Quote:Socialism had this surprising benefit for women — according to studies by socialist governments

Quote:When the workers control the means of production, does it really help women enjoy sex more? That’s what a New York Times opinion piece claimed this Sunday, arguing that socialism increased pleasure for Eastern Block women. The writer, Kristen R. Ghodsee, is a University of Pennsylvania professor of Russian and East European studies.

The piece mostly cites anecdotal evidence and studies conducted by communist nations from before the wall came down.
The conclusion?
Not having to worry about money and work led to a “life … full of romance,” as reported by Bulgarian Ana Durcheva.

hodsee describes a sort of freedom to flirt and and enjoy the company of men because there is freedom from personal responsibility and the existential angst of making a life for oneself.

Source

(08-16-2017, 12:50 AM)Ninurta Wrote: Ah!

Then that would explain those droves of eastern-bloc gals who were climbing over one another to get to the west just after the wall came down, right? The must've been absolutely worn out with all that romance going on, and were no doubt seeking escape! Of course, that's not what they were saying... back then they were claiming that conditions were so bad that all the men were laying around drunk and unable to get it up, and they were running TOWARDS the potential for romance, but that of course was just a clever cover story! I see it all so clearly now! You could get a Russian mail order bride for between 3 and 5 grand in those days.

Did anyone other than me notice that the "study" was conducted by the Socialist governments themselves? Isn't that like setting the fox to guard the hen house?


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Quote:Life Under Communism Was No Liberation For Women

Nostalgic accounts of life under communism avoid the broader perspective of widespread oppression and economic failure.

Quote:Over the last few months, The New York Times has published a number of warm and nostalgic recollections of communism. Authors have opined about the supposed optimism, idealism, and moral authority of communism.
Perhaps the most bizarre article so far claimed that women behind the Iron Curtain enjoyed greater sexual satisfaction and more independence than their Western counterparts (except, of course, when it came to freedom of thought, speech, religion, association, or movement).

I would have chosen to commemorate 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution and the birth of the Soviet Union in a different way. Over 100,000,000 people have died or were killed while building socialism during the course of the 20th century.
Call me crazy, but that staggering number of victims of communism seems to me more important than the somewhat dubious claim that Bulgarian comrades enjoyed more orgasms than women in the West. But as one Russian babushka said to another, suum cuique pulchrum est.

I am, however, intrigued by the striking similarities between the Times articles. To the greatest extent possible, they seem to avoid the broader perspective on life under communism (i.e., widespread oppression and economic failure). Instead, they focus on the experiences of individual people, some of whom never lived in communist countries in the first place.

In "When Communism Inspired Americans," the author remembers her socialist parents and the life of the communist sympathizers in 1950s America. In "Thanks to Mom, the Marxist Revolutionary," the author remembers his batty mother, who dragged him from one communist hellhole to another in search of a "real world" experience.

In "'Make It So': 'Star Trek' and Its Debt to Revolutionary Socialism," the author quotes Captain Picard, who explains to a cryogenically unfrozen businessman from the 20th century, "People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We've eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy."


Speaking of hunger and infancy, here are some completely gratuitous eyewitness accounts of parents eating their own children during the man-made famine in Ukraine in the 1930s. Communism may have influenced science fiction writers, but real life in the USSR was no picnic.