On May 25, 2004, at 14:12, Weronika Patena wrote:
!!!!! This is really horrible! I always thought this sort of thing was over earlier than the 60's... Tamara, was it like this in Poland too?
Nope, and I doubt it had been like this in Poland even in 1860's... :)
Polish women had always had to be especially strong, what with their men always being dragged off to an occupant's army for 25 yrs at a stretch, or on the lam from the secret police for "dissidentism", or in jail/exile, or just plain drunk under the table... I don't think this "meek mouse mode" would have played well in Poland at any time after 1795. And the post WWII communist rule only strengthened the trend: women had to work, same as men did (the salaries were calulated on the basis of *two* people supporting one family), so were less likely to go, willingly, through the pretense of "you are more important than I am". On top of which, they were *told* (never mind that the facts didn't always match the "official spin " <g>) that they were equal to men (everyone's equality was guaranteed, constitutionally), so why should they accept "his needs count for more than yours"?
Secondly, matters of sex were never discussed quite as openly as in the snippet David'd sent. Partly because *both* the black (Catholic) and the red (Communist) regimes were rather prudish when it came to the daily nitty-gritty. And partly, I think, because the Polish language doesn't seem to lend itself to such discussions, or not easily (possibly because the Catholic Church had had hundreds of years of declaring the subject taboo). I'd estimate that 98% of all the sex education I received (school, friends, books, parents) was couched either in strictly biology textbook terms, or those from the gutter; the first were too boring, the second too embarassing. But there was nothing in between, no "every day" language to bridge the gap, until I learnt enough English...
I also have some doubts about the text having been written by a woman; sounds to me more like something concocted by a man in a wet dream. Women had written under male pseudonyms for different reasons (George Elliot) more often than the other way around, but the other way around isn't all that rare, either, especially in the 20th century.
Nor does it mean that, when such advice was *offered*, it was necessarily followed, or, even, generally accepted... If it had been, there wouldn't be so many jokes about men who "didn't get theirs". There wouldn't have been so many men bragging that they *did* "get theirs". As early as The Forsyth Saga, when Soames "insisted" on his marital rights, the book manipulated one's sympathies towards his wife, who resisted...
I'd love to be able to lay my hands on a big book of early Ann Landers responses; by the time I got here ('73) she was very level-headed and, while she preached compromise, she preached it to *both* sexes (something I entirely agree with)
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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