The Oh, Hello and welcome to Behind the News my name is Doug Henwood the usual two segments today in

moments we'll hear from Kristen Godsy on Sex and Gender in the former East Block and

at the bottom the hour the anthropologist Roger Lancaster

will talk about crime, punishment, and the problems with the prison abolition agenda.

I don't have anything this week about the events in Charlottesville, a city I spent three years in going to graduate school at the University of Virginia. But next week... in who's been writing about far right violence for some time now.

First, sex in the former communist world.

In an essay that appeared in the print edition of the New York Times

in August 13th, and in the longer version on the web,

Kristen Godsy explained why, as the title of both versions put it,

women had better sex under socialism.

The web version of the piece links to a charming documentary that everyone should watch,

after reading Godsy's piece of course about East Germany

with the title do communists have better sex it's on the Daily Emotion's website I

don't know why except for timidity the title is phrased as a question because the documentary's answer is yes.

A third related contribution that's also well worth checking out, and one that Godsy brings up in the

interview, is Katie Baker's 2013 peace for dissent. I don't think I can say the

title on the air, but it argues that Danish social democracy ruins the game of

American pickup artists because the greater material security women enjoy in that country

makes them resistant to their dubious charms.

I love it when an analysis of macro politics gets joined to the experience of daily life.

Kristen Godsy is a professor of Russian and East European

studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book Red Hangover,

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