“Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism?" by Kristen R. Ghodsee

Of the many troubles in the last year and the growing disagreements among people over politics and social issues, losing nuance is one of the greatest costs. Many of us have lost the ability to see those in other political parties as anything but ignorant or evil. We lose even more nuance when discussing political systems. “Why Women have Better Sex under Socialism” seeks to return some of that nuance by suggesting that in the decades of socialism they might have had some good ideas and that it would be absurd to dismiss all of them simply because the people who had them were in a socialist state. More impressively, it really does a good job of both defending the title of the book and explaining why it is important.

What does “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism?” Say

It is impossible to both present and explain the ideas in a book adequately in any blog post. So I will only attempt to give basic ideas of what the book explores fairly rather than trying to make or disprove points with far too little context.

The book doesn’t start with the titular question. It instead begins by pointing out that there are different socialism and that not all of them consisted entirely of waiting in breadlines. There are socialist parties in many modern democracies and that it’s worth considering their points. It also discusses the views that younger people in America have on socialism pointing out that there are polls in which young people say they would prefer to live in a socialist state than a capitalist one and discusses why that might be.

Getting closer to the title question, she points out the advantages that men have in our modern capitalistic system. It discusses both the physiological and sociological issues which come down largely to the point that women are expected to do more of the unpaid work in society which includes having children, raising children and other forms of caretaking including the sick and elderly.

But what does this have to with women having better sex you’re likely asking. This goes to an economic theory. It effectively assumes that women like sex less than men. Therefore, it becomes a commodity that women can use to get things. In this way it effectively creates the idea that it is transactional and if women are getting something other than pleasure out of sex, then it becomes less necessary for those men to seek equality in pleasure. But in a socialist state women have more options and less need for men to take care of them. This improves their lives in a number of ways. Among them is that it removes the transactional status of sex. It also allows them to leave marriages in which they are unhappy.

Of course, there is a lot more to all of this than one simple aspect. She points out that in socialist states women are more likely to have access to health care that isn’t dependent on their husband’s job, have access to childcare and more. But it’s important to understand that this book doesn’t speak of socialism as a utopia. It understands that many of these states had major and fundamental flaws. But that doesn’t mean that it’s bereft of reasonable ideas.

What I didn’t love about this book?

While many of the points in this book are excellent and I agreed with much of what the author said, I think it could have focused a bit more on how the ideas that are presented on this book could be implemented in the current systems. But not all books are how to guides. Some just need to present the information to allow people to understand why they are good. She also takes the argument that people want to take away women’s right to vote far more serious than I do, but then people take thing aimed at them more serious than those that aren’t.

Conclusion

An interesting book that presents a lot of ideas that I already agreed with in new ways. Perhaps the most important was pointing out that women are likely to be more progressive than men because of basic self interest, but there are a lot of interesting ideas outside of that and while this will not change the way I see economics or be something I regularly recommend that under-informed people read like something like “The Deficit Myth” it was well written, educational and fun to read.