Gender, Pleasure, and Violence

Agnieszka Kościańska, Marta Rozmysłowicz

Description

Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West.

While Polish citizens undoubtedly suffered under the oppressive totalitarianism of socialism, abortion was legal, clear laws protected victims of rape, and it was relatively easy to legally change one's gender. In Gender, Pleasure, and Violence, Agnieszka Kościańska reveals that sexologists—experts such as physicians, therapists, and educators—not only treated patients but also held sex education classes at school, published regular columns in the press, and authored highly popular sex manuals that sold millions of copies. Yet strict gender roles within the home meant that true equality was never fully within reach. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and archival work, Kościańska shares how professions like sexologists defined the notions of sexual pleasure and sexual violence under these sweeping cultural changes.

By tracing the study of sexual human behavior as it was developed and professionalized in Poland since the 1960s, Gender, Pleasure, and Violence explores how the collapse of socialism brought both restrictions in gender rights and new opportunities.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Sexology and Society
1. The Development of Sexology and Sexual Rights Activism in Europe and North America
2. The Polish School of Sexology
Part II. Pleasure: Towards Good Sex
3. Sexuality and Scientific Knowledge
4. "Civilized" Sex and Gender Relations under Socialism
5. Gender and Pleasure in Expert Discourse Today
Part III. Violence: Expert Discourse of Rape
6. Rape: Definitions, Legal Understanding and Statistics
7. The Provocative Victim and the Male Limits of Self-Restraint: Stereotypes in Expert Literature
8. In the Court Room
9. Feminism: Changes in Expert Discourse and in the Court Room
Conclusions
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Violence in Society
• Gender Studies
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• History of Europe
• Poland
• Violence
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253053121
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

NEW ANTHROPOLOGIES OF EUROPE
Michael Herzfeld, Melissa L. Caldwell, and Deborah Reed-Danahay, editors

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
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1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2014 for the Polish edition by Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
2020 by Agnieszka Ko cia ska
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
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ISBN 978-0-253-05308-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-05309-1 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-05310-7 (ebook)
First Printing 2021
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. Sexology and Society
1. The Development of Sexology and Sexual Rights Activism in Europe and the United States
2. The Polish School of Sexology
Part 2. Pleasure: Toward Good Sex
3. Sexuality and Scientific Knowledge
4. Civilized Sex and Gender Relations under Socialism
5. Gender and Pleasure in Expert Discourse Today
Part 3. Violence: Expert Discourse of Rape
6. Rape: Definitions, Legal Understanding, and Statistics
7. The Provocative Victim and the Male Limits of Self-Restraint: Stereotypes in Expert Literature
8. In the Courtroom
9. Feminism: Changes in Expert Discourse and in the Courtroom
Conclusions
Works Cited
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to sincerely thank everyone who made writing this book possible. This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the Seventh European Community Framework Programme. I am particularly grateful to Magdalena Zowczak at the University of Warsaw and Michael Herzfeld at Harvard University for taking me and my project under their wings. I appreciate the helpful comments of the book s official and unofficial reviewers: Anna Wieczorkiewicz, Tomasz Wi licz, Maria D bi ska, Magdalena Grabowska, Dorota Hall, and Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz. Special thanks go to Monika P atek for her expertise and help with the legal elements in my research. I also thank the participants of the panel, The Science of Sex in a Space of Uncertainty: Naturalizing and Modernizing Europe s East, Past and Present, which took place as part of the European Association of Social Anthropologists conference in Paris in July 2012-Agata Ignaciuk, Kristen Ghodsee, Agnieszka Weseli, Katarzyna Sta czak-Wi licz, and Hadley Renkin-for the productive discussion about my presentation, in which I forwarded this book s main theses. Gratitude is also owed to all those who took part in other presentations of my research findings. I thank my colleagues and the students at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw for their insight and interesting questions. I thank Dorota Badzian, Agata Che stowska, and Agnieszka Leszczy ska for their help in collecting data. I am grateful to Micha Buchowski, Danuta Duch, Anika Keinz, Ewa Klekot, Gra yna Kubica, Katarzyna Leszczy ska, El bieta Matynia, Lidia Osta owska, Kate ina Li kov , Jill Owczarzak, Judith Okely, Frances Pine, Ma gorzata Rajtar, Ann Snitow, Grzegorz Sok , Karolina Szmagalska-Follis, and Carole Vance for inspiring conversations about my project and for their support and encouragement.
Special thanks go to all those who agreed to be interviewed and who served as my guides to the world of Polish expert knowledge of sexuality.
Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for their faith in my capabilities. I thank Micha Petryk for his support, inspiration, and love.
The English-language version of this book would not have been possible were it not for the sympathy and determination of the editors of the New Anthropologies of Europe series, in particular Michael Herzfeld, on whose support and friendship I could count at all stages of my project. Heartfelt thanks go to Marta Rozmys owicz for the effort she put into translating this book. I am also grateful to Jennika Baines of Indiana University Press for watching over the publishing process and to the directors of the University of Warsaw Press, Anna Szemberg and Beata Jankowiak-Konik, for their kindness during subsequent stages of this project. Many thanks to Agnieszka and Fredek Dzwonkowski for their hospitality and friendship, which allowed me to complete my work on the English version.
Small portions of this book were published earlier in the following articles of my authorship:

