Sex on equal terms? Polish sexology on women’s emancipation and ‘good sex’ from the 1970s to the present

Introduction

In his lecture for future sexologists at a state-sponsored centre for medical education in 2008, a leading figure of Polish sexology discussed new sexual dysfunctions, which he had observed among his patients: ‘premature female orgasm’ and ‘erectile dysfunctions related to male involvement in childcare’. He explained that ‘premature female orgasm’ was a female version of a male dysfunction – premature ejaculation. According to him, unlike ‘normal women’ who need 24 hours of arousal before having an orgasm, women who suffer from ‘premature female orgasm’ have an orgasm very quickly and behave ‘abnormally’ after having sex: they are able to return to work right away, for instance, ‘they take their laptops and start to work in bed’; they are not interested in ‘holding their partners for hours, as normal women do’. According to him, this occurs among couples in which women have particularly successful careers and earn more than their male partners or in other ways transgress ‘traditional gender relations’. In a similar way, men who stay at home to take care of children while their wives or female partners go back to work after childbirth may experience erectile dysfunction. These kinds of ideas reappeared during other lectures and conferences in which I participated during my research and in interviews I conducted with representatives of mainstream Polish sexology, in which my interlocutors stressed the link between traditional gender roles and a satisfying sex life.

In this article, I discuss the development of sexology in Poland and the period of the 1970s and 1980s, when sexology became highly popular there. I focus on the relationship between the past and the present: I show how this set the stage for contemporary sexological discourses and models of sexuality and gender within them. I ask how sexological knowledge was constructed in the Polish context and what kind of sexual and gendered subjects and models it produced; I also consider the issue of subjects’ agency vis-à-vis sexological discourse. I argue that for mainstream Polish sexology, sustaining differences, traditional gender division of labour and gender hierarchy are the routes to ‘good’, ¹ satisfying sex and good family or marital life. By linking sexual satisfaction with traditional gender roles and arguing that the transgression of these roles leads to physiological abnormality, sexological discourse disciplines, normalizes and naturalizes certain models of (hetero)sexuality, ² and gender relations.

To frame my argument, I depart from Michel Foucault’s work on the role of scientia sexualis as a disciplining power in the modern process of subjects’ construction and I follow those who, drawing on Foucault’s theory, have argued for recognizing subjects’ (both doctors’ and patients’) agency in the building of scientific discourses (for example, Oosterhuis, 2000). I draw on scholars who have focused on the role of the public and culture in constructing scientific theories (Fleck, 1979 [1935]). In doing so, I show the critical role of the patient–doctor relation in the process of constructing science and its political consequences, including the production of models of gender and sexuality.

My article is based on research conducted using multiple methods. My point of departure was participant observation conducted during classes held at a state-sponsored medical education centre. The courses are intended for future sexologists as well as for those who already work as sex therapists but want to increase their professional qualifications. I attended these classes twice, in 2008–2009 and 2011–2012. Drawing on this phase of research, I selected participants for in-depth interviews and conducted 35 of these. In the interviews I asked my participants about the sources of their knowledge and about their understanding of sexuality and gender. I also conducted archival research, beginning with a thematic collection of newspaper clippings from the period 1953–2009 at the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw.

Based on my interviews, participant observation during the classes and analyses of the press clippings, I identified three sexologists whose work shaped the development of Polish sexology in the 1970s and 1980s (Kazimierz Imieliński, Michalina Wisłocka, Zbigniew Lew-Starowicz) and the influential works (Sztuka kochania [The Art of Love], Wisłocka, 1978 and Seks partnerski [Sex on Equal Terms], Lew-Starowicz, 1983). Through my ethnographic and archival inquiries I learned that these were written as a result of dialogue between sexologists and their patients and correspondents. I studied this dialogue in detail through an archival study of two publications: the student weekly itd (etc.), from 1965 until its last issue in 1990, and the magazine published by the League of Polish Women, a socialist organization, Zwierciadło (The Mirror) from 1957 until 2012. Both journals where highly progressive, held sexologist columns and dedicated a lot of space to discussions concerning issues such as sexuality, gender, reproduction, marriage and morality.

Patients’ and doctors’ agency and the social role of sexology

Historians of sexuality have interpreted the social role of sexology in various ways. Until the 1970s, the mainstream interpretation often presented by sexologists themselves, portrayed sexology as a force of progress contributing to the liberation of sexuality (for example, Robinson, 1989; see also Waters, 2006: 50–53). ³ This narrative was challenged by the work of Michel Foucault, who argued that sexology rather constituted a new and disciplining force, instrumental in the power-knowledge system and in the production of particular subjects (1978: 53–73). For Foucault, sex and sexuality are products of modernity. Scientific discourses are crucial to the deployment of sexuality and hence to biopower: sexual science, through its texts and medical practices, produces individual subjects and disciplines entire populations by constituting norms and naturalizing some sex as good and some as bad (Foucault, 1978: 157; see also Rubin, 1984).

