The paper aims to critically analyse media discourse on the “Venus” female nude exhibitions, organized annually in Kraków between 1970 and 1991. By analysing discourse that legitimised nudity in the public sphere, the paper sheds light on ways in which attitudes toward sexuality and the body changed during the so-called Gierek decade. The source base consists primarily of press publications, newsreels, and photo books from the 1970s. As the paper demonstrates, there were three dominant frameworks of discussing nudity in state-socialist Poland: artistic, pornographic and educational. Moreover, historical discourse analysis allows us to observe the role female nudes played in setting the stage for the Polish sexual revolution in the second half of the 1980s.

The aim of the paper was to analyse relations between power in professional work and in close sexual relationships. Power in professional work was analysed with respect to the managerial position, the number of subordinates and salary. Power in close sexual relationships was determined on the basis of a sense of reinforcement of power as a sexual motivation, a propensity for sexual domination, the sense of power in relations with a partner in a close relationship, sexual assertiveness, realization of one’s own sexual phantasies and inclination to initiate sexual activity. The research was carried out on a group of 205 participants in which 100 of respondents occupied managerial positions at work and 105 were subordinates. The following tools were used: the Sense of Power Scale (Anderson, John, & Keltner, 2012), the Multidimensional Sexuality Questionnaire (Snell, Fisher, & Walters, 1993), the AMORE scale (Hill & Preston, 1996), the Need for Power and Influence Questionnaire (Bennett, 1988) and a data sheet. The results showed that power in the workplace was correlated a more frequent initiation of sexual activity, greater assertiveness in sexual matters, more frequent realisation of one’s own phantasies and an increased propensity for sexual domination.

After World War II, sexology developed in Poland as a holistic discipline embracing achievements in medicine, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, and religious studies. Sexuality was perceived as multidimensional and embedded in relationships, culture, the economy, and society at large. This approach was fundamentally different than the biomedical model, which started to develop rapidly in the United States after Masters and Johnson’s Human Sexual Response. The author discusses the impact of the two different models of sexology on the understanding of gender, while also considering the influence of economic and political factors (capitalism and socialism) on the development of scientific knowledge.

The aim of the presented paper is to show the history of the development of research on social minorities in the environment of Bialystok sociologists. This research center, located on the north-eastern borderland of Poland, was one of the first in Poland to develop research in the field of borderland sociology. With time, the research subject has been expanded, from the analysis of the assimilation of the Belarusian minority to the contemporary face of the idea of a multicultural society, discussing not only nationality, religiosity, but also non-heteronormities.

Considering recent media cases of incorrect communication about the traumatic experiences of children, the Committee on Psychological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, together with scientific psychological societies, prepared a joint statement on this problem. It illustrates the role of adverse events (including sexual abuse) experienced in childhood in lowering an individual's wellbeing in the future, and how some factors may lead to secondary victimization. It also emphasizes the appropriate ways of communicating about children's exposure to traumatic events. An appeal to the participants of the public debate is made to refrain from using media descriptions of child abuse in current political games.

The display of affection in romantic relationships and its concomitants still require more scientific attention. Despite some studies addressing the topic of affection display, the literature does not provide a psychometrically reliable self-descriptive tool to measure this construct. Therefore, we conducted three studies among Polish adults to develop and validate a psychological tool for comprehensively identifying and measuring the display of emotional affection. Study 1 ( N = 894) aimed to develop and validate the Public and Private Romantic Display of Affection Scale (PPRDAS). It proved to be a valid psychological scale, as the theoretically assumed structure was supported by the results of the empirical analysis. Study 2 ( N = 343) confirmed the convergence validity of the PPRDAS using items of emotional expression from the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1989). In Study 3 ( N = 204 couples), we further verified the external validity of the PPRDAS using an assessment of affection displayed by one's partner in the relationship. Individuals’ self-estimates of their private and public displays of affection were confirmed by their romantic partners. In all studies, display of feelings was positively correlated with sexual and relationship satisfaction. Negative correlations with age and the duration of the romantic relationship were also observed.

This text is a presentation of the project of a revisionist history of feminist art in Poland. In its first part, I draw attention to the fact that the conceptual frameworks that shape the narratives of the relationship between art and feminism, both global and local, have proved to be extremely durable. In the next two sections of the article, I present a revisionist history of feminist art in practice with brief analyses of three works: Banner-Corset and Cover for My Lover by Maria Pinińska-Bereś (both 1967) and Consumer Art by Natalia LL (1972–1975).

