Interview with ex-citizen of Brezhnev-era Soviet 
Union: Part II MIM's sex education platform 
reviewed

July 9, 2001

In MIM Notes 235, June 1, 2001, we interviewed 
Hari about life in a republic of the Caucasus in 
Brezhnev's Soviet Union and the study of Mao's 
theories about it today. When the 2001 MIM 
Congress passed a platform, Hari objected to only 
one plank, the one calling for sex education by 
age 11. 

It is MIM's belief that there is no excuse 
for promoting unnecessary ignorance and that most 
people who oppose sex education do so for entirely 
subjectivist reasons that have nothing to do with 
arming children to defend their own interests. Our 
critics talk about an innocent period of life as 
if there were no threats to that innocence and as 
if all children were sexually inactive, when facts 
show that there are many sexually active children, 
even 8 or 10 years old, active amongst themselves, 
never mind those forced into activity by predatory 
adults.

MIM: You originally opposed the sex education 
plank of our platform, but as you reflected on 
your own life under Brezhnev, you realized that 
MIM's platform plank is actually a good thing. We 
want to start by commending you and all those 
people who realize that their own lives were not 
"typical" and therefore necessarily desirable 
models to follow. You initially agreed that having 
children prepared for AIDS, infectious diseases 
and dealing with strangers or relatives was 
important. However, there is also some experience 
from your own life to point to regarding the 
dangers of not having sex education. Did you ever 
have sex education in school?

Hari: No, I didn't. It wasn't considered 
appropriate.

MIM: When you were 18, can you give us an example 
of what you knew or did not know about men and 
their interest in you?

Hari: Oh, I knew pretty much nothing. Of course, I 
was vaguely aware of some things, however, I 
really couldn't relate this knowledge to real 
life.

MIM: So would you agree that children (including 
people of any age of low sexual development) 
should know in advance what kinds of sexual 
interest they may attract from various types of 
people as they exist today?

Hari: This is an interesting question. Most of the 
trouble I had arose not because I didn't know how 
a penis looks, what kind of sexually transmitted 
diseases exist, and how to protect yourself from 
getting pregnant (this is what usually comes to 
peoples' minds when they think about sex 
education), but rather because I really couldn't 
understand how and why somebody twice my age and 
married would try to use me in a sexual way, 
because I couldn't fathom that men and boys may 
just want to have "fun" without any feelings, 
because I thought that nationality doesn't matter 
if you love somebody, because I believed that if a 
man tries to kiss you, he does so for some deep 
reasons. Maybe I was too naive. But my innocence 
was destroyed by all those people in a very 
painful way. Maybe it would have been better if my 
view of life was more realistic. I think the goal 
of sex