However, Foucault was criticized for depriving subjects of agency; sexologists and their patients were portrayed in his work as passive elements of the power-knowledge system. In his book on Krafft-Ebing, Harry Oosterhuis (2000), who draws on a Foucaultian constructivist approach, argues that the pioneer of sexology was in constant dialogue with his patients and readers. According to Oosterhuis, Krafft-Ebing used their testimonies to create various classifications of sexual subjects. His patients and the authors of letters sent to him, actively constructed their identities based on the accounts he discussed. The authors of the letters expressed gratitude: after reading Psychopathia Sexualis they understood they were not the only ones experiencing these kinds of problems. Others begged for help: for instance, they wanted to marry, but were afraid of persons of the opposite sex (see for example von Krafft-Ebing, 2010 [1886]: 99–102). Oosterhuis writes: ‘By publishing his patients’ letters and autobiographies and by quoting their statements, Krafft-Ebing enabled voices to be heard that were usually silenced’ and he stresses that ‘contemporary readers could find subjective experience, dialog, multivocality, divergent meaning, and contradictory sets of values in Psychopathia sexualis’ (Oosterhuis, 2000: 195). Oosterhuis argues that Krafft-Ebing avoided generalizations, which contradicts the image of the sexologist as eager to classify and generalize. Furthermore, some testimonies conveyed a social message: ‘Some of the autobiographers took the opportunity to vent their criticism of current social norms’ (2000: 195). For example, one of his correspondents wrote: ‘I think that sexual contact between two people of the same sex is at their individual discretion, without legislators having any right to interfere’ (cited in Oosterhuis, 2000: 196; on the interactional bases of sexological knowledge see also Terry, 1999, esp. chapter 7).

George Chauncey (1982/1983) has shown another dimension of the interactional character of sexological knowledge. In his article on the scientific understanding of female sexual ‘deviance’ in the USA between the 1880s and 1920s, he argues that its conceptualization was a result of new social developments, ‘part of the general ideological reaction by the medical profession to women’s challenge to the [Victorian] sex/gender system’ (1982/1983: 140). Chauncey writes that ‘doctors attributed the supposed increase in inversion to the repudiation of motherhood by women influenced by feminism’ (1982/1983: 141). He shows that conservative social concerns (in this case antifeminism) could be expressed through sexological discourse, a point to which I will return, and that doctors were important actors in this process. Thus, both Oosterhuis and Chauncey show the constant involvement of medical knowledge of sex in social life, which works not only in the way Foucault portrayed it (sexual science as disciplining power), but also in response to patients’ or other groups’ concerns.

The interaction between physicians and their patients, as well as other factors in constructing knowledge goes beyond issues related to sexuality, and has been analysed by scholars working on the history of medicine, including the pioneering work of Polish-Jewish physician and philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck (1979 [1935]). Fleck argues that this interaction is central to the advance of diagnoses, treatments and understandings of health and illness. According to him, medical knowledge is based on ‘proto ideas’ or ‘prescientific’ ideas existing in culture before they ‘become embodied in scientific concepts’ (Oudshoorn, 1994: 10). These in turn influence medical knowledge through relations between multiple ‘thought collectives’ and ‘thought styles’, mainly the collective of physicians and the collective of patients, expressing various worldviews. Fleck writes: ‘The complex structure of modern society results in multiple intersections and interrelations among thought collectives both in space and time’ (1979: 107) and concludes that ‘the intercollective communication of ideas always results in a shift or a change in the currency of thought’ (1979: 109). Furthermore, in following this perspective, collectives of scientists representing various disciplines can also influence their thought style. In this process, ‘scientific claims achieve the status of universal, natural facts’ (Oudshoorn, 1994: 10; on the social construction of scientific facts see also Latour, 1987).

In this article, I follow Oosterhuis, Chauncey and Fleck in their thinking on the role of interactions between patients and doctors in the processes of knowledge construction. I assume that sexological discourse plays a crucial role in the production and naturalization of (sexual) subjects. However, those subjects are not purely passive: they possess a certain level of agency in constructing discourse. They can influence the development of sexual science: doctors might express their patients’ concerns and their claims for (sexual) rights as in the case of Krafft-Ebing’s work or, to use Fleck’s terms, the thought style of various patients might influence doctors’ thought styles. At the same time, sexological discourse can also serve as an expression of conservative backlash, which naturalizes certain models of sexuality and gender, as in the case discussed by Chauncey. The active role of patients and other groups with which sexologists interact is crucial for sexology’s ability to construct and naturalize sexual and gendered subjects. This was also the case of sexology in Poland.

