Publication details
Sex during Communism. Intimate Life and the Power of Expertise
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Sexuality seems to be something innate and biological, as if it were around in the same form since the dawn of time. Research in the social sciences, however, has shown persuasively that what people perceive as sex, the ways in which they understand themselves as sexual beings and even sexual practices change across time and place. Moreover, sexuality might be perceived as the innermost part of ourselves but its forms and expressions are strongly culturally mediated. Sex is formed by society and, conversely, we can make sense of the broader social arrangements if we study sexuality. What did, then, sex during communism look like? What was seen as normal and deviant? How did these perceptions change over time? On the case of Czechoslovakia between the years 1948 and 1989, I will show the ways in which sex changed in connection to the shifts in the regime and its priorities. |