Julia Ioffe: evaluation

Transcript context

…There’s a pattern I’ve noticed in many Soviet women of my generation or a bit younger, that they have their first kid at age 20 or 21, married, but then they divorce the guy and then have a great career. Is that just another form of single motherhood in a way, or the marriage becomes irrelevant pretty quickly because there’s a divorce and the guy is allowed? Yes. I think, furthermore, I know a lot of women like that of my generation, but I also know a lot of Russian men of my generation, who, when Russia banned homosexual propaganda, and banned adoption of Russian children by gay couples, and then when they vilified the single-sex family of, let’s say, two men adopting a child or two women adopting a child, so many Russian men I knew of my age said, “What do you mean? We all grew up in a single-sex family. We were raised by a mom and a grandmother, and there was just no men around.” There were so, so many Soviets and Russians raised like that. To what I was saying before is that men became so irrelevant as fathers that women came to see them, on one hand, they’re competing for men and it’s like a blood sport among Russian women. On the other hand, they’re treated with quite a bit of condescension and they’re seen as glorified sperm donors. It’s great to get married, but mostly what you need them for is insemination and money. He’s certainly not going to be a friend. He’s certainly not going to be a real partner. He’s not going to do household chores either, right?…

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