Sexology in Poland and its social context

Sexology in Poland has developed as an interdisciplinary field of research and therapy, quite different from the highly medicalized and market-bound mainstream North American sexology (Irvine, 2005; Tiefer, 2000). Historically, Polish sexual science dates back to the first part of the 19th century, when the first marriage manuals such as that by Lubicz Czerwiński (1817) and educational publications covering issues of intimate life and sexual development appeared (for example, Śniadecki, 1840; see also Imieliński, 1982: 22–23; Urbanek, 2004). In 1906, Stanisław Kurkiewicz published the first Polish book that discussed issues of ‘sexual perversion’. Based on his 1903 survey, Tadeusz Łazowski (1906) authored a work on the sexual lives of youth in Warsaw. These works linked sexuality with other spheres of life and stressed its psychological, social and cultural character. German-language classics of early sexual science were also well known to Polish readers. The Polish translation of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, for example, was first published in 1888, only two years after the first German edition. In 1933 the Polish branch of Magnus Hirschfeld’s World League of Sexual Reform was established. The interwar period witnessed the vivid development of sexuality related activism and science especially among physicians, intellectuals and feminists organized within the Planned Motherhood Association (Gawin and Crozier, 2006). Here again sexuality was perceived as embedded in the social and cultural context. This expansion was stopped by the Second World War and followed by the Stalinist regime, which silenced all social debates. Although the Planned Motherhood Association was reactivated in 1957, it was only in the late 1960s when sexology started to grow again. The period of the 1970s and 1980s constitutes the golden age of sexology in Poland, as my participants liked to call it. Following earlier models of sexuality as embedded in society and culture, sexual science developed during these two decades to become a holistic discipline embracing the achievements of various branches of medicine, social science and humanities, with psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, religious studies, and even theology providing resources for sex education and therapy. ⁴ Sexuality was perceived as multidimensional and embedded in relationships, culture, economy and society at large. In the introduction to the first Polish sexological handbook, Kazimierz Imieliński, an important Polish sexologist who organized sexological training courses in late socialist Poland, explains:

Sexology deals with … [human] intimate life in all of its dimensions: psychological, sociological, pedagogical, ethical, moral, legal, ethnographic, anthropological, biological, hygienic, religious and medical. The medical dimension constitutes only one of many of its aspects, as sexology is interdisciplinary. A sexologist, who knows only the medical aspect and does not know other aspects is not able to make a proper diagnosis (because many interpersonal conflicts and dysfunctions are caused by socio-cultural differences and upbringing factors), nor is he capable of implementing efficient therapy. (Imieliński, 1982: 7)

A good example of combining medicine with other disciplines is ‘the sexological interview’ (wywiad seksuologiczny), a diagnostic tool invented by another important figure of Polish sexology, Lew-Starowicz. It covers questions related strictly to physical issues (types of stimulation during sex, frequency of erections, influence of alcohol, non-sex-related illnesses), psychological issues (including detailed questions about family settings in childhood, childhood memories, self-esteem), social and cultural issues (questions concerning worldviews, social background, literature, movies), sex education (in what way the patient gained sexuality-related knowledge), relational issues (questions about the intellectual, emotional and material settings within marriage or relationships, as well as questions concerning conflicts and the impact of having children) (Lew-Starowicz, 1988: 119–126).

Janice Irvine argues that three conflicting types of sexology have developed in the USA since the 1960s: scientific, humanistic (psychological), and feminist/LGBT (2005). Meanwhile, in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s, the situation was completely different: psychology and humanistic psychiatry were exceptionally influential and since the very beginning constituted the mainstream of Polish sexology. Imieliński himself was the author of several publications describing the need for medicine to take into consideration the achievements of psychology and even of the humanities (for example, Imieliński et al., 1997). Moreover, sexology was combined with various medical and non-medical disciplines, like those mentioned earlier.

As for feminism and LGBT movements, the situation in Poland was again different from the North American one. Feminist and LGBT movements didn’t exist under socialism in the form known in the USA or western Europe and they could not influence sexology. However, women’s emancipation was a part of official state politics and sexology had to, and did, refer to it. ⁵ The mobilization of women to the labour force, the development of public childcare and unlimited access to free abortion were important features of socialism in Poland. Nevertheless, reproductive rights and the entrance of women into the labour market were not accompanied by changes in the domestic sphere – women were responsible for all the housework and experienced a double burden. Analyses of women’s lives under communism show their constant exhaustion and the sacrifice of their needs in order to fulfil their duties. Furthermore, although almost all women were engaged in waged work under socialism, they earned significantly less than men did and had very limited possibilities for career development. Nevertheless, access to waged work, with the money earned as well as the social networks and social life built through the workplace, gave women independence and power vis-à-vis men, and many families struggled with this new model of gender relations (see for example, Marody and Giza-Poleszczuk, 2000; Pine, 2002; Szpakowska, 2003). I will show later how sexologists addressed these concerns in their works.

