The role of aesthetic and legal communities in the struggle for sexual human rights in Poland

Abstract

Conditions under both communism and capitalism have been devastating for the intersectionality of aesthetic and sexual expression in Poland. Powerful institutions surrounding church and state have been influential sources of repression, relegating citizen sexuality to mere reproduction of new generations of passive consumers under both system of production. In response to the historic diminution of sexuality and other human rights, aesthetic communities have been persistently contesting these systemic arrangements through creative, legal, urban alliances that have been steadily building utopian enclaves of erotic expression. International sexual rights legislation, dynamics of democratic contention, institutionalization of gender inequality, the arts in sexual identity formation, fear of sacral feminine sexuality, sexual authenticity and erotic agency, the body as site of artistic resistance, and oppositional encounters among the alienated are some of the factors discussed that provide evidence of flourishing aesthetic cultures of resistance to combat institutionalized suppression of sexuality in the arts and society.