Not long ago we discussed this subject and then I came across the letter of a Russian girl in the Internet. Take your time to read it! It is very arguable, but it shows well the state of public opinion in today’s Russia. Sometimes I see an opinion in the Internet that strong family traditions of Russian women is a myth made up by dating services. But such letters as this one – emotional and honest – prove the opposite. The letter was written by the girl named Anna. She is a feminist, or want to become such. She reflects on the future of feminism in Russia. Anna says:

Even well-educated, intelligent and tolerant people in Russia react somehow nervously and embarrassedly if to begin a talk about feminism with them. And the word “male feminist” perplexes and bewilders. Russians are deeply convinced that a man can’t be a feminist like a bulldog can’t be a cat.

The arguments like “one doesn’t have to be a black man to believe in equality of races”, put a grin on their faces. And the grin says: “oh, yes, we know these fighters for interests of other people”. In opinion of most Russians, both men and women, only a woman can be a feminist and she can be such due to three main reasons:
The first one is that she has no husband due to her ugliness, bad character or bad luck of some other sorts.
The second reason is laziness that makes a woman seek excuses to her unwillingness to carry our “genuinely female” family duties, i.e. wash, cook, clean the house, go shopping and raise children.
It is supposed that a “normal” woman carries our these functions just due to her physiological organization, as well as she gives birth to children and feeds them with her breast. It is very typical that there is no similar list of “genuinely male” duties. Repair taps? It is a plumber’s job. Cutting a lawn? Those two percents of Russians that have lawns now, also have a gardener to look after it.
The third reason due to which a woman can become a feminist is preference to sexual partners of her sex. Many people in Russia still confuse feminists and lesbians.

… In contrast to Europe and America, women in Russia don’t fight for their rights to work and earn money equally with men. They fight for their right to spend the money that their husbands earn.

During the last 20 years Russia is experiencing the patriarchal renaissance, some sort of nostalgia about “traditional” distribution of family roles. He works, earns money and provides for a family. She raises children and keep the house. If the circumstances allow, for instance children are quite grown-up and don't need so much care, the wife can go to work. But her salary, of course, will be lower than her husband’s. Patriarchal idyll.

- You spend too much!
- No, you earn too little!

That’s the distillation of the family conflict. That’s what makes a man impotent and makes a bitch out of a woman? Nobody tries to abandon their roles, they get tightly stuck. If a woman earns much money, she can’t feel full-fledged until she finds a husband who earns more than she does. The man, whose wife won him in the career race, starts to drink, waste money in casino or find a quiet modest lover and they laugh gaily together at the stupid wife. Why a successful woman becomes “male- like”, sexually unattractive, frightening and repulsive? Why does she turn at once into “a feminist” – a worse swear word than “whore” or “bitch“?

… The heyday of ideology of “female predestination” and patriarchal family was in the western countries in the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when due to the rapid industrial growth there was a great demand of employees occupied with hard physical labor. Men rushed to the cities to earn money and women remained at home with their children, trying hard to be “the keepers of the hearth”. Everything was all right until a lot of men perished during the World War I.

In Russia with its eternal economical problems most women could never afford this luxury – stay at home and not work.

The patriarchal family where the husband is a provider and the woman is a housewife is economically weaker than the family where both spouses work, and so it is doomed to death. Actually, the real flourishing of feminism in the West took place in the beginning of the 1980-ies, the period of deep economical crisis, when it appeared that the man couldn’t provide for a family alone, to pay for a house, a car and heaps of household machines, bought on credit, and also pay for the education of children.

Then it appeared that the woman could do the same things that he did: speak at the court, sit at the parliament, operate on cancerous growths and shoot films.

Sooner or later feminism will win, since the equality of men and women is much more profitable for all, than dependence of one sex on the other. And the expression “the stronger sex” will be as indecent as the expression “higher race”. Both men and women will have to put up with it.

Hard unqualified labor that requires healthy and strong men doesn’t determine economical prosperity any longer. Computer programs are created by paralyzed people, music is composed by blind people, laws are passed by pregnant women and budget is approved by nursing mothers. The only problem is to stop considering “the nursing” president of the country as a monster. Roosevelt isn’t considered to be a moster, though his physical drawbacks were much more serious.

October 13, 2005