Thus sexology in Poland, at least in the 1970s and 1980s, developed as an interdisciplinary field. An important result of this is that today, the holistic tradition of Polish sexology supports the development of feminist and queer sexology. A 40-year old popular Polish feminist sexologist told me in an interview that Imieliński’s interdisciplinary approach constructed her thinking about sexuality. Educated within his model of sexology she continued her search for knowledge during a fellowship in a major western European centre for sexuality studies and linked the achievements of international queer and feminist sex research to what she had learned earlier in Poland. As a result, she is highly esteemed in both mainstream sexology and feminist sexology. The interdisciplinary approach developed by Imieliński made possible the incorporation of elements of feminist and queer theory into mainstream sexological knowledge. However, it did not prevent sexologists from reinforcing gender and sexuality-related stereotypes like those expressed during the training seminar described at the beginning of this article.

This interdisciplinary approach is combined with a specific research methodology that is patient-centred. Leading figures of North American sexology, like William Masters and Virginia Johnson (1966) conducted their research by studying healthy volunteers and focused on the physiological aspects of sexuality (see also Irvine, 2005; Robinson, 1989). In contrast, Polish sexologists developed their theories based on their practice as therapists. They also used data from letters received from their readers. For example, one textbook for physicians and therapists dealing with sexual dysfunctions is based on 780 cases of patients who were treated by the author (Lew-Starowicz, 1984: 5). Likewise, Imieliński draws on his patients’ experiences as well as on letters he received from his readers; almost every issue he discusses in his publications is illustrated through his patients’ cases (for example, Imieliński, 1967: 7–9, passim). Polish sexologists’ methods of collecting and presenting data were closer to those of the ‘fathers’ of sexology like Krafft-Ebing than to Northern American sexological research. Additionally, Polish sexologists relied on survey research, referring to the self-characterization of their patients. An early and significant example of such a survey is the research conducted by the social psychologist Hanna Malewska and her team, who interviewed 861 gynecological patients about their sexual lives (1969). ⁶

Significantly, during socialism, sexology in Poland was free from the influence of pharmaceutical companies. After 1989, when the Polish border opened to the global market, sexologists started collaborating with the industry. However, because of their interdisciplinary background, along with the availability of state funding, Polish sexologists proved more resilient to the global trends in sex therapy that developed under the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. These trends later caused the medicalization of sexual problems experienced today, especially in the USA (Fishman 2004; Moynihan and Mintzes, 2010; Tiefer, 2000). This medicalized model of therapy has been criticized by feminist therapists and scholars from all around the world who have pointed out that it does not take into account the social, cultural, economic and gender-related dimensions of sexuality and sex problems (Kaschak and Tiefer, 2001).

Major sexological works of the 1970s and 1980s and models of sexuality and gender

As in the USA, sexology in Poland has been a very popular discipline. Since the early 1970s, sexological books have had very high print runs and some sexologists have become celebrities, constantly appearing in the media. ⁷ Sexologists who published in popular magazines often received enormous numbers of letters and answered readers’ questions and addressed their problems in those magazines. As a result of this, and of the very limited presence of sexuality in official discourses under socialism, sexology played an important role in constructing sexual subjects and sexual cultures in Poland. Sexologists also contributed to the formation of gender models; most major sexological works (Imieliński, 1967; Lew-Starowicz, 1983; Wisłocka, 1978) linked satisfying and ‘good sex’ with proper gender roles.

As I mentioned earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s there were three main figures in Polish sexology: Kazimierz Imieliński (1929–2010), Michalina Wisłocka (1921–2005) and Zbigniew Lew-Starowicz (born 1943). Imieliński organized sexological training sessions in Poland and was the first Polish physician who specialized in sexology. Since he perceived sexuality as multidimensional and was very much inspired by classical German-language sexological works, this training combined medicine with psychology as well as other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history and theology. Future sexologists were advised to take into account literature, fine arts and so on while treating their patients. Today’s sexological training is based on this model and this approach dominated the training and conferences in which I participated. For instance, during a continuing medical educational seminar held in Warsaw in April 2012, the lecturers’ professions varied from physicians to psychologists, sociologists and historians.

Michalina Wisłocka was a gynaecologist and the author of the most popular Polish book on sex – Sztuka kochania (The Art of Love), first published in 1978. She claimed that 7 million copies were sold in Poland, which has a population of 38 million (Zaborek, 2004). Although these numbers seem to be exaggerated, the book has had at least nine editions (the last one was published in 2004, and is still available), each with a very high print run. Additionally, several pirated editions were published. The book was the first publication in post-Second World War Poland to openly and in depth discuss sexual pleasure, and women’s pleasure in particular. It presented detailed, illustrated descriptions of sexual positions and techniques. First editions had drawings of couples having sex as well as drawings depicting how the penis penetrates the vagina in certain positions.

