NYT: Women Had Better Sex Lives Under Socialism

On August 18, 1896, Adolph Ochs borrowed money to gain financial control of the floundering New York Times. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, he created a new slogan for what he determined to be a new era: “To set his paper apart from its more sensational competitors, Ochs adopted the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” (first used October 25, 1896) and insisted on reportage that lived up to that promise. Despite an early shortage of capital, he refused advertisements that he considered dishonest or in poor taste.”

Fast forward to 2017.  That was the actual headline in the New York Times over the weekend:

“Why Women Had Better Sex Under Socialism.”

Oh how the Gray Lady has changed since Adolph Ochs took the reins. The piece begins like this:

When Americans think of Communism in Eastern Europe, they imagine travel restrictions, bleak landscapes of gray concrete, miserable men and women languishing in long lines to shop in empty markets and security services snooping on the private lives of citizens. While much of this was true, our collective stereotype of Communist life does not tell the whole story.

Um… What?  As Mark Tapson wrote on Truth Revolt, “Right, our stereotyping left out all the good parts of life under Communism.” Sure.  The article continues:

A comparative sociological study of East and West Germans conducted after reunification in 1990 found that Eastern women had twice as many orgasms as Western women. Researchers marveled at this disparity in reported sexual satisfaction, especially since East German women suffered from the notorious double burden of formal employment and housework. In contrast, postwar West German women had stayed home and enjoyed all the labor-saving devices produced by the roaring capitalist economy. But they had less sex, and less satisfying sex, than women who had to line up for toilet paper.

How to account for this facet of life behind the Iron Curtain?

Answering the questions no one’s ever asked.  Tapson continues with his commentary below:

Who knew that life under brutal state oppression could be so wild and sexy?

Ghodsee goes on to depict Communist governments as being pro-feminist, although they “never fully reformed domestic patriarchy.” Well, nobody’s perfect. Still, “Communist women enjoyed a degree of self-sufficiency that few Western women could have imagined… The socialist state met their basic needs and countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and East Germany committed extra resources to support single mothers, divorcées and widows… [M]ost Eastern European countries guaranteed access to sex education and abortion.”

“The [People’s Republic of Bulgaria] gave me my freedom,” Ms. Durcheva said. “Democracy took some of that freedom away.”

Right.  The lives of women in Communist Eastern Europe seem so romantic!

I would say the New York Times has finally lost all credibility, but it’s pulled stunts like this so many times that it seems almost pointless to say.  In an era of all the chatter about “fake news,” it might be best to lay off the stories of how sexually liberating tyranny is for women.