Is it capitalism or greed that leads to bad sex?

by philg

A Ukrainian friend who speaks German derisively linked to “Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism” (nytimes):

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. Researchers marveled at this disparity in reported sexual satisfaction, especially since East German women suffered from the notorious double burden of formal employment and housework. In contrast, postwar West German women had stayed home and enjoyed all the labor-saving devices produced by the roaring capitalist economy. But they had less sex, and less satisfying sex, than women who had to line up for toilet paper.

Consider Ana Durcheva from Bulgaria, who was 65 when I first met her in 2011. Having lived her first 43 years under Communism, she often complained that the new free market hindered Bulgarians’ ability to develop healthy amorous relationships.

“Sure, some things were bad during that time, but my life was full of romance,” she said. “After my divorce, I had my job and my salary, and I didn’t need a man to support me. I could do as I pleased.”

Ms. Durcheva was a single mother for many years, but she insisted that her life before 1989 was more gratifying than the stressful existence of her daughter, who was born in the late 1970s.

“All she does is work and work,” Ms. Durcheva told me in 2013, “and when she comes home at night she is too tired to be with her husband. But it doesn’t matter, because he is tired, too. They sit together in front of the television like zombies. When I was her age, we had much more fun.”

“As early as 1952, Czechoslovak sexologists started doing research on the female orgasm, and in 1961 they held a conference solely devoted to the topic,” Katerina Liskova, a professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, told me. “They focused on the importance of the equality between men and women as a core component of female pleasure. Some even argued that men need to share housework and child rearing, otherwise there would be no good sex.”

Agnieszka Koscianska, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Warsaw, told me that pre-1989 Polish sexologists “didn’t limit sex to bodily experiences and stressed the importance of social and cultural contexts for sexual pleasure.” It was state socialism’s answer to work-life balance: “Even the best stimulation, they argued, will not help to achieve pleasure if a woman is stressed or overworked, worried about her future and financial stability.”

Although gender wage disparities and labor segregation persisted, and although the Communists never fully reformed domestic patriarchy, Communist women enjoyed a degree of self-sufficiency that few Western women could have imagined. Eastern bloc women did not need to marry, or have sex, for money.

Those comrades’ insistence on government intervention may seem heavy-handed to our postmodern sensibilities, but sometimes necessary social change — which soon comes to be seen as the natural order of things — needs an emancipation proclamation from above.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the research results may be peculiar to Germany and German culture (if we assume that law is a reflection of cultural attitudes, note that German family law is completely different from the U.S.; alimony has been substantially eliminated and child support is capped at a small fraction of U.S. levels).

The Ivy League university professor who wrote the Times piece blames Capitalism for ruining female sexual satisfaction. What would a Buddhist peasant say, though? Perhaps that the suffering described could only stem from materialism and greed. An American content to live at the same material standard of living as a former East German wouldn’t have a “work-life balance” problem because a superior standard of living can be obtained today without working at all, either by collecting welfare or collecting child support. The American who doesn’t work can then spend his or her time doing whatever he or she wants. Does The Redistribution Recession show that there are millions of Americans who have figured this out and are therefore smarter than the professor?

The professor says that only Bigger Government can give women bigger sexual satisfaction. But what if the factors are simpler, e.g., working hours for the person seeking satisfaction, working hours for the sex partner(s) of that person, the availability of no-fault divorce so that one is not chained to a boring sex partner, and social approval and financial support for single parenthood so that one can enjoy children without being chained to a single sex partner. Every U.S. state offers no-fault or “unilateral” divorce. U.S. society offers social approval and either publicly or private-supplied cash for single parents. That leaves the working hours factor to explore.

Before declaring the Capitalist experiment a failure (what’s the point of money if you’re not enjoying life, right?), why not look at sexual satisfaction as a function of hours worked by the people studied and their sex partners? Maybe it will turn out that people who work at a government or union job with a strict 35- or 40-hour week can achieve the same level of sexual satisfaction as the women of former East Germany while simultaneously enjoying a higher material quality of life.

11 thoughts on “Is it capitalism or greed that leads to bad sex?”

  2. philg, I can not believe you are falling for this trolling in yellow press by an individual who does nothing useful or important for living and allocate it even minimal brain bandwidth. There was a statement made by a Soviet propagandist impersonating regular Soviet Joe in response to American audience (probably pre-selected too) “There is no sex in USSR!” and it became common joke. I guess that 25 year olds have better sex than 65-year olds but whatever ‘social’ studies were in East block they were used to confirm Marxist – Leninist theory and make socialist government look good. This is similar to Western ‘social’ ‘sciences’: the only unquestioned transfer credits I received in an American university for my Soviet schooling was for mandatory Marxist – Leninist ‘social’ ‘science’ classes, I guess I had Marxist indoctrination covered. 19th century mathematics, physics and chemistry that were grinded into me in way more technical detail in former USSR than in US undergraduate programs I had to take tests for. I can certify that men and women had to commute in overcrowded bus and subway cars pressed in during pick hours, about 1 hour each way, work for little pay and come home to stand in food lines and such, no joke here. Not sure how this improves sex lives, unless vodka stimulates better that US drugs

  3. @dean: but… but… while commuting in overcrowding buses and subway trains, those men and women had full faith in their future! Surely that was an aphrodisiac.