It also discussed topics such as the hormonal system, sex differences and contraceptives. However, the majority of the book deals with gender roles and relations, presenting the woman’s proper gender behaviour as the route to satisfactory sex (Wisłocka, 1978: passim). Published in a Catholic country under the rule of a communist regime, the book became extremely controversial and was perceived as revolutionary. Nevertheless, the first edition’s cover had a drawing of a newly wed couple. The author later said that this was done because of the requirements of censorship (Zaborek, 2004). Yet the entire book is addressed to married couples, mainly to wives (Wisłocka, 1978: 10). In the introduction to her book and in interviews, the author describes how she gained her knowledge (Wisłocka, 1978: 9). She stresses that she draws on her patients’ experiences and expectations. In an interview published in a women’s magazine she explains:

Over the course of my work in the clinic, I encountered frigid women, women who were on infertility treatment, women who had huge sexual needs and who were in need of protection against unwanted pregnancy. This was a huge opportunity for me to collect data. Each patient had her own broad statistical chart with various data. Thus the book, for which I collected materials over a period of ten years, is a history of a few thousand women who came to see me. (Pałęcka, 1979: 14)

As a result of this approach, Wisłocka refers not only to her own research, but also presents her patients’ cases. Furthermore, drawing on the interdisciplinary approach of Polish sexology, she uses various social scientific and philosophical sources (for example she quotes Erich Fromm extensively) and refers to what she calls ‘tradition’.

Zbigniew Lew-Starowicz is the head of the Polish Sexological Association. Until recently he was also the president of the Polish Association of Sexual Medicine. He is the author of numerous books and since the late 1960s has appeared widely in the media and published extensively in the popular press. Like Imieliński and Wisłocka, he draws on his patients’ experiences. His most famous book Seks partnerski (Sex on Equal Terms) was first published in 1983 and had four high print run editions in the 1980s of 100,000 copies each. The book stresses that sex is an important part of human life and discusses how to achieve sexual pleasure and overcome sexual and relationship problems, and how to achieve proper femininity and masculinity, which are in his view crucial to a successful sexual life. Like The Art of Love, the book was based on a dialogue between the sexologist and his readers and patients. A significant portion of the book was first published in the form of short articles in a student weekly entitled itd. (etc.). Lew-Starowicz had written a sexological column for the journal from 1969 to 1990. The articles drew on readers’ letters and often started by quoting a letter or a few letters. During the first three years of writing the column Lew-Starowicz received 1560 letters (Lew-Starowicz, 1973: 20). Some articles came about as answers to the questions asked during open meetings with students as well as to the problems reported by patients.

While Imieliński was mostly interested in his scientific work, professional education and in developing new therapeutic schemes, Wisłocka and Lew-Starowicz were also highly popular authors, and therefore in what follows I focus on their writings. How do these authors define gender in relation to the notion of ‘good sex’?

Both Wisłocka and Lew-Starowicz argue that only the so-called traditional gender roles can lead to sexual pleasure and fulfilment, and they put gender at the centre of their discussions of sexuality and ‘good sex’. For example, in Sex on Equal Terms, Lew-Starowicz describes how successful marriages function. He writes that ‘Strong male and female qualities which give a feeling of complementary, but distinct psychological worlds (1983: 109) are necessary to achieve satisfaction in the relationship. Next he lists male and female qualities. The female qualities are: ‘intelligence, practical skills, the ability to self-control, take care of the household, take care of herself (the way she looks, dresses etc.), to be a coquette, charming, maternal qualities’ (1983: 109). When talking about sexuality he emphasizes woman’s arousal through touch, and her passivity (Lew-Starowicz, 1983: 117). Male qualities are: ‘reflexivity, stability, an ability to be independent, having a hobby, the power of will and conviction’ (1983: 109), and according to him, in sex men are stimulated by visual factors and are dominant and active (1983: 117). He lists gender roles and qualities that lead to unsuccessful marriages: ‘In women: domination, rivalry, frigidity and emotional coldness. In men: lack of consequence, excitability, suspicion, misbehaviour, being boring, perceiving women only through their sexual and housewife values’ (1983: 110). He concludes in a rather contradictory way that sex on equal terms is only possible if men are masculine and women are feminine. He writes: ‘A sexual partnership is the encounter of persons certain in their feeling of being a man or a woman. This certainty makes that both sides feel psychosexual distinctiveness and are capable of being erotically fascinated by an individual of the other gender’ (Lew-Starowicz, 1983: 68). Gender is presented as a result of physiological, psychological and cultural factors. The proper development of male and female qualities might be disturbed by cultural factors and result in improper, immature femininity or masculinity, which he describes as ‘a gender disapproval syndrome’ (1983: 69). As a result of this conceptualization he sees sexual problems as related to powerful women. Powerful, influential, masculine, emancipated mothers and wives cause what he calls ‘a crisis of masculinity’ (1983: 15). This problem is social in nature – because of social conditions, such as the socialist politics of women’s emancipation, women gain power and agency to a degree that threatens sexual life (1983: 13–15). This is also bad for women: women who are too powerful, he says, dream of being raped or imagine being raped (Lew-Starowicz, 1983: 75–76). ⁸ He argues that the nature of femininity is passive, and ‘in bed women desire to be conquered by men’ (1983: 76). Furthermore, he says: ‘Nowadays, women have higher expectations regarding sexuality, which is partly related to [women’s] emancipation and sex education. Women’s expectations are the most common cause of male sexual dysfunctions’ (1983: 334).

