As a result, women had to assume the role of bread-winners and protectors. The myth of a weak, traumatized man who needed to be taken care of came into existence.

Of course, the demographic imbalance was corrected in the next generation. The myth of men’s scarcity and male weakness, however, persisted. Two generations later, this model of male-female relationships is still in place.

“What do you mean you are sick? You are a woman, so just suck it up already.” “He’s a guy, he’s fragile. It’s your duty to educate him and help him learn to be more mature.” (I know that it sounds like the repetition of the Angel in the House myth, and how weird is that?) “Well, what do you expect? He’s a guy, so obviously he is whiny, fickle, and unreliable.” “Of course, he can’t hold down a job. What do you expect from a guy? You are a woman, just deal with it. Can’t you provide for the family on your own? No? What kind of woman are you, then?”

This is what women kept hearing from the day they were born.

For generations, women in my culture saw permanently immature, cossetted and babied men and powerful, strong women who had to provide for the family, find food (we are still talking about the Soviet Union, remember?), tend to the house, bring up children, and take care of older relatives. Enacting femininity became a rare luxury. You had to be extremely rich to afford to think about new tights (I keep forgetting the American equivalent for them, sorry!), a lipstick or a tube of mascara. Dresses were impractical because you had to work all the time. High heels, too, for the same reason. And everybody despised the profligate female who would waste money on a hair-dresser instead of cutting her own hair with kitchen scissors over the sink (after the needy husband and the kids were put to bed, of course).

(To be continued. . .)

Femininity has a bad rap in North America nowadays. High heels, dresses, skirts and make-up are a sign that you are a miserable Evangelical victim in search of a husband to validate your existence by marrying you.

I’m not North American, though. I come from a different culture. And I believe that my feminism is as valid as anybody else’s. I don’t think that I have to modify who I am because of other people’s struggles, issues, and complexities. I totally get it that, for North American women, not enacting their femininity is a feminist achievement. For me, however, it’s the opposite.

As we often joke in my culture, in the year when American women gained their right to become miners and fire-fighters, we gained our right not to. In the Soviet Union, women gained the right to vote and the right (actually, the obligation) to work in 1917. Since then, everybody worked. You will be hard-pressed to find a Russian-speaking woman my age whose great-grandmother, grand-mother, mother and aunts did not work. Not working for any reason was punished with a jail sentence in the Soviet Union.

Outside of the short-lived Stalin-era ban on abortion, abortion on demand was the only available form of contraception. I know women who had over 40 abortions in their lifetime for the simple reason that absolutely no other means of contraception were available. (Except for the ultra-rich, of course.) So the right to an abortion was not the issue Russian-speaking feminists were concerned with either. (Things are changing now, and the corrupt Russian Orthodox Church is spearheading a campaign to destroy women’s reproductive rights in Russia, though.)

On top of that, the absence of any hygienic aides for menstruation and forced gynecological exams made women hate everything that reminded them of their gender.

Our feminist issues were different. The Soviet Union lost a huge segment of its male population to the genocide and the wars. After World War II, we had 1 male per 3 females in the population. The result of this demographic imbalance was that men became a precious commodity to be cherished and coveted.

(To be continued. . . soon. . .)