Morality, Law, and the Socialist Sexual Self in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1972.

[摘要] While many existing accounts attribute the emergence of a new sexual sensibility in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to the liberalization of laws regarding contraception and abortion that accompanied the beginning of Erich Honecker’s tenure as First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the early 1970s, ;;Morality, Law, and the Socialist Sexual Self in the German Democratic Republic, 1945-1972;; revisits the 1950s and 1960s as a crucible for sexual change.In the absence of Western-style civil society and the overt commodification of sexuality, the presence or absence of a ;;sexual revolution” in the GDR must be assessed with different yardsticks.Despite the depredations of Stalinism and Nazism and the conservative moral climate of the early Cold War years, the spirit of Weimar-era progressive sex reform continued to inform the tenor of sexual change in the legal realm and in marital counseling, albeit in a muted fashion.Indeed, it was in part because of this legacy that the SED came to respect the inviolability of the right to private same-sex sexual intimacy despite its ostensible commitment to abolishing the concepts of the rights-bearing individual and the public-private divide from liberal jurisprudence.While many observers have criticized the East German polity for having failed to abide by its rhetorical commitment to gender equality, the SED promulgated new norms regarding the age of marital consent and no-fault divorce as part of a sincere effort to change the gendered dynamics of domestic life.This endeavor, however, was undermined by the regime’s willful obliviousness to the discordance between official and popular mores.By inviting citizens to submit petitions (Eingaben) and visit an expanded network of marital counseling centers, the regime facilitated the proliferation of discourse on sexual topics that many in the regime would rather have left unspoken.Through an amalgam of ideological and medical measures designed to shape the socialist sexual self, the SED effectively redefined the terms of biopolitical interventions under state-socialist auspices in ways that were not reducible to demographic concerns alone.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Sexuality

[关键词] (East) Germany;Sexuality;Gender;History;Morality;Socialism;History (General);Humanities;History