Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism(nytimes.com) |
Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism(nytimes.com) |
"Kristen R. Ghodsee, a professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of numerous books on European Communism and its aftermath, including, most recently, “Red Hangover: Legacies of 20th-Century Communism.”
This is an essay in the series Red Century, about the history and legacy of Communism 100 years after the Russian Revolution."
Edit: formatting
They are critical and contexualizing when it comes to certain topics. Why not when it comes to "data" driven observations?
In the US rural teens have more sex than urban teens. One of the theories of why this happens is boredom. Rural teens just don't have as many activities to fill their day as do urban teens.
I wonder if something like that can explain at least part of this finding. The West during this time underwent massive technological and social change, compared to the Communist countries. In addition, in the Communist countries, complaining could land you in prison (see the Stasi and their informant network). Unless you wanted to risk your life escaping, the best coping strategy was probably to shut up and have sex to relieve your tension.
I can attest that life under socialism was perhaps a bit more boring, certainly there was less distractions (in the form of media, computers, games). However, I am not sure that the dictatorial nature of these regimes affected large enough portion of the population - most people were probably happier with having job security and general stability. I even heard stories from people that they could actually complain more in the job, because they didn't risk they would be fired. Not to mention the general laid back attitude to work that many people had.
However, your hypothesis somehow misses the "more pleasurable" part; it considers sex as something that is done when times are rough, and not as something that is also fun in itself.
A comparative sociological study of East and West Germans conducted after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women had twice as many orgasms as Western women.
"A fifth of male fish in UK rivers now ‘trans-gender’ due to chemicals in human waste"
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_591899_en.h...
It was difficult to get basic hygiene products (tampons, toilet paper).
E.g. it is a matter of fact that a lot of legislation relating to women's rights have been rolled back in many of these countries for example.
And your statement that sex was one of very few available entertainment options would make sense as an explanation if we can see this same outcome in e.g. third world countries compared to developed countries.
It would be interesting to see if that is the case. Maybe you're right that it is simply due to lack of alternative entertainment.
> It was difficult to get basic hygiene products (tampons, toilet paper).
And nobody is saying otherwise - this is entirely irrelevant to the article.
And please educate me what women's rights post-communist goverments took away.
I honestly wonder, what's so much better about today's entertainment that people prefer it to sex?
I was also born in communist Czechoslovakia. Yes, it was dull, although I was too young to speak for sex. From what I heard, it was a weird mix of conservative and liberal morality.
I personally think that people were simply more content with relationships they had. Today, people are dazzled by the paradox of choice, because their life heavily depends on good choice of the partner (as I already remark elsewhere in this discussion).
The rest is a couple of anecdotes that seem to fall suspiciously in the "it was better in my day" and "my mother wants grandchildren" camps. Neither of which are particular to ex-socialist countries. Plus some supposition that doesn't appear to have any grounds within the article.
I mean, that tl;dr might well be true (of life rather than the article). I would be interested in seeing the detail of the original study though. Depending on precisely when they counted said orgasms, my own anecdata of early post-Wall relations may have a quite different explanation.
As far as I know, it was ruled for 40+ years by the self called communist party, and the means of production were owned by the state.
They might not have been part of the USSR, but they were pretty communist as far as I can see.
So it was not communist, as there was a state. And it was not communist because there were class differences (unless we are to believe that the party elite did not live differently to the rest).
But that did not distinguish them from the rest of Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union - none of these countries described themselves as communist, but as socialist, for a reason: They all used the lure of a future communist society as a carrot to get people to accept the many sticks being applied.
So he's half right, but for the wrong reasons.
EDIT: In any case, whether or not one agree on the above definition of communism, Bulgaria certainly was not different enough to the rest to set it apart. Either Bulgaria was communist too or none of them were.
In countries in which there has been no "Socialist" past, many people see Socialism as a realistic option given modern Communist philosophers. That is to say, this is because aside from McCarthyist red scare legacy, there is less stigma.
In Germany, Linke (Left), is by far strongest in the former DDR, and it came out of PDS, which again was the successor to SED - the ruling party of DDR.
It has merged with some other groups, and appears fairly thoroughly "reformed" to the extent that they're too centrist for many socialists, but the imbalance between its support in the East and West remains.
It varies a lot by country, seemingly both coming down to the level of oppression in the different countries, but also things like their propaganda, and to what extent their ideology was presented in a way that their populations had the background to recognise how different their actual polices were vs. their supposed theoretical foundations (e.g. teaching Marx to someone using full source texts if you want to maintain an authoritarian regime is not a particularly bright plan, but the extent of careful quoting and ordering and explaining away and indoctrination varied greatly)
And, by the way, Fabianism is virtually unknown outside the UK today other than in small pockets in the English-speaking world, though it had such unfortunate effects as inspiring the creation of the Ba'athist movement (Saddam Hussein and the Assads were/are Ba'athists), and also inspired quite a few other leaders of former British colonies, many of whom thankfully made better leaders.
Most places outside the UK, when talking about democratic socialism you can be talking about anything from libertarian communism to social democracy - the term generally only exclude Stalinist/Maoist parties. Many communist parties have explicitly used the term in order to signal lack of support for Stalinism. But most "democratic socialist" parties are to the left of the social-democratic parties though the latter also use the term with some regularity.
Though you're right that they are increasingly gradualist like the Fabians.
Most social democrats outside the UK see Eduard Bernstein as one of their main sources for their gradualism, not the Fabians, in part because largely unlike Labour in the UK most of the European social democratic left as well as many other places started as communist parties and split and/or reformed (most of them in the period between the October Revolution and Stalins decree that Comintern member parties were to be obligated to accept orders from the Soviet Union), and Bernstein as a friend and associate of Marx and Engels who continued to support many of their views and goals even as he rejected the need for revolutions was able to gain far more support than the Fabians that had pretty much no presence other than in the British Empire.
It might not have been textbook communism - but if we go down that route, how many real communist countries have there been?
The whole soviet block self described as communist (bulgarian party was "communist", the russian party was "communist"). They have effectively redefined what communist means for 95% of the population.
I'd like to know more about the alleged difference between Bulgaria and the unnamed allies.