Russia Gives Its Workers Day Off to Have Sex, Get Pregnant

Posted by Jill Filipovic at 3:33 PM on September 13, 2007.

This post, written by Jill Filipovic, originally appeared on Feministe

This is especially interesting on the heels of this: Russia is giving people a day off of work to have sex. And if you give birth exactly nine months later, you get a prize, which might be anything from money to a refrigerator to a car. It's being called National Conception Day -- which isn't quite as catchy as my term for it, which is National Russians Fuck Like Cold, Pale Rabbits In Furry Hats Day.

It's being held in the Volga River region, which I also initially read as "Volva River region."

But the humor of people doin' it in an effort to win a refrigerator aside, this is one aspect of what I was alluding to in my previous post -- the politics of population control are fraught with racism, and white people world-wide are terrified that brown people are "out-breeding" them. Russia is a good example:

Last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the country's most acute problem and announced a broad effort to boost the birthrate, including cash subsidies for couples giving birth to more than one child. Women who give birth to their second or third child receive $10,000 vouchers to pay for education or home repairs.

When our world is already over-populated and population growing, why in God's name would a declining population be a "country's mos acute problem"? Only if the wrong kinds of people are the ones doing the populating.

And then there's this:

Russia wants to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year as births fail to outpace a death rate fueled by AIDS, alcoholism and suicide.

I'd say you have some problems that are more pressing than your birth rate.

Amanda has some interesting thoughts on the issue, and I think at the end of the day, most of us agree: It would be good to reduce the population. It would be good to make having no children, or only one child, a socially acceptable choice. The problem, though, comes with balancing idealism and reality. Amanda is clear that her post represents an ideal, and that there are lots of social ills standing in the way. The fact is, we have a really, really ugly, racist history when it comes to population control. The ideas that underlie that history are still alive and scoring votes -- see Reagan's "welfare queen" for a blatant example. It's middle and upper-class white women who are encouraged to have more kids in order to stem the tide of brown babies coming from immigrants, Muslims, poor people, and other "unfit" "breeders." And the U.S. certainly doesn't have a monopoly on natalism; see how negative birthrates have been viewed from Italy to Japan.

At the heart of all of these conversations is a need to shame women. Shame them if they don't produce enough of the right kind of children for their country. If they're the wrong kind of women, shame them for having the nerve to reproduce in the first place. Shame them for using birth control or having abortions. Shame them for not. Shame them for being a drain on our financial resources. Shame them for harming the environment. Shame them for being selfish and anti-child. It's not always intentional, but it's what's happening.

So while I can get behind conversations about how our childbearing choices affect the environment, I can't get behind social policy that encourages women to do one thing or another. And while I can get behind social policy that helps women (including women with children), I can't get behind policy that promotes childbearing in order to score a new fridge.

Although I would certainly a support a National Doin' It Day.

Tagged as: russia, putin, population control, sex, pregnancy

Jill Filipovic is a New York-based freelance writer and a law student at NYU. More of her writing is available online at her blog, Feministe.