In October 2020, a ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal, effectively ending legal abortion, incited massive protests across the country. People around the world saw pictures of Polish women fighting fiercely for their rights.
Join us for a discussion with the author Dr Agnieszka Koscianska about her book Gender, Pleasure, and Violence: The Construction of Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland, recently translated into English. The book recounts the non-linear history of sexuality in Poland under socialism and the changes that have taken place within it as a result of the post-socialist transformation. Gender, Pleasure, and Violence focuses on the expert understanding of sexual pleasure and sexual violence, and shows how in relation to these categories, the notion of gender has been defined and re-defined.
But it also shows how the intentional, both formal and informal, women’s activities influence the transformation of expert discourses – through dialoguing with experts under socialism and through feminist interventions in the 1990s and 2000s, Polish women gained sense of agency and autonomy that paved the way for the current mobilization.
This event is free with registration. Registered attendees will receive the Zoom link in advance. Please register here.
Presented by the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies and the Democracy Seminar at The New School for Social Research.
