Beyond the Conservative Turn: Gender in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia

• In Event: The Other Sexual Revolutions: Socialist Visions of Sexual Liberation

Abstract

This paper rethinks the recent divergence of scholarship on gender and sexuality in late socialist East Central Europe: while scholars of gender posit a conservative turn in the post-1960s period, scholars of sexuality argue for, however gradual, liberalization. By examining selected developments in gender and sexuality in 1970s Czechoslovakia, following Dagmar Herzog’s work, this paper examines the “syncopated” complexity of the period.

Author

• Michaela Appeltova, Wake Forest U