In The Art of Love, Wisłocka discusses women’s emancipation in a similar fashion. In her view, women are associated with the domestic and passivity; men with the public and activity. Wisłocka advises women to maintain their female role, not to be active in sex life, and never to initiate sex ‘because this could cause the end of their relationship’ (1978: 151). She argues that in sex life there is no equality between the sexes and women’s emancipation leads to sex problems. She writes: ‘One can educate herself, have an academic or other career, be an activist, but at home and when it comes to love a woman has to be a woman, and a man has to be a man, if they want to live the full life and avoid disappointments and complexes’ (1978: 91). She also answers possible criticism:

You might shout with outrage: what about equal rights? In the domain of sex there is no sameness of feeling and there never will be. We should accept the major psychosexual differences between genders … Our grandmothers claimed that man is a hunter, and woman is a bird which he hunts. The more difficult to hunt, the more precious. Girls, don’t deprive your boys the pleasure of hunting a precious prey. (Wisłocka, 1978: 152) ⁹

Wisłocka explicitly criticizes the idea of similarities between men and women present in North American sexology in the 1970s, for example in the work of Masters and Johnson. She writes that men and women are profoundly different and this difference is related to their hormonal systems. Men, especially young men, cannot control their sexuality. This is the duty of women who should be responsible for all sexual affairs in the relationship and for the well-being of their families. Wisłocka writes that women are responsible for controlling male sexuality even in such extreme cases as rape:

The boy cannot control his level of sexual arousal, but the girl should know that every situation mentioned above ¹⁰ is for him an explicit invitation for ‘rape,’ and if she does not want to be raped, she should not allow for the opportunity … Unfortunately, when one analyses court and press reports, one usually finds that the girls had agreed to going to an apartment, the woods or a desolate place with boys that they had only just met … The ordinary recklessness of girls puts boys, carried away by sexual arousal, which is especially abrupt during this age, at risk of being compromised, subject to legal punishment and frequent derailment from the path of proper development already in their early years (Wisłocka, 1978: 41–42)

Young girls and women think in emotional terms and through maternal instinct. Women ‘nest’, take care of men, cook for them and see to their health (Wisłocka, 1978: 42, passim). They are responsible and in control, but they have their own, ‘female’ ways of controlling and exercising their agency. She calls this ‘female diplomacy’ (1978: 76): a woman shouldn’t be straightforward in telling her husband what she wants or criticizing him, she should give him an opportunity to figure it out by himself, but should never be openly active (1978: 150). Within this model, there is no open communication about sex or about any other matter. In sum, sexological publications such as The Art of Love and Sex on Equal Terms focus on emancipating sexuality, but at the same time they are very traditional when it comes to gender.

Patients’ concerns and the reinstallation of traditional gender roles

How can the sexologists’ message be situated in the social and political context of the 1970s and 1980s in Poland? Sexology can be understood as constitutive of the socialist power discourse and contributing to socialist biopolitics. In these decades, Poland witnessed a backlash after the first period of socialism when women’s emancipation was promoted, including support for women’s employment in heavy industry. ¹¹ The critique of powerful women, very similar to the one in works analysed by Chauncey (1982/1983), as well as the binding of women with the family and the denial of their voices (for example, discouraging the direct communication of needs) can be seen as part of this backlash. The image of gender roles in sexological literature was consistent with the image of gender in the popular press and other popular culture accounts. For instance, Polish sociologists Mira Marody and Anna Giza-Poleszczuk have analysed the image of women and gender relations in women’s magazines in the 1970s: these presented women’s responsibility for their family and indirect means of communication as essential for domestic relations (2000: 160–162). In this sense, sexological discourse contributed to the production and naturalization of certain models of gendered socialist subjects through the discourse of ‘good sex’.

Yet in following Oosterhuis and others who emphasized patients’ and doctors’ agency, the role of sexology in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s was more complex than simply being a disciplining discourse. Thanks to the specific methods of collecting materials, focusing on patients’ and readers’ experiences and incorporating them into sexological writings, sexological knowledge resulted from the interaction between sexologists and their patients and sexological texts were multivocal. The Polish interdisciplinary tradition of sexology pushed these processes further. The thought styles, to use Fleck’s term, of multiple academic disciplines influenced physicians and psychologists who worked as sex therapists and provided sex counselling in the media. Thus, the discourse on gender vis-à-vis the notion of ‘good sex’, as described earlier, might be seen as an answer to the uncertainty that sexologists’ patients and correspondents displayed concerning socialist gender and sexual politics. Furthermore, it constituted a critique of these politics and especially of women’s double burden. Sexological discourse can be understood as a result of patients’ concerns, embedded in proto-scientific ideas, influenced by various scientific thought styles and emerging in response to changes in sexuality and gender models.

