Comments:

1. 

    

   Alexis:

   I think femininity is not and should not be defined in terms of relationships with men, which is what a lot of those “subservient” qualities are. :\

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Alexis Alexis, great comment and the one I absolutely agree with!

2. 

    

   Rob McGee:

   I’m posting from the library, and I was able to find the English version of The Slynx (trans: Jamey Gambrell, ISBN 0-618-12497-7). And lib.ru has the complete Russian text, so I did a search for the portion that Yelena quoted, which turned out to be from “Chapter Л (Люди)”.

   So, based on that, I found the official English translation for this passage. Notice that Gambrell doesn’t totally capture the “semi-literate spirit” of the post-apocalyptic Russian:

   On this day you have to honor and respect all women… On this Holiday don’t give them a thrashing or a licking, they don’t have to do all the usual things… Say: “I wish you happiness in life, success in work, and a peaceful sky over your head.” And every woman you meet… say the same polite words.

   “A licking” (in the sense of “a beating”) seems like a good choice of words by Gambrell, because it has an old-fashioned, rural-slang sound in English. Cowboys in old westerns are always saying things like “I’ll give that varmint a licking he won’t soon forget!” (= “I’ll beat him up; I’ll kick his ass”)

   However, “woman” isn’t really an adequate translation for баба — Yelena’s “broad” is much better. (Although I have the impression that in some contexts — especially in youth slang — you could also translate баба as “hot chick.”)

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Rob McGee Rob, I just knew you’d find this book! Thank you for the translation! Have you had a chance to read the entire book? What did you think of it? I ordered an English language copy from our library, but they have to do ILL for it and it’ll be some time before I get it.

3. 

    

   Rob McGee:

   Yet another psychologist explains that there is nothing more отталкивающее (repulsive) than мужественная женщина, evidently confusing мужественная (brave) and мужеподобная (manly).

   Hmmm… it’s possible that “mannish”, which generally means “unfeminine in appearance and habits”, would be a better translation for мужеподобная than “manly”, which is nearly always a positive word implying bravery.

   But “mannish” is more often negative and looks-related, and is sometimes applied stereotypically to lesbians:

   Американская писательница Гертруда Стайн была довольно мужеподобной. (The American writer Gertrude Stein was rather mannish.)

   On the other hand, the famous 18th-century female pirate Anne Bonny fought in combat alongside her male shipmates, but was reportedly quite an attractive woman — so people might say that “she was manly in spirit” (of course, there’s some sexism in that phrase, too), but probably no one would call her “mannish”, because she was pretty to look at.

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Rob McGee I do like “mannish” in this case. I really haven’t come across too many positive references with the Russian мужеподобная except in the Russian translations of Greek myths (мужеподобная Афина).

4. 

    

   Rob McGee:

   By the way, one might point out that the stereotyping of women in the Russian concept of женственность also (by logical implication) stereotypes men.

   For example, if it’s a bad thing когда женщина конкурирует с мужчинами, surely this must mean that the typical man lacks the emotional maturity to “lose to a broad”.

   (But in fairytales, when a poor peasant’s clever daughter proves that she’s quicker-witted than the Tsar and all of his [male] advisors, the Tsar doesn’t get mad and feel humiliated because he was “beaten by a girl” — usually he asks her to marry him and become Tsaritsa, or if she’s too young for marriage, he sends her home to her parents with her own weight in gold!)

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Rob McGee And as you know, in many a fairy tale a smart and beautiful woman marries Иванушка-дурачок (Ivan the little fool) and helps him out of tight spots. Сказка ложь, да в ней намёк 🙂

5. 

    

   Sally:

   Thank you, Yelena.

   International Women’s Day originally celebrated the работница, the working woman. It was celebrated in conditions of great difficulty in Russia before the Revolution and was the day on which the first phase of that Revolution erupted in 1917.

   I am disgusted that these ‘psychologists’ are trying to push women backwards by several millennia with an almost prehistoric template of gender politics and what it means to be a woman.

