Wykład przewodni Agnieszki Kościańskiej na konferencji Beyond Binaries
Zapraszamy na wykład przewodni prof. Agnieszki Kościańskiej na konferencji Beyond Binaries: Gender, Sexuality, and Medicine in Post-War Europe. Centre for the Study of Health, Ethics and Society, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, 9-10.06.2023:
Sexology and the Cold War: Gender, Sexuality and Hierarchy
This lecture recounts the story of the most popular sex book ever published in Poland, The Art of Love by Michalina Wisłocka (1978). As The Art of Love is seen as an integral part of the Polish sex revolution with over 7 million copies sold, Wisłocka’s approaches to sexuality and gender merit analysis. While the gynaecologist declared that sexual pleasure was a woman’s right, she also suggested that maintaining a gender hierarchy was the most effective means of achieving such pleasure. This lecture situates Wisłocka’s work in both the local and global shifts occurring in sexuality and gender during the 1970s, and argues that the tensions between sexual liberation and gender hierarchy were not unique to Poland but flourishing on both sides of the Iron Curtain.