How exactly did this process develop? As I described earlier, Lew-Starowicz’s articles were usually answers to readers’ letters. These often addressed gender issues. A female reader who signed her name KL writes on sex and women’s emancipation and expresses her concerns about it:

First I go to work, then I come back home and do housework, in the evening I am exhausted and I have only one desire – go to sleep, sleep as long as possible. Sex is a luxury for me. I desire it, but in fact sex is forced, I give it to my husband, but I take no satisfaction at all. Only during vacations and holidays I become more interested in it. A lot is being said about women’s emancipation, but emancipation results in a double or even triple burden for women and a constant feeling of exhaustion, and when it comes to sex it brings frigidity. (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14)

In the spirit of the interdisciplinary approach of Polish sexology, the sexologist replies: ‘Sociological research points to the existence of disharmony between the vocational, the family and the erotic lives of the woman’ (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14). Next he discusses the issue of emancipation and presents it as a positive process. But after this he presents it in more ambiguous terms and points out: ‘Emancipation has also caused negative effects: various forms of copying male behaviour (smoking, drinking, sexual freedom). It has also brought about unhealthy competition between women and men, which appears in many households and workplaces’ (1970: 14). Next, he refers to the Bible, his own theories and survey research and portrays femininity and masculinity as well as gender relations in the same way as in his book Sex on Equal Terms, stressing the problem of powerful women:

‘Eva’ who attacks, lacks charm, femininity, intuition and kindness. If she possesses those virtues, she can bring up a real man. Meanwhile, the man who meets his own double usually escapes from the battlefield and becomes infantile. This rivalry entered into the erotic might cause male sexual neurosis. Ideas of progress, women’s liberation, women’s passions are bandied about by proponents of female employment. Sociological research does not confirm this enthusiasm. The majority of women work because they have to … Well educated women claim that they want to develop their passions at work, but there is a conflict between their involvement in wage labour and the household and erotic needs. It must be admitted that the double or triple burden of the contemporary woman really exists, and as a result of it she is constantly exhausted and weary. (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14)

Using his patients’ cases as well as survey data, he also discusses male behaviour that has resulted from changes in gender roles:

Husbands are not helpful at all. Retreated from the battlefield, they do not resign from stereotypical thinking that assigns all the housework to the woman. Only 12–20% of husbands reasonably help at home, the rest spend time in ‘manly ways’ and have male sexual expectations. This situation is not only against the rules of the psycho-hygiene of everyday life, but it also causes premature aging of women and their secondary frigidity. (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14)

At the end he proposes some – utopist, as he calls them – ‘rules of psycho-hygiene’, presenting at the same time his solution to the problem of women’s double burden:

1. Wage work is good for women only when it is in accordance to their passions.

2. Mothers of small children, up to the age of three, should not work.

3. Because of their nature, women need more sleep than men, especially when they are pregnant or menstruating.

4. Women need to rest a few times during the day… in order to regenerate their psyche and in order to prevent varicose veins.

5. The ideal for women would be part time jobs.

6. Man’s help in the household does not ruin his ‘masculinity’ and it helps to develop his involvement in household matters.

7. Sex can become art only under conditions of psychological comfort. (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14)

Lew-Starowicz is a proponent of women’s emancipation. However, he links it to women’s double burden, which causes their constant exhaustion. He places women at home and points out their role in taking care of families. He uses various scientific and social arguments, combining various thought styles, as well as his expertise as a therapist to show that women work too hard and emphasizes the role men should play in housework. In this way, he addresses his patients’ anxieties about the gender order of the late 1960s and early 1970s, about women’s double burden caused by their participation in the labour force and the lack of renegotiation of the division of labour at home (Szpakowska, 2003). Through his statements, patients and correspondents gain a voice in public discourse; their thought style influences his and vice versa. The discourse setting gender and sexual models is in effect constituted by both sides, as in the cases described by Oosterhuis (2000) and Chauncey (1982/1983). Thus, sexological knowledge does discipline sexual and gendered subjects, but in different ways than Foucault argues; the experts and the patients are active agents in the process of knowledge production and subject construction.

However, this critique of the double burden reinstalls ¹² ‘traditional’ gender roles. Even when men are encouraged to participate in the housework, their contribution is called ‘help’ which implies women’s responsibility for the household (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14). Proper femininity is constructed as passive, ‘naturally’ bound to motherhood and the domestic (1970: 14, 1983: passim); women should also ‘manage’ male sexuality and more broadly men’s behaviour using indirect means of communication and agency (Lew-Starowicz, 1970: 14; Wisłocka, 1978: passim). The reinstallation of traditional gender roles in this discourse is partly due to the existence of gender stereotypes in culture and conservative, often Catholic influence, but also due to the influence of multiple academic disciplines, which in the 1970s and 1980s were male biased and heteronormative.