Fifty years after Linda Nochlin wrote her essay Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? female artists are still struggling with limitations, a weak position in the field of art and their own dependence on others. In the text I discuss selected works of artists from Central Europe, which indicate the gender and geographical dependencies prevailing in the Western art world. Such artists as Tanja Ostojić, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkáčova, Agata Zbylut and Aneta Grzeszykowska use diversion and mimicry strategies in their art, and the artists themselves can be described as tricksters.

Vast research has sought to better understand the origins and development of rape myth beliefs given the problematic influence of such misconceptions throughout global societies and criminal justice pathways. The current research aims to build on this body of literature by examining the contribution that psychopathic personality traits (affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation, egocentricity) and emotional intelligence may have upon rape myth beliefs. Furthermore, this study will investigate the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity, education), and prior experience of sexual victimisation, contribute to variance in rape myth acceptance scores. In total 251 participants (M Age = 31.66) completed an online, self-report questionnaire which included contemporary measures of psychopathy and rape myth acceptance, never previously tested in combination. Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicate that egocentricity, age, and gender were significantly associated with rape myth beliefs. Emotional intelligence, as well as affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy, were not directly related with rape mythology. Findings are interpreted alongside previous research, where we suggest there is an urgent need for larger, nationally representative samples, systematically recruited from the general population to help clarify uncertainty in existing literature emerging from small-scale opportunistic datasets.

Rumex thyrsiflorus Fingerh. is mentioned as a European folk medicinal plant. This species has also been traditionally used as an edible plant in Eastern Europe because of its nutritional value. During the study, qualitative and quantitative sex-related differences of phenolic constituents in methanolic leaf extracts of R. thyrsiflorus were evaluated. The presence of the same substances (nine phenolic acids before, and six phenolic acids after acid hydrolysis, nine flavonoids, and a catechin) was estimated in both female and male specimens, using the HPLC-DAD method. A statistically significant higher content of eleven constituents in female plant extracts (acids: chlorogenic, p-coumaric, cryptochlorogenic, gallic, protocatechuic, neochlorogenic, vanillic; flavonoids: quercitrin, rhamnetin, rutoside; and catechin) was shown. This is the first report concerning the relation between the sex and the content of biologically active phenolic secondary metabolites in leaf extracts of R. thyrsiflorus. Female plants of R. thyrsiflorus could be useful for pharmaceutical purposes as a preferential source of bioactive phenolic acids, flavonoids and especially catechin.

In his book Mortal Questions (1979) Thomas Nagel discusses four practical moral issues: (1) fear of death, (2) the absurdity of human life, (3) sexual perversion and (4) military massacre. His primary concern is neither to justify moral opprobrium nor to find an appropriate punishment for the culprits. Instead, he wants to clarify motives of those individuals who are not afraid of death, who can deal resolutely with the pointlessness of human life, who are not deeply dismayed by the crudity of some forms of sexual behavior or who refuse to justify whatever forms of military atrocities with higher purposes. He reviews various cases of excessive or deficient moral sensitivity and offers specific, case‑oriented advice on how to deal with them. Nagel favors self‑persuasion in cases of fear of death and argues that the sense of absurd is not much different from skepticism. He proposes to draw a line between private and public aspects of sexual behavior and supports dual evaluation of military activities by distinguishing between the moral value of an act and the moral value of the motives of the actor. He condones no atrocities. These arguments do not add up to constitute a form of moral relativism but, instead, seem to restore intellectual respectability of casuistry.

This article examines Słowacki’s preoccupation with eroticism in some of his works and in his correspondence. The first part focuses on his poem ‘In Switzerland’ in which the relationship between the characters is shrouded in ambiguity and the sexual theme is treated in an elliptical manner. Beatrix Cenci, a Romantic drama showing the fi lthy, predatory aspects of sexuality and eroticism, is analysed in the second part of the article. It is followed by a discussion of Słowacki’s correspondence with Leonard Niedźwiecki, conducted in French. The article examines the ways in which the choice of the French language appears to have infl uenced the poet’s articulation of his intimate experiences and desires.