Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism PDF Author: Kristen R. Ghodsee
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568588895
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
A “brilliant,” “engaging,” and “valuable,” (Financial Times) exploration of why capitalism hurts women and how socialism, when done right, can bring economic independence, better labor conditions and, yes, even better sex. In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives. She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism. Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.

East German Girl

East German Girl PDF Author: Sigrid Jackson
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1462042562
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
War memories do not have an age requirement. They force you to mature and give you no choice but to cope with the realities of the world. In this memoir, author Sigrid Jackson tells what it was like being a child of war in East Germany before and after World War II. In East German Girl, Jackson describes what it was like to live through the bombing raids, food shortages, diphtheria, communism, and being forced to leave her home with her mother and brother to be relocated to a rural farm. Using personal anecdotes to illustrate how God has worked in her life, Jackson demonstrates the courage that was necessary to escape East Germany to freedom in the west when she was just twelve years old. From an alcoholic, absentee father to an unsuspecting future husband, life continuously threw her curveballs, but East German Girl narrates an inspirational story of war, communism, family betrayal, and finally resilience.

Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Films

Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Films PDF Author: Jennifer L. Creech
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253023173
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Mothers, Comrades, and Outcasts in East German Women's Film merges feminist film theory and cultural history in an investigation of "women's films" that span the last two decades of the former East Germany. Jennifer L. Creech explores the ways in which these films functioned as an alternative public sphere where official ideologies of socialist progress and utopian collectivism could be resisted. Emerging after the infamous cultural freeze of 1965, these women's films reveal a shift from overt political critique to a covert politics located in the intimate, problem-rich experiences of everyday life under socialism. Through an analysis of films that focus on what were perceived as "women's concerns"—marital problems, motherhood, emancipation, and residual patriarchy—Creech argues that the female protagonist served as a crystallization of socialist contradictions. By framing their politics in terms of women's concerns, these films used women's desire and agency to contest the more general problems of social alienation and collectivism, and to re-imagine the possibilities of self-fulfillment under socialism.

Making Waves

Making Waves PDF Author: Shirley Babashoff
Publisher: Santa Monica Press
ISBN: 1595808043
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
In her extraordinary swimming career, Shirley Babashoff set thirty-nine national records and eleven world records. Prior to the 1990s, she was the most successful U.S. female Olympian and, in her prime, was widely considered to be the greatest female swimmer in the world. Heading into the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Babashoff was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and followed closely by the media. Hopes were high that she would become “the female Mark Spitz.” All of that changed once Babashoff questioned the shocking masculinity of the swimmers on the East German women’s team. Once celebrated as America’s golden girl, Babashoff was accused of poor sportsmanship and vilified by the press with a new nickname: “Surly Shirley.” Making Waves displays the remarkable strength and resilience that made Babashoff such a dynamic champion. From her difficult childhood and beginnings as a determined young athlete growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, through her triumphs as the greatest female amateur swimmer in the world, Babashoff tells her story in the same unflinching manner that made her both the most dominant female swimmer of her time and one of the most controversial athletes in Olympic history.

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism PDF Author: Kristen R. Ghodsee
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568588895
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
A “brilliant,” “engaging,” and “valuable,” (Financial Times) exploration of why capitalism hurts women and how socialism, when done right, can bring economic independence, better labor conditions and, yes, even better sex. In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives. She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism. Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.

After the Wall

After the Wall PDF Author: Jana Hensel
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 9781586485597
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Jana Hensel was thirteen on November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall fell. In all the euphoria over German reunification, no one stopped to think what it would mean for Jana and her generation of East Germans. These were the kids of the seventies, who had grown up in the shadow of Communism with all its hokey comforts: the Young Pioneer youth groups, the cheerful Communist propaganda, and the comforting knowledge that they lived in a Germany unblemished by an ugly Nazi past and a callous capitalist future. Suddenly everything was gone. East Germany disappeared, swallowed up by the West, and in its place was everything Jana and her friends had coveted for so long: designer clothes, pop CDs, Hollywood movies, supermarkets, magazines. They snapped up every possible Western product and mannerism. They changed the way they talked, the way they walked, what they read, where they went. They cut off from their parents. They took English lessons, and opened bank accounts. Fifteen years later, they all have the right haircuts and drive the right cars, but who are they? Where are they going? In After the Wall, Jana Hensel tells the story of her confused generation of East Germans, who were forced to abandon their past and feel their way through a foreign landscape to an uncertain future. Now as they look back, they wonder whether the oppressive, yet comforting life of their childhood wasn't so bad after all.

A Woman in Berlin

A Woman in Berlin PDF Author:
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805075403
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
With shocking and vivid detail, the journal of a woman living through the Russian occupation of Berlin in 1945 tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject and describes the common experience of millions.

