A Russian lawmaker warned that Russian women should not have sex with non-white foreign men during the World Cup because they could get pregnant and end up with children who would be discriminated against in Russia, according to a Reuters report.
The lawmaker, Tamara Pletnyova, is the head of parliament’s committee for families, women and children. From Reuters:
She spoke in response to a question from a radio station about the so-called “Children of the Olympics” after the Moscow Games in 1980, a time when contraception was not widely available in the country.
The term was used during the Soviet era to describe non-white children conceived at international events after relationships between Russian women and men from Africa, Latin America, or Asia. Many of the children faced discrimination.
The passive voice of that final sentence is truly audacious considering that Russia’s ingrained and unapologetic racism has been widely documented for years, and especially recently, in the lead up to the World Cup, but here’s the rest of Pletnyova:
“We must give birth to our children. These [mixed race] kids suffer and have suffered since Soviet times,” Pletnyova told Govorit Moskva radio station.
“It’s one thing if they’re of the same race but quite another if they’re of a different race. I’m not a nationalist, but nevertheless I know that children suffer. They are abandoned, and that’s it, they stay here with mum.”
Meanwhile, the Argentinean national football association put out a manual telling men how to have sex with Russian women during the World Cup—what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? How on earth will women ever be able to make up their own minds?