TSUKERMAN: War of the Sexes triggered by the World Cup in Russia

By Slava Tsukerman

<em>Russian girl, fаn at the World Cup.</em>

Russian girl, fаn at the World Cup.

It is understandable that the World Cup has been the main topic in the Russian media. Unexpectedly one of the side issues attracted a special attention of the Russian Internet and press. Some refer to it as: “The war of sexes”.

It started on the Internet. Some Russian male patriots got very upset with the multiplying cases of Russian girls dating foreign fans, calling them “whores”.

However, the girls who have met the cheerful, loud and sporting foreign fans in the streets of Russian cities, were not buying this. “Evil, unwashed, smelly, greedy” – that were the epithets used by some of the women to describe their male compatriots in the heat of Internet disputes.

Thousands of hitherto unknown foreigners have become the catalysts of a great social explosion. In the Internet a huge amount of negativity and jealousy flowed, supported with the attempts to return the ladies from the colorful and rustling streets to the kitchen, to the stove. The soccer holiday provided an excellent opportunity  to take the dirty linen out and tell each other everything had been accumulating for decades.

The comments of the “patriots” often had very nationalistic and even racist connotations. The new nickname was created for the women who had sex with foreigners: “Chernilnitsy” (Inkpots). Words “ink” and “black” have the same root in Russian. So the new nickname sounds like “black pot”.

<em>A picture from Russian Internet gives a “classification” of so called “Inkpots”.</em>

A picture from Russian Internet gives a “classification” of so called “Inkpots”.

racist xenophobic meme

The charge of “corruption” of Russian girls went from the Internet to the pages of the media. One of the most popular Russian papers “Moskovsky Komsomolets” published an article under the heading “Time of whores: Russian women disgrace themselves and the country at the World Cup.”  Platon Besedin, the author of the article called the Russian women “seedy girls with low social responsibility.”

The Russian women, having been subject to the wave of accusations, decided to defend their honor. A petition was initiated on the platform change.org. The authors of the petition required public apology from the “Moscow Komsomolets” and the removal of the article from the site.

“This entire text is a direct humiliation of Russian women” the authors of the petition insisted. In addition, they were sure that the article on “corrupt” Russian women falls under the scope of Article 282 of the Criminal Code “Raising hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity.”

More than seven thousand people signed the petition on the first day, the number  continues to grow. Women, who “dared” to admit their sympathy for foreign fans are ready to fight for the right to choose with whom to spend time, with whom to be photographed and who are to father their children.

The media fight is getting more and more emotional.

The popular website “Lenta.ru” interviewed Vladislav Pozdnyakov, the ideological mastermind of the online campaign for the “purity of the Russian gene pool”, the creator of the Internet “Men’s State” group.

Pozdnyakov said:

“A real Russian woman is a woman who got married as a virgin, who is faithful to her husband, and lives under patriarchal conditions. The rest of the women in Russia are ‘Natashas’.  There is a great difference between “Natashas’ and the real Russian women. ‘Natasha’ is more a state of mind, not a nationality.

“What is happening now during the World Cup is not a relationship between men and women, it’s just a total whoredom. In foreign countries the sexual availability of our ‘Natashas’ is well known. It’s not about a few specific girls, it’s really about the thousands of women who bust loose.

“Why did they do that? (…) In Russian ancient times, we were attacked and raided with regularity.  The same was happening through the entire long Russian history. In the occupied territories, women have no choice but to spread their legs for the winners.

This is natural, it happened due to the laws of nature: a female is always given to a stronger male.

“And now for many centuries a breed of women has emerged, who at a subconscious level are spreading their legs right away when they face foreigners.”

Most of the “patriots – nationalists” state that they are ashamed of “our women”, who have sex with foreigners.

A lot of the commentators though are opposed to the nationalists.

Dima Zitser, the columnist of the popular site snob.ru, writes:

“How easy this charming term ‘our women’ emits from the pen of those irritated writers. Who are those ‘ours’?  As far as I know (I believe, like most readers), our favorite women are different from yours. Or did you mean the usual ‘our female slaves’? And these writers are echoed by the writers of angry comments: ‘How will they look after that in our eyes?’ And why, in fact, should they choose your eyes? After all, it turns out, there are others. Maybe it is exactly that fact that unconsciously troubling the owners of these inquisitive eyes?”

The blogger of the same site snob.ru Vladimir Guriev comments:

“Some write about the moral duties, others state that each person can dispose of her own body, and this is no business of these moralists.

But all that is rationalization on rationalization. In fact, everything is much simpler.”

Guriev describes a young Russian man dating a girl in the evening. At his work place he had not even a shower to wash off his sweat after the day of hard work, and he doesn’t make enough money even to treat a girl with a cup of tea in a café. The blogger ends his article addressing the young Russian:

“Russian man, do not despair, friend. Brazilians will leave soon!”

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