Issue #30/55, December 29, 1998 - January 14, 1999  

Moscow's swinginest "rootless cosmopolitan"--our very own Mark Ames--is pleased to introduce the eXile's eXciting new "chi-XXX-ploitation" page, dedicated entirely to hard-hitting commentary by and about women and chicks, bitches and ho's, career gals and working girls. "This issue, we have a gritty deconstruction of the nightmare of the American feminist yoke from T.L. Wilcox, a Canadian who, by her own admission, is 'definitely a woman and not Mark Ames or anyone else in disguise.' This is followed by the whimsical ruminations of Russian author Andrey Smiryagin, inspired by a recent visit to the seventh layer of hell, i.e., California. As for me, I'm still here in NYC recuperating from a particularly nasty case of Russian-bred crabs, but I'll be back to light up all you ladies' lives real soon!"

by T.L. Wilcox

The eXile has devoted a lot of space to the sad fate of expat women in Moscow, by which it generally means the sexless fate of American women living here. Perhaps other readers commiserate with perky girls-next-door left high and very dry by expat men who prefer Masha muff to Gidget gash. They're not getting any sympathy from me, though. The fact is, most of these whiners are just so many stale slices of middle-class Wonderbread who have robbed sex of its delicious depravity. They don't deserve to get laid here--or ever again.

The All-American girl is a unique creature (which should please her, since Americans pride themselves on being in a class of their own). When pretty, she is pretty without being sexy. She may be sporty and a good sport, but never sexy. She can be sweet, but that's not sexy, except to those looking for little girls in grown-up women's bodies (and what the hell's the point of that?). Most amazingly, the middle-class American coed (and her legal successor, the middle-class American junior career woman) can be sexually active and want sex, and still not be sexy. She is not only a disappointment, but a freak.

Largely to blame is feminism. In its European incarnation, the fight for women's advancement is balanced--effortlessly it seems--with a continued celebration of feminine beauty. The mainstream movement in North America, however, views such a celebration as "demeaning to women." This movement emphasizes the supposed ideological dangers of dressing and behaving sexily. In particular, it is horrified at any attempt by women to enhance their physical appeal, which is taken as evidence of "low self esteem" and/or capitulation to the "Patriarchy." Women are encouraged instead to eschew makeup, hairdressing, high heels, and often, depilatory agents. The grubby products of this trend can be seen toting their backpacks all over the expat ghettos of central Moscow, their brittle California-blonde hair hanging in limp ponytails, their oversized college sweatshirts disguising what may or may not be nice tits.

Far more serious and insidious than American feminism's attack on the sexual body, however, is its attack on the sexual mind. There is a long and depressing list of most stimuli most feminists forbid on the grounds that they are "demeaning to women." No reading or viewing pornography. (It goes without saying that no woman would want to produce her own.) No indulging in fantasy, at least not his, and certainly no acting his out. No getting turned on by being on your knees, being shared by his friend, being tied up, being made to beg, being made to --? or being penetrated by anything other than a no-larger-than-average, clean, respectful (and sheathed, of course) penis. Absolutely no liking to suck cock, ever, let alone suck it dry. In fact, since giving head is viewed by many American feminists as the ultimate symbol of women's subjugation to men, there is a vocal lobby within the movement encouraging women not to give head at all.

It's likely that many of the American females studying and working in Moscow are not feminists and pay no attention to feminist theory. Even they, however, are probably mentally infibulated. This is true because attitudes similar to those of mainstream feminism are held by the American white middle class, an institution to which almost every American female here does belong. This class is, in good capitalist fashion, happy to "put its daughters to work" and encourage them to enter medicine, law, engineering, and other well-paid and respected professions. It is not nearly so progressive on the topic of female sexuality. White middle-class girls are usually daddy's little princesses, and both mommy and daddy--in spite of their moderate Baby Boomer liberalism--have certain expectations. They (still) want their girls to be "nice," which is essentially a code word for clean and well-behaved and always remembering to mask those bodily odors in the bathroom with rose-scented spray. They also want their girls to "respect themselves," still more Boomer code. This particular phrase replaced the "maintain a high moral standard" of the pre-W.W.II generations. But it still means: No sucking boys' cocks.

This message is only reinforced when Gidget goes away to college. It used to be that colleges--although themselves middle-class institutions--were places where girls became women thanks to their introduction to tequila and frat boys. While a good bit of such blessed debauchery still goes on, it's much more controlled now, because American campuses have become the base camp for the most zealous of the anti-sex feminists. Third-rate scholars in Women's Studies help the denser Gidgets to make the mental leap from "No sucking boys' cocks" to "No sucking boys' cocks because they are symbolic of nuclear missiles and baseball bats and other implements of male aggression." The smarter Gidgets are targeted by these scholars' partners-in-slime, cowed university bureaucrats and "radical" student feminist organizations, who employ various methods to make women fearful of men in general and sex in particular. For example, they plaster handbills and posters all over every available space--including toilet stalls--reminding female students that dating and drinking don't mix, and that one in four campus women can expect to be raped. The latter statistic has been proved to be a bald-faced lie, but it's still used on many campuses to help turn daddy's little princess into some poor guy's dead fuck.

So the average American woman in Moscow is at least doubly cursed, being both a representative of the white middle class and an American university student or graduate. She's triply cursed is she's also a mainstream feminist. Sheep-like, she fills the role for which she has been prepared, as letters to the eXile concerning her so often demonstrate. Remember the poor guy who wrote in about his last American girlfriend here? The week ended, they went out dancing, they came home and he waited while she slipped into something more comfortable... sweats, so she could sit down to watch videotapes of Friends. And what about "Andrea," whom I bet is an American (or maybe a Canadian, but I hope the hell not, or I'll have to shoot myself in shame), and her complaints about how the eXile's women columnists spend too much time writing about sex. Why, wrote Andrea, can't the eXile find a woman with a "light touch" who "talks about relationships and caring and career issues, which are what really matter to women"? Thank you, Andrea, for setting me straight! I spent this morning surfing the web for porn, but now I realize how unwomanly I was behaving. (although I have the "light touch" down pat). I should have been curled up on the divanchik with my gal pals talking about relationships and caring, with plenty of apt anecdotes borrowed from Friends!

As long as Gidget is wearing Eau de Wonderbread, she doesn't deserve a date. The scent would wash off soon enough is she were to throw herself with naked abandon into a cleaner stream of feminist thought. It's not as if there aren't first-rate brains shit-kicking the hell of those hacks at Ms., and there's even one for practically every political stripe! Christina Hoff Sommers for the conservatives, Nadine Strossen for the liberals, and Camille Paglia for the gleefully outrageous left-wing radicals.

Or, if reading and thinking seem like to much hard work, Gidge could just agree to swallow. At least that would relieve the rest of us of her constant bitching, since good girls don't talk with their mouths full.

Andrey Smiryagin's ruminations....