This paper shows the role of historical findings in the interpretation of ethnographic research. The 1970s and 1980s mark a period in which sexology developed in Poland; several important books appeared, and sexologists published extensively in the popular press. Health professionals discussed with their readers various sexuality related issues, such as sexual techniques and pleasure, sexual “deviations,” gender, marriage and violence. They provided guidelines on how to achieve pleasure and how to eliminate obstacles to good sex. One of the obstacles discussed by sexologists was women’s emancipation. Referring to various scientific theories, sexologists argued that women’s sexual expectation made many men unable to perform. This paper asks how to interpret sexological understanding of gender in the 1970s.
This article analyzes an expert discourse used during a court trial of men accused of gang raping a 30-year-old man in the early 1990s. The author argues that we could look for sources of homophobic and sexist language used by the perpetrators’ defense counsel in two expert discourses that were shaped during the 1970s: in the discourse of heterosexual rape, within which the female victim was perceived as responsible for the rape, and in the criminological discourse of homosexuality, within which the homosexual was presented as explicitly “perverted” and unable to control his sexual desire.
he editorial outlines the main theme of the volume: the problem of relations between socio-cultural anthropology and history. Presents briefly the subject of particular articles in the 8th issue of RAH.
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