The West has imposed financial sanctions against Russia after it annexed Crimea. But going one step ahead, the Ukrainian women have put a sex ban on Russian men.
With the tagline 'Need to fight the enemy in any way', a group of Ukrainian women launched an online campaign putting an embargo on Ukrainian women sleeping with Russian men.
'Don't Give it to a Russian' drive started on Facebook last week, gained popularity in the country and garnered nearly 3,500 'Likes' from supporters. According to Irena Karpa, a Ukrainian writer and musician, the phrase, 'Don't Give it to a Russian' was inspired by locally famous lines by Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainian poet. The lines from the poem 'Kateryna' go "Fall in love, O dark-browed maidens, but not with the Moskaly (Russians)."
The campaigners even sell T-shirts with symbol of hands cupped together. Now it is up to one's imagination to see what the cupped hands signify; it might be a praying pose or even female genitalia.
Women supporters wearing these T-shirts pose proudly asking Russian women to join them because "our (Ukrainian) men are still at home, but yours are already at war," reports The Moscow Times.
"We tried to make it provocative because it attracts attention," Karpa admits. "The deeper true meaning is do not give away your dignity, your freedom, your motherland. It is more about (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his policies, it is not racist," she told Agence France-Presse, reports INQUIRER.net.
The sex boycott, however, has not gone down well with some Russians who accused the campaigners of being prostitutes.
Women in various countries have often used sex ban as a medium of protest. The oldest one dates back to ancient Greece; in Aristophane's play 'Lysistrata' women refuse sex to their husbands or lovers until they end the Peloponnesian war. And last month a group of women in Tokyo threatened not to have sex with men who voted for a candidate with orthodox views on gender.
In 2003, 'Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace' boycotted sex with men to end the Liberian civil war. According to The Atlantic, a feminist group 'Femen' is encouraging the wives and girlfriends of the members of the prime minister's cabinet to boycott sex to protest what they call the prime minister's "caddish and humiliating attitude towards Ukrainian women."