  4. You are right Zapiens. Men and women knew that if they started to save now in 20 years they could afford soviet subcompact car, if they will fast and sign up for it now, that there is no way they could improve their living accommodations and will have to share their one bedroom apartment wit elderly parents and kids if any and so on… I was pretty depressed with this when I was a teenager. Not sure how adults were going on with regular everyday staff. I guess they lived thorough worse. I definitely did not and did not go along. Older people who fought in WWII did not go along either – they used to live in freer world, it took awhile for socialism to set in.

  5. Women not having orgasms? I thought we fixed this with the Female Viagra (Flibanserin) but a search on the net shows it has mixed results, unfortunately (both for men and women). Hmm, if only women could have unlimited sex until they have orgasms… who could supply them with all this unlimited sex?… I just don’t know… it’s a mystery…

    So capitalism is stopping women from having orgasm. What a sense of injustice and resentment…

    All this complaining reminds me of this paragraph from one of my favorite books:

    “And now I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror – a raging gargoyle corroded by acid rain. How can this have happened to a 1960s flower child? Especially one who has yet to enjoy fully the sexual variety promised to the flower children? Not to mention all the new stuff. Can anyone nowadays be said to have lived life to the full without experiencing group sex, bondage and a pre-op transsexual?
    This is crazy, of course. But who, in the Western world, has not been deranged by a toxic cocktail of dissatisfaction, restlessness, desire and resentment? Who has not yearned to be younger, richer, more talented, more respected, more celebrated and, above all, more sexually attractive? Who has not felt entitled to more, and aggrieved when more was not forthcoming? It is possible that a starving African farmer has less sense of injustice than a middle-aged Western male who has never been fellated.” – Foley, Michael. The Age of Absurdity (Kindle Locations 87-91). Simon & Schuster UK. Kindle Edition.

  6. btw, you can fund an experiment to better understand female orgasm:

    https://experiment.com/projects/finding-the-ancestral-roots-of-female-orgasm

    “About This Project: Human females ovulate on a monthly cycle. Rabbits and many other mammals are physically induced ovulators. This means that rabbits ovulate due to a stimulus from mating. Last year we proposed that female orgasm in humans evolved from physically induced ovulation. We hypothesize that using drugs that inhibit orgasm in humans will reduce ovulation in rabbits compared to untreated females. The results of this study may have profound implications for the understanding of female sexuality.”

  7. “A Ukrainian friend (who speaks German derisively) linked to…”

    Or

    “A Ukrainian friend who speaks German (derisively linked to…)”

    Always pick the association that is more amusing.

  8. This part of an ongoing NY Times series that looks back with fond nostalgia at various aspects of Communism. Communism was a system that killed as many people (maybe more if you count China) as Nazism and which turned all of eastern Europe into a giant prison behind barbed wire, but somehow it is OK to write puff pieces in the NY Times about how X was better under Communism. Did they make the trains run on time too?

  9. Jackie:

    It is an interesting phenomenon that the majority of the Left in this country and perhaps everywhere else regards Communism as respectable ideology, despite ample evidence to the contrary, the ideology worthy of teaching in American universities and practicing on the streets of this country ( http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-berkeley-protests-20170827-story.html) . Both Nazism and Communism are indistinguishable in practice and have historically led to bloody totalitarian regimes in every implementation attempt, the oil rich Venezuela being the latest shining example of such an implementation greatly admired by the Nobelist Paul Samuelson.

    If one reconciles oneself to the realization that in the arguably minority of historical liberal mind’s and the majority of today’s liberal mind’s meme of “Communism is much better than Nazism and probably better than Capitalism” is writ in stone , everything else follows naturally: New York Times nostalgia for communist sex, unwillingness to denounce antifa role in inciting violence, free speech death in the Universities, increased government role in all areas of life, etc.

    The black-and-white identity tactics of the left is rather brilliant although not original having been borrowed from the 1917 Russian revolution’s враг народа (enemy of the people) propaganda toolbox. I.e. if one blames antifa for anything, one automatically becomes враг народа, a Nazi sympathizer, and must be dealt with accordingly. That’s exactly why the useful idiots like Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Charles Krauthammer have been reluctant to denounce antifa gang violence. Who want to be labeled a Nazi ?

  10. >An American content to live at the same material standard of living as a former East German wouldn’t have a “work-life balance” problem because a superior standard of living can be obtained today without working at all, either by collecting welfare or collecting child support.

    I don’t understand; I thought long-term/permanent welfare for any individual was eliminated in the Clinton era.

    Also, I am not good enough at persistent dishonesty to plot to collect child support or contrive a disability income pension. So I need the government to plunder other people’s wealth on my behalf without my having to do so much of the plundering myself!

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