Red Love

Red Love PDF Author: Maxim Leo
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 178227068X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Winner of the European Book Prize "The East isn't far away at all. It clings to me, it goes with me everywhere. It's like a big family that you can't shake off ..." "Tender, acute and utterly absorbing" Anna Funder, author of Stasiland "A wry and unheroic witness... an unofficial history of a country that no longer exists" Julian Barnes Growing up in East Berlin, Maxim Leo knew not to ask questions. All he knew was that his rebellious parents, Wolf and Anne, with their dyed hair, leather jackets and insistence he call them by their first names, were a bit embarrassing. That there were some places you couldn't play; certain things you didn't say. Now, married with two children and the Wall a distant memory, Maxim decides to find the answers to the questions he couldn't ask. Why did his parents, once passionately in love, grow apart? Why did his father become so angry, and his mother quit her career in journalism? And why did his grandfather Gerhard, the Socialist war hero, turn into a stranger? The story he unearths is, like his country's past, one of hopes, lies, cruelties, betrayals but also love. In Red Love he captures, with warmth and unflinching honesty, why so many dreamed the GDR would be a new world and why, in the end, it fell apart. "Tender, acute and utterly absorbing. In fine portraits of his family members Leo takes us through three generations of his family, showing how they adopt, reject and survive the fierce, uplifting and ultimately catastrophic ideologies of 20th-century Europe. We are taken on an intimate journey from the exhilaration and extreme courage of the French Resistance to the uncomfortable moral accommodations of passive resistance in the GDR. "He describes these 'ordinary lies' and contradictions, and the way human beings have to negotiate their way through them, with great clarity, humour and truthfulness, for which the jury of the European Book Prize is delighted to honour Red Love . His personal memoir serves as an unofficial history of a country that no longer exists... He is a wry and unheroic witness to the distorting impact - sometimes frightening, sometimes merely absurd - that ideology has upon the daily life of the individual: citizens only allowed to dance in couples, journalists unable to mention car tyres or washing machines for reasons of state." Julian Barnes, European Book Prize With wonderful insight Leo shows how the human need to believe and to belong to a cause greater than ourselves can inspire a person to acts of heroism, but can then ossify into loyalty to a cause that long ago betrayed its people." Anna Funder, author of Stasiland "Heartbreaking... This very personal account allows us to better understand the reality of a kafkaesque regime, and the blindness of its elite that allowed it to survive for so long." La Tribune "The great charm of this book, about the gradual disintegration of the GDR, lies in the level-headed but loving attitude with which it investigates the interweaving of the private and political [in Communist East Germany], revisiting a child's-eye view of the era." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "A crucial book ... poignant ... a tragedy reminiscent of the great narrative poets, Dostoevsky or Koestler. Maxim Leo has earned his place alongside them." Sud Ouest "A lyrical story about a family in a divided city" Hamburger Abendblatt Maxim Leo was born in 1970 in East Berlin. He studied Political Science at the Free University in Berlin and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. Since 1997 he is Editor of the Berliner Zeitung . In 2002 he was nominated for the Egon-Erwin-Kisch Prize, and in the same year won the German-French Journalism Prize. He won the Theodor Wolff Prize in 2006. He lives in Berlin.

Faust's Gold

Faust's Gold PDF Author: Steven Ungerleider
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466891858
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Steven Ungerleider's Faust's Gold is the stunning expose of the East German sports juggernaut of the 1970s and 1980s that forced young athletes to unknowingly take steroids. For nearly twenty-five years, East Germany's corrupt sports organization dominated international athletics. While the German Democratic Republic's secret "State Plan" was in effect, more than ten thousand unsuspecting young athletes--some as young as twelve years old--were given massive doses of performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. These athletes achieved miraculous success in international competitions, including the Olympics, but for many of them, their physical and emotional health was permanently damaged. Faust's Gold draws on the revelations of the ongoing trials of former GDR coaches, doctors, and sports officials who have now confessed to conducting ruthless medical experiments on young and talented athletes selected for Olympic training camps. It also draws on the extensive research of Brigitte Berendonk, who escaped from East Germany to begin a decade-long crusade to bring justice to her fellow athletes, and that of her husband, Professor Werner Franke. Berendonk's story, and those of her colleagues in the GDR, offers a unique insight into a bizarre regime. Faust's Gold is a true-life detective story that plunges into the dark, secretive world of the GDR doping scam, where elite competitors and their families are up against a formidable opponent: the East German secret police, known as the STASI. What emerges is a complex tapestry of the politicized modern Olympics that culminates in a powerful testimony to the massive wrong done by one Eastern Bloc nation to its world-class athletes.

Inge's War

Inge's War PDF Author: Svenja O'Donnell
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 1984880217
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A riveting account of a German woman's experiences during World War II--a story not of heroism or evil, but of ordinary people caught in the gears of history--and a granddaughter's quest to uncover a family history kept hidden for seventy years Growing up in France, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her German grandmother's past, except that she had been raised in K nigsburg, a place that no longer existed on any map. But when O'Donnell's reporting brought her near the windswept city--now known as Kaliningrad, and a part of Russia--a spur-of-the-moment phone call to her grandmother Inge opened the floodgates to a family story she could not have imagined. Over the course of nearly ten years of conversations, as well as archival research and travel across Europe, she would soon learn that behind her grandmother's facade of dull respectability lay a troubled past of passion, displacement, and betrayal. In this transporting and illuminating book, the award-winning journalist vividly reconstructs the story of Inge's life from the rise of the Nazis through the brutal postwar years: from falling in love in Berlin's underground jazz bars with a sensitive young man who was soon sent to the Eastern Front to returning to her provincial home pregnant with his child to spearheading her family's flight to Denmark as the Red Army closed in, her not-yet-two-year-old daughter--O'Donnell's mother--in tow. By walking in her grandmother's footsteps and ultimately uncovering the act of violence that finally parted Inge from the man she loved, O'Donnell tells a part of the World War II story that is less often heard: that of ordinary German women, whose stories will soon disappear from living memory.

Hitler's Furies

Hitler's Furies PDF Author: Wendy Lower
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547863381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
About the participation of German women in World War II and in the Holocaust.