I'm appalled and I feel betrayed. I continually attempt to think the best of the many Russian men I know and often disappointed by their beliefs regarding gender roles. This weekend I was confronted with a particularly heinous example.
I married a Russian man with my eyes wide open and have been often impressed with his progressive views on femininity and masculinity. He sees nothing wrong with expressing affection for his son and performs various household chores. In essence, he is logical to the extreme and has a flexible mind, resulting in openness to otherness. Knowing him, I hope that other Russian men are capable of his strength and beauty.
I am often wrong. Sitting around the campfire this weekend, I expressed pride in the role he plays as an excellent and supporting husband and father. A Russian man responded, "so you're under her heel," in Russian so I wouldn't understand. At some other point, he also implied that my husband's loving behaviour toward his son is unmanly. On the drive home, my husband told me all of this as we were discussing the trip.
It's now clear to me why that Russian man repeatedly expresses wonder at the fact that a Canadian woman has married a Russian. Why would we want to be with a man, who thinks that his wife should do all the housework and take care of the kids while being the principle breadwinner. What is his contribution to the relationship and to the home. And more importantly, how can he declare that he's a non-conformist, when he clearly conforms to century old misconceptions on the abilities and roles of women.
You may wonder why I have couched this in terms of Russian versus Canadian. I am not fond of generalizing, but gender and the cultural differences between Canadians and Russians is a topic that often comes up saddled with a rather ugly form of misogyny. Behind that surprise at a Canadian woman married to a Russian man is often the question of why would a Russian man be with a Canadian woman. Within an integrated Canadian society, Russian men have little of the same unjust rights and expectations that they would have in a segregated Russian community.
Is that why so many Russian men living in Canada choose to be with Russian women? Do other cultures that have similar repressive views of women also mostly choose women who have been cultured to conform to their expectations?
In 2011, I watched the Russian film, Elena, directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev that encapsulates the dominating perception of women in Russia. A business tycoon marries his nurse whose rights as a wife remain essentially the same as a housekeeper. When learning that she won't be provided for after he dies, she takes drastic measures out of desperation. Jim Hoberman opens his review of the film as a "vivid evocation [...] of Moscow’s contemporary society."
While he focuses on the class divisions, there is also a limited image of gender identity. The two main female roles, the nurse-wife and the tycoon's daughter, represent two main stereotypes of women in Russian society. One sees women as subservient to men and expected to take care of all the household duties. The other sees women as extremely attractive playgirls, whose purpose in life is to spend their husband/father's money. Another smaller voice whose power is equivalent to her class is evoked in the wife of the nurse's son. Her unplanned pregnancy and dependence on her mother-in-law's handouts reflects the lack of power she has over her body and her finances.
The encounter I had this weekend with one man's derogatory view of equality in praxis confirms for me that feminism is far from being a dead issue. I feel I have no choice but to become an ironic man-hater. As Jess Zimmerman, the editor of the magazine Medium explains, "It's inhabiting the most exaggerated, implausible distortion of your position, in order to show that it's ridiculous." Maybe the only way to fight misogyny is with irony.
