Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West.

While Polish citizens undoubtedly suffered under the oppressive totalitarianism of socialism, abortion was legal, clear laws protected victims of rape, and it was relatively easy to legally change one's gender. In Gender, Pleasure, and Violence, Agnieszka Kościańska reveals that sexologists—experts such as physicians, therapists, and educators—not only treated patients but also held sex education classes at school, published regular columns in the press, and authored highly popular sex manuals that sold millions of copies. Yet strict gender roles within the home meant that true equality was never fully within reach. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and archival work, Kościańska shares how professions like sexologists defined the notions of sexual pleasure and sexual violence under these sweeping cultural changes.

By tracing the study of sexual human behavior as it was developed and professionalized in Poland since the 1960s, Gender, Pleasure, and Violence explores how the collapse of socialism brought both restrictions in gender rights and new opportunities.

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Gender, Pleasure, and Violence is one of the most interesting critical works on sexuality published in Poland in recent years.

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In highlighting the patient-centric and holistic approaches that Polish sexology developed in the 1970s and 1980s the book offers an important counternarrative to the presumed historical superiority of Western sexological approaches and more generally a rebuttal of Western representations of state socialism as a non-modern and static system. . . . Capturing the complexities of sexologists and sexological discourses under state-socialism aside, the book is particularly insightful in discussing continuities and changes within sexological approaches to sex and sexuality since 1989.

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Kościańska's book is an outstanding example of how to popularize Poland's cultural history and can help readers from a non-(post)socialist background to understand the significance of research done behind the Iron Curtain. For decades, it has been an unquestioned primacy of the West to judge whether post-socialist countries have either failed or succeeded in their transformation – i.e. in terms of culture. Kościańska opposes this self-assumed entitlement of the West by presenting not only a strong, but also a highly nuanced Polish point of view. In doing so, her book is a substantial contribution to overcome orientalization of Central European history and sciences.

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Gender, Pleasure, and Violence presents a complex and fascinating picture of Polish sexology in the twentieth century. The author's detailed research and nuanced analysis renders palpable the robustness of the community of experts and their output, showing that sexuality was a topic of sustained interest in the medical community. The author sees many Polish sexologists as global pioneers in their approach, which combined psychological and cultural elements earlier than many US counterparts. Embracing a sex-positive perspective early on, Polish sexologists provided both expertise and educational materials for wider consumption that depicted sexual pleasure as a natural component of our humanity, which needed to be understood, nurtured, and valued.