Another little tidbit about Russian forms of address, one I remember from my Russian class:
Russian women really, really have no choice but to put up with being called "girl," even well into their fifties. The Russian word for girl, dyebushka, is used for not just for little girls but for women of almost all ages.
There is, of course, a perfectly adequate word for woman, zhensheena, in Russian. But any woman who demands to be called the more grown-up word, as millions of American women have done since the 1970s, would encounter a serious problem. In Russian language and culture, to say "I'm not a girl, I'm a woman" comes across as "I'm not a girl, I'm a slut." So there really is no way out for a Russian feminist.
Dyebushka is also occasionally used in direct address as well.
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1 comment:
Mom here again!
Why don't Russian women find a noun or create a noun that can be used to show respect for grown women?
When American feminists objected to being called "Miss" or "Mrs." they created "Ms." It was ridiculed at first, but business soon realized how simple it made keeping address files of women. No longer did they have to ask "Miss or Mrs." They could just use "Ms." and (nearly) everyone was happy.
It takes great courage to engender social change of this magnitude. When Elizabeth Stanton Cady and Susan B. Anthony introduced the original "bloomers" -- which were essentially harem pants made out of stiff material and worn with tunics longer than most modern-day skirts -- they were subjected to scorn, derision, even physical harm. They persevered and now women can decide for themselves what they want to wear -- even Victoria Secret underwear.
We modern-day feminists know that we stand on the shoulders of the giants of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. I wonder how many remember Sojourner Truth and Alice Paul?
Young women today say that they don't think of themselves as feminists. They better get busy and come up with an alternative term for their generation or face going backwards, as happened in the 1900s and 1910s. And as we see today among many parts of the religious right.
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