   They dishonour the women who fought in the Revolution and the Civil War that followed, they dishonour the women – workers in offices and schools, in factories and fields, artists and intellectuals – who helped build the USSR, they dishonour the approximately 800 000 women who served in the Soviet armed forces — as tankists, fighter- and bomber-pilots, sailors, partisans, MPs, medical personnel, and especially as snipers — during the Великая Отечественная Война, Great Patriotic War, and they especially dishonour the 90 of those who received the title of Герой Советского Союза, Hero of the Soviet Union, for their bravery!

   And, ironically, they even dishonour the Russian women who fought in the Tsar’s armies in WWI – not to mention their own mothers, daughters, sisters and wives and the millions of крестьянкы who over the centuries have worked in the поля to create the basis for a society where these misogynists can exist.

6. 

    

   Minority:

   I’m surprised about you explain женственность with such words!
   Though I think most of this is nessessary for normal relationship with other people – it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female.)
   “flexibility, ability to agree to a compromise” – to me, finding a compromise is like an art.
   “ability to not argue” – why not if you will add “умение без спора достигать взаимопонимания и согласия”.
   “tenderness and weakness in a sense that a man is needed to solve many of the life’s issues” – and what’s wrong? =) Tenderness to your beloved one is one of the greatest thing in the world 🙂 “weakness” isn’t bad too. It’s so hard to find the person who would make you feel you can relax sometimes and do not solve all your problems all alone. Who wants to do everything on his own? Does this person really exists? It’s not a matter of sex.. Men need such persons too.
   Patience and respect to other people are the things which will help you in life anyway. Don’t you think everyone should be patient and respectful to the people around no matter if he’s feminine or not, ’cause it’s an elementary politeness.

   I think feminity should include these aspects, but without such strange explanation of their meaning. Мужчина должен себя рядом с женщиной чувствовать мужчиной, а не тряпкой. Только с женственной женщиной он может себя так почувствовать в полной мере. =)

   PS. but of course there’s always other meaning of feminity including the style of the women, her gracefulness, beauty.. 🙂

7. 

    

   Rob McGee:

   “Мужчина должен себя рядом с женщиной чувствовать мужчиной, а не тряпкой.”

   There’s a lot of wisdom in this, Minority, but it’s important that мужчина is in the singular here. In other words, “Безусловное уважение к мужчинам” is quite a different thing from “Безусловное уважение к своему мужчине“.

   The latter is what Tammy Wynette was singing about in her classic country song “Stand By Your Man”, and seems like good advice for a successful relationship. (Although I would rephrase it as something like Безусловное взаимное уважение друг к другу.)

   But the former, with мужчины in the plural, does indeed reduce women to тряпки или ковёрчики (rags or “doormats”).

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Rob McGee Thanks, Rob! Now I can’t get the “Stand by Your Man” out of my head 🙂 I do agree with you. Besides, it goes both ways, мужчина не должен себя чувствовать тряпкой, но и женщина не должна себя чувствовать половиком (doormat).

8. 

    

   Rob McGee:

   Yelena — I’m reading Slynx, but I haven’t finished it yet. But I’m really enjoying it so far, and find myself frequently making comparisons and contrasts with other books in the “dystopia” genre:

   Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange (the invented language full of neologisms);

   Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, or at least the first third of it (radioactive landscape with the most severely mutated humans reduced to a semi-animal state);

   the original Planet of the Apes, and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, and Miller’s Canticle again (for the common theme that although books and technological relics survive from the pre-apocalyptic era, anti-intellectualism and Ludditism prevail, so the relics are taboo, instead of being constructively used to improve living conditions).

   Of course, it also has features not found in any of the above (while most of the human mutants merely have extra limbs or bizarrely shaped facial tumors, some seem to possess X-men-ish abilities, taking it from sci-fi into fantasy). And, too, a lot of the satire specifically takes aim at “Russian-ness” and/or Soviet culture. (Whereas American or British dystopias, naturally, satirize the US or the UK.)

   Anyway, thanks again for the recommendation.

   • 

      

     yelena:

     @Rob McGee Grrr, and my library still hasn’t called me 🙁 I read the reviews on Amazon for The Slynx and boy, am I glad I bought this book without reading the reviews first 🙂 Not to give too much away, but have you thought back to Fahrenheit 451? Definitely, the Canticle comes to mind although I thought the Canticle was much darker. Ok, back to waiting for the English copy 🙁