic, and marvelously poetic action, came about because some of the women who had started a sewing business found they couldn’t deliver their products because rampant violence, including clan conflicts and shooting incidents, had shut down the roads. The women warned their men that if they kept making trouble they’d be cut off from sex.

Lengs Kuprong, husband of sewing group leader Hansa Kandatu, says in a U.N. video that his wife had told him “If you do bad things, you will be cut off here,” as he motions at his waist.

It’s certainly the most literarily satisfying solution we’ve heard in awhile and if it works there, could it work elsewhere? Ditto, Dado?