Gender on Trial: Changes in Legal and Discursive Practices Concerning Sexual Violence in Poland from the 1970s to the Present, Ethnologia Europaea 2020, 50 (1): 111-127.
Sex on Equal Terms? Polish Sexology on Women s Emancipation and Good Sex from the 1970s to the Present. Sexualities 2016, 1-2:236-56.
Feminist and Queer Sex Therapy: The Ethnography of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland. In Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe , edited by Hana Cervinkova, Micha Buchowski, Zden k Uherek, 131-146. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2015.
Beyond Viagra: Sex Therapy in Poland. Sociologick asopis/Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50 (6): 919-38.
Finally, I would like to thank the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for supporting this project as part of the National Program for the Development of the Humanities (2018-2021; project no. 21H 18 0103 86; agreement no. 0103/NPRH7/H21/86/2018; amount 49 233 PLN).

Introduction

People are divided into two genders: male and female. The consequence of this division is sexuality, along with all the secondary effects, including erotic love. Sexology is the scientific study of all the consequences of . . . the division . . . into two genders for human development and health, for humans harmonious co-existence with other humans and for their ability to form interpersonal relationships. . . . Sexology centers on . . . intimate life . . . in all of its . . . aspects: psychological, sociological, pedagogical, ethical-moral, legal, ethnographic, anthropological, biological, hygienic, religious and medical. The medical aspect is only one among many others, because sexology is interdisciplinary. The sexologist who does not know the other aspects of this science save for the medical is unable to determine the right diagnosis (because many interpersonal conflicts and disorders arise in the context of, for instance, differences in the socio-cultural background, or in the mode of upbringing), nor can he apply effective therapy. (Imieli ski 1982, 7)
Kazimierz Imieli ski wrote of gender, sexuality, and the science focused on their study. This physician founded the contemporary Polish school of sexology. He understood sexology to be interdisciplinary and placed sexuality in a psychological, sociocultural, and economic context. In writing and training future specialists, he referred to the experiences of his patients, from whom he drew his knowledge. Contact with patients also served as a strategy to legitimize that knowledge. Imieli ski s approach differed fundamentally from that dominant in the second half of the twentieth century in the West, especially in the United States, where leading sexologists William Masters and Virginia Johnson (1966)-contemporaries of Imieli ski-put clinical research above all else and examined sexual life outside of its actual context (I discuss this issue in chap. 1 ). The contribution of Masters and Johnson to the development of knowledge about the human sexual response is invaluable, just like their revolutionary research on women s sexuality. Nevertheless, the achievements of Masters and Johnson are criticized by North American feminist therapists and activists who see their studies as the source of today s commodification and biomedicalization of sexuality and therapy under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism. These feminists argue that Masters and Johnson ignored what Imieli ski-whose work they might not be aware of-paid so much attention to: the cultural, social, economic, and political contexts of sexuality (see Tiefer 2001, 75-82).
Let Poland and the United States serve as examples of two systems: socialist and capitalist (on sexuality in the context of socialism and capitalism and for a discussion of the most important literature, see Ghodsee 2018). In the narrative prevalent in public discourse-and, to a certain extent, in academic works-socialism denotes the absence of creativity. Accordingly, it was a totalitarian system that fully determined the life of its citizens, and the history of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II is often understood through this lens. The intellectual accomplishments or progressive reforms of the period are hardly discernable in this framework. With all certainty, no successful sex life appears in the socialist foreground. In August 2017, a researcher of gender and sexuality in the region, Kristen Ghodsee (2017), wrote an opinion column for the New York Times in which she noted that although people suffered during socialism, it is worth remembering that not everything was bad at the time: women had more independence and thus more orgasms, and sexologists proposed innovative methods of therapy. Ghodsee, who referred to my research presented in this book, caused a storm, especially on the West side of the already long-g