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Sexual liberation, socialist style
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ISBN: 9781108424691 9781108341332 9781108440844 Year: 2018 Publisher: Cambridge Cambridge University Press

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"In communist Czechoslovakia, there were two distinct approaches to sexuality and gender. The first one went like this: sex should occur between equals, and men and women should be equal and free of the bourgeois shackles of property. Indeed, before entering into marriage, people were expected to get to know each other, whether in the workplace or at collective volunteer work units. The other approach to sexuality claimed the following: Men and women are fundamentally different and marriage only works if men are superior to women. That is, if gender arrangements are not ordered this way, women will suffer in a way similar to sexual dissatisfaction. In this approach, it is one's nuclear family and spouse that are the only safe social bonds. These types of statements capture the attitudes towards sex, gender, and family as they changed throughout the years in Czechoslovakia. The first approach to sexuality and gender is characteristic of the long 1950s, i.e. the period since the communists took power in 1948 until the early 1960s when discourses began to shift. The second approach, from the 1970s, sums up the attitude of the period called 'Normalization' which followed the failed attempts of the Prague Spring of 1968. This book tracks what it took to get from one approach to the other"--


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Sexual liberation, socialist style : communist Czechoslovakia and the science of desire, 1945-1989
Author:
ISBN: 1108617387 1108341330 1108576486 1108424694 1108440843 Year: 2018 Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,

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This is the first account of sexual liberation in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. Kateřina Lišková reveals how, in the case of Czechoslovakia, important aspects of sexuality were already liberated during the 1950s - abortion was legalized, homosexuality decriminalized, the female orgasm came into experts' focus - and all that was underscored by an emphasis on gender equality. However, with the coming of Normalization, gender discourses reversed and women were to aspire to be caring mothers and docile wives. Good sex was to cement a lasting marriage and family. In contrast to the usual Western accounts highlighting the importance of social movements to sexual and gender freedom, here we discover, through the analysis of rich archival sources covering forty years of state socialism in Czechoslovakia, how experts, including sexologists, demographers, and psychologists, advised the state on population development, marriage and the family to shape the most intimate aspects of people's lives.

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