Sex backwards. Sexology and intimate life in communist Czechoslovakia

LIŠKOVÁ, Kateřina. Sex backwards. Sexology and intimate life in communist Czechoslovakia. In European Sociological Association annual conference, RN23 Sexualities. 2015.

Basic information

• Original name: Sex backwards. Sexology and intimate life in communist Czechoslovakia
• Authors: LIŠKOVÁ, Kateřina (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: European Sociological Association annual conference, RN23 Sexualities, 2015.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50000 5. Social Sciences
• Country of publisher: Czech Republic
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14230/15:00084233
• Organization unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Keywords in English: sex-gender-Czechoslovakia

Abstract

Czechoslovakians came to sex backwards, achieving gender emancipation long before sexual liberation. Moreover, sexual liberation didn’t come as a result of popular demand from below, but rather came from above. In the early years of communism in the 1950s, women were equal to men not only at work and according to the law, but also in expert discussions of sexuality and marriage. Sex experts discussed sex in connection with love within an egalitarian marriage, and included a woman’s equal right to orgasm. As sexual deviance was not a priority, sexologists even pushed for the decriminalization of homosexuality at this time. But, by the late stages of socialism – when the West was experiencing sexual and then gender liberation – equality disappeared from Czechoslovak sexology. A successful marriage was reframed as hierarchical; family became privatized and was strictly separated from the public realm of work. Individual therapy replaced public equality. Utopian models of a new and just society disappeared as both individuals and society at large settled for privatized solutions to any and all social ailments. Hundreds of sexually dysfunctional couples came for treatment in new marriage counseling centers or in-patient facilities. Dozens of “sexually deviant” men who could not or did not live up to the family norm were sentenced and placed in the sexological wards of psychiatric hospitals established in the 1970s. The case of Czechoslovakia shows that histories of sex and gender are more complex and diverse than the narratives of linear advancement most Western theories suggest. In this paper, I analyze the developments of sexology, its prescriptions in marriage manuals and treatment protocols, its internal debates as published in scholarly papers, and its connections to broader political environment. Studying sex during communist rule reveals an alternative modernity as it unfolded in Eastern Europe.