
Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism - lfglopes
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/why-women-had-better-sex-under-socialism.html
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obeid
Read the writer's bio before sharing your hot take on the article.

"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

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ChristianBundy
Thank you. Regardless of whether the article is factually correct, I'm a bit
surprised to see the number of reactionary comments (dead or otherwise) in
this thread.

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rgejman
I really wish the NYTimes didn't publish crap like this: "here's a marginally
significant observation about two groups of people and here's a bunch of
anecdotes that purport to explain the difference." It's a just-so story
wrapped in a veneer of history. At least deal with the subject critically,
discuss whether the observation is significant or whether the method
(anecdotes, in this case) being used to explain the differences between people
is robust. Ask a follow up question: "If X is true, we might also expect Y."

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vidarh
They're a newspaper, not a scientific journal. They commissioned a piece from
an academic working with the subject. That's already a step above most
newspapers who'd just have a journalist write something themselves.

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rgejman
What's your point? Newspapers shouldn't treat the subjects they cover
critically? They shouldn't contextualize statements to help readers
distinguish truth from fiction?

They are critical and contexualizing when it comes to certain topics. Why not
when it comes to "data" driven observations?

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vidarh
My point is that they should not need to treat it with the care of a
scientific journal, and that commissioning an academic known to write on the
subject already means NY Times is exceeding the standards of most newspapers
in this respect.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
According to
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2008/05/sex_and_the_country.html)

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.

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js8
I think that's an interesting idea, I think it's also documented that people
have more sex during power outages.

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.

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pavlov
The basis for the headline:

 _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._

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pookiemonster
[deleted]

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pavlov
"A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the
knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way
your hard-core Commie works."

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jankotek
Bullshit. I was born in communist Czechoslovakia. It is like celebrating North
Korea, because their army has 30% women. Sex was one of a few available
entertainment options.

It was difficult to get basic hygiene products (tampons, toilet paper).

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vidarh
They're not "celebrating" it, unless you seriously think the NY Times have
suddenly decided communism on any shape or form is great. They are just not
pretending that no joy was possible, or that there were no positive aspects at
all, and not insisting on ignoring the few positive aspects.

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.

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jankotek
I think I am reading different NY Times. They never wrote how communist
goverment in Romania banned anticonception, abortions etc... But maybe that
makes sex more exiciting :(

And please educate me what women's rights post-communist goverments took away.

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greglindahl
[http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/21/world/romania-s-
communist-...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/21/world/romania-s-communist-
legacy-abortion-culture.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/25/world/romanian-orphans-
pri...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/25/world/romanian-orphans-prisoners-of-
their-cribs.html)

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js8
I think it's plausible. The research in the book The Spirit Level supports the
notion that more equal societies have their members less stressed, across the
whole social hierarchy. There is also interesting research from Robert
Sapolsky about this.

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notfromhere
tl;dr women, when not having to depend on a man for income and have an
equivalent divide of household duties, tend to not be as stressed and have
better sex

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lucozade
Not exactly. The only facts here refer to a study post-Reunification that said
that East German women had twice the orgasms of West Germans.

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.

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LeoNatan25
Bulgaria was never a communist state, and categorizing it as such is a gross
misrepresentation. It was ally to communist states, yes, but the socialism in
Bulgaria was far communism.

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lucozade
Sorry, are you saying that the People's Republic of Bulgaria was not run by
Bulgarian Communist Party? Or are you saying that there wasn't a People's
Republic of Bulgaria or that the Bulgarian Communist Party wasn't communist?
Or something else?

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ue_
GP is probably noting that Communism is a classless, stateless, moneyless
society in which the Law of Value has been abolished; "Communist state" is an
oxymoron.

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jwilk
LeoNatan25 said Bulgaria "was ally to communist states", so it's clear he
doesn't consider "communist state" an oxymoron

I'd like to know more about the alleged difference between Bulgaria and the
unnamed allies.

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ue_
Interesting, I missed that part. In this case I would say he is incorrect,
then. Having a Communist party in power does not make a Communist society.

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knbknb
In East Germany before the unification, lifestyles were more traditional.
Moreover, there were incentives to start a family early in life. Perhaps most
importantly, young families would get priority treatment when applying for
newly-built apartments. Therefore people got married in their early 20s, and
moved into their new flat, away from parents, as soon as possible, and had the
sex life young married couples normally have.

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RealityNow
Makes sense. The longer your work day and the more financially stressed you
are, the less sex you're going to tend to have. Birth rates have been
decreasing in the first world countries for a reason.

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emersonrsantos
Why do we have more socialists in other countries than in (former) socialist
states?

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vidarh
Do we?

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)

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emersonrsantos
Linke, or DDR, is now fabian (democratic) socialism.

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vidarh
They are still socialist, though.

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.

