Upstream

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall was toppled, a lot was unearthed and a lot of interesting information became available to scholars and researchers in the West. One of those little bits of information was the answer to a question that a lot of people had never really thought of even asking: did women have better sex under socialism? Well, spoiler alert, but maybe not so much if you’ve read the title of today’s episode: Yes, it seems like they did. And in today’s episode, we’re going to explore why. Why do women have better sex under socialism? The answer to this question is the topic of the highly acclaimed book Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, by Kristen Ghodsee. Kristen Ghodsee is a Professor and Chair of the department of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of twelve books, including Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolu