‘Now you see them, now you don’t’. Sexual deviants and sexological expertise in communist Czechoslovakia

LIŠKOVÁ, Kateřina. ‘Now you see them, now you don’t’. Sexual deviants and sexological expertise in communist Czechoslovakia. History of the Human Sciences. SAGE, 2016, vol. 29, No 1, p. 49-74. ISSN 0952-6951. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695115617383.

Basic information

• Original name: ‘Now you see them, now you don’t’. Sexual deviants and sexological expertise in communist Czechoslovakia
• Authors: LIŠKOVÁ, Kateřina (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: History of the Human Sciences, SAGE, 2016, 0952-6951.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 50000 5. Social Sciences
• Country of publisher: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Impact factor: Impact factor: 0.397
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14230/16:00089527
• Organization unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0952695115617383
• UT WoS: 000371563100003
• Keywords in English: communism; expertise; family; sexual deviance; sexuality
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Despite its historical focus on aberrant behavior, sexology barely dealt with sexual deviants in 1950s Czechoslovakia. Rather, sexologists treated only isolated instances of deviance. The rare cases that went to court appeared mostly because they hindered work or harmed the national economy. Two decades later, however, the situation was markedly different. Hundreds of men were labeled as sexual delinquents and sentenced for treatment in special sexological wards at psychiatric hospitals. They endangered society, so it was claimed, by being unwilling or unable to conform to the family norm. The mode of subjection shifted from work to family. I analyse this change by using the tools of Gil Eyal’s sociology of expertise (2013), which focuses on shifts in institutional matrices that bring forth new groups of agents creating new expert networks. I argue that sexology became profoundly institutionalized in the early 1970s, which brought the discipline closer to psychiatry and forensic science. New inpatient facilities were opened that could admit sentenced sexual deviants. Also, demographic changes accelerated in the 1960s, especially skyrocketing divorce rates and plummeting birth rates, which made it imperative for the government to focus on cementing the family. After the failed attempts of the Prague Spring in 1968, the new pro-Soviet government of communist Czechoslovakia did just that. During the time dubbed as ‘normalization’ by the new elites, anyone who strayed from the family norm was suspected of deviance.

Abstract (in Czech)

Text analyzuje souvislosti mezi výskytem mužské sexuální deviace, jejím pojetím v sexuologickém diskurzu a proměnami režimu v socialistickém Československu mezi 50. a 70. lety 20. století.