When women are financially independent and have access to reasonably priced (or free) childcare and other supportive services, their romantic relationships, and by extension the sex in those relationships, are given out of desire and not out of the need to return value to the partner (usually a man) for the sake of being supported. Even in capitalist economies, the rich woman can, of course, afford this. But the majority of the middle class, and all of the lower class, cannot.
Dr. Ghodsee’s argument is not deterministic, but a matter of intense psychological and economic pressure. There are those among every class who manage to marry for genuine love, and even in cases where the women are utterly dependent on the man economically, she is never made to feel that way. She is cherished and respected by her partner for her nominally free work as a mother and home builder. But such relationships are rare under capitalism, given the natural inclination of men to use their economic power to extort sex from their partners.
But in many (not all) of the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, women of the working classes—almost everybody—were freed from dependency thanks to their own salaries, free medical care, liberal maternity leave, and ubiquitous state-sponsored daycare. Freed from their economic dependency, women engaged romantically more out of genuine love for a partner and not merely for his provider potential. This is the sum and substance of Dr. Ghodsee’s book. It isn’t that Capitalism forecloses loving marriages and mutually satisfying sex, but it sets conditions that make them less likely.
Women in every society are often forced to compromise for the sake of their ability to have and raise children. Most women want children, and become conscious of a ticking biological clock when they hit their mid to late twenties. It may be that they have to trade away decent sex for the sake of a partner who wants children and will contribute—they hope—to raising them. The biological clock remains no matter the economic system. But under Socialism, that is, when the state actively supports women and children, the economic rationale for female subjugation is removed, and the biological clock becomes the only matter about which women might have to compromise.
In her last chapter, Dr. Ghodsee suggests that politically franchised women tend to vote liberal to promote government services like day care, school lunches, generous maternity leave, and stipends for their housework, giving them some economic independence. Women, she claims, mostly vote in line with their true self-interests. I’m not sure that is true, at least in the United States. Ghodsee exhorts women to vote in their interest. Half do, but what about the other half? Why do so many women vote against what would seem to be obvious interests?
Because what is evident for women overall is not obvious for specific women—those who find themselves in economically dependent relationships and not only accept, but choose them for a variety of possible reasons. Dr. Ghodsee might say that these women are less likely to have good sex, and she may be right, but women are not as pointedly driven [as men] by sexual desire in their life decisions. There are many individual circumstances, among both rich and poor communities, where economic dependence in exchange for a bit of nookey can seem like a pretty good deal. Those women vote Republican!
There is ironic humor in Dr. Ghodsee’s book. Female political, social, and economic emancipation is a desideratum for its own sake, something Dr. Ghodsee knows very well. That a woman might have more orgasms as a consequence of her elevation in dignity is a happy side-effect. Dr. Ghodsee cites the impact of many female-empowering socialist programs on the sex lives of those who grew up with them. But none of the programs she cites were explicitly designed to foster more female orgasms. I, for one, am glad Dr. Ghodsee called our attention to this consequence. Five stars! A good read!
Ruminations 