Contemporary implications of sexology of the 1970s and 1980s

The same interpretation can be applied to the contemporary examples presented at the beginning of this article. It is not enough to say that sexology as a disciplining power contributes to the conservative critique of changes in sexuality and gender in today’s Poland. It also expresses men’s and women’s anxieties about sexuality, gender and relationships. ¹³

Models of gender vis-à-vis the notion of ‘good sex’ created in the 1970s and 1980s set the stage for contemporary Polish sexology. The examples from the sexology class I attended portray this very well, where powerful women were presented as the main threat to ‘good sex’. This discourse also reflects contradictory messages regarding gender and sexuality that Polish men and women receive on both scientific and popular levels. It expresses a critique of neoliberal gender and sexuality politics that burden men and women even more than socialism. It aims to re-establish traditional gender roles and contribute to the Catholic/conservative discourse, ¹⁴ even though sexologists perceive themselves as progressive. Indeed sexologists often publicly express views on sexuality that reflect progressive sexual politics. However, when it comes to gender they present traditional models of gender relations as a condition for a satisfactory sex life.

Although sexology constructs a certain notion of ‘good sex’, which in turn reinforces traditional gender roles, thanks to its interdisciplinary character it is open to some extent to the influence of feminism. Indeed, a feminist perspective is becoming more and more visible in Polish sexology. As part of my research, I interviewed feminist sexologists as well as feminist activists devoted to sexual politics. They stressed that since the 1980s they have made an effort to point out to sexologists their stereotypical thinking about gender. They have organized formal and informal meetings and conferences in order to start collaborating with sexologists and some of them now teach at official sexological training sessions. They offer totally different solutions to sexual problems related to gender roles. One of my participants, a feminist sexologist in her late 30s says in the interview:

On of my clients came to see me and said that her problem was that her husband was less interested in sex than she was. She said she did everything she could to change it: she comes back from work and dresses in a sexy way, and she waits. But nothing happens.

She sees this problem as related to the gender relations which are dominant in contemporary Polish culture, but her answer is different to the one offered by mainstream sexology: ‘I asked her: why are you waiting, why not tell him you want to have sex. And she said it had never occurred to her’.

The interdisciplinary character of Polish sexology made it more receptive to the influence of feminism than the medicalized mainstream sexology of the USA. Feminist sexologists try to address their patients’ concerns in ways that do not reinstall traditional gender roles. Feminism as a thought style contributes to the exchange of ideas between sexologists, their patients and multiple academic disciplines and provides new ways of addressing gender related issues. It constitutes an alternative thought style, which was missing in sexology in the 1970s and 1980s. As part of my research, in the academic year 2011–2012, I conducted participant observation during classes for future sexologists taught in the same educational centre and by the same lecturers as the classes I took in 2008 and described in the beginning of this article. The dysfunctions I mentioned at the beginning of this article were not discussed the second time and lecturers referred several times to feminist theories and their personal and professional contacts with feminists. This shows that feminism is an element in the production of sexological knowledge and the interdisciplinary tradition of Polish sexology allows it to be more influential. If feminist sexology develops further, in the future it might influence the mainstream in more significant ways and offer models of sexuality and gender roles. It may also destabilize the current subjects that are based on a very traditional understating of gender and sexuality.

But the influence of feminism should not be overestimated. Sexological understandings of gender roles influence some feminist therapists, who stress that maintaining some gender differences (not being fully on equal terms) is good for sexual life (Długołęcka and Reiter, 2011: 16–17). Furthermore, many feminist sexologists, especially those who openly critique mainstream sexologists, are not allowed to become members of sexological associations and are not able to contribute to sexological training.

Conclusion

In the 1970s and 1980s, following earlier intellectual trends, Polish sexual science developed as a holistic and multivocal field. Sexologists drew on various medical disciplines and responded to the concerns of their patients and correspondents and general social and cultural trends. In this period, sexologists were very popular and because of the lack of other sources of knowledge of intimate life, they were instrumental in constructing sexuality and sexual subjects in the country. Sexological concepts seem somewhat contradictory: on the one hand they stressed that sexuality and sexual satisfaction for both men and women was important and they tried to emancipate sexuality from conservative restrains; on the other, the route to ‘good sex’ was through traditional gender roles, producing and naturalizing in this way very specific gendered subjects. In sexological writing, powerful women were presented as the main threat to good sex. Sexologists repeated this message about gender in the 2000s, by presenting changes in gender roles as threats to ‘good sex’ and stressing ‘career women’ or ‘alpha females’ as the source of the problem. In this article, I argued that this development cannot be seen only in relation to a backlash after Stalinist politics of emancipation (in the case of the 1970s and 1980s) or to new trends of contemporary culture. Following Fleck, Chauncey and Oosterhuis, I described how Polish sexology developed as a result of patients’ concerns and the interaction between multiple thought collectives and styles. Sexologists responded to their patients’ confusion regarding both socialist and neoliberal politics of gender and sexuality which gave women some new opportunities as well as power, but also caused their double burden. The lectures I attended and the interviews and literature I discuss here show that sexology should be seen not only as disciplining power: it is also a means for patients to express their concerns related to gender and sexuality. But left to itself, without the influence of critical feminist thought, sexology in Poland addresses these concerns in a manner that reproduces so-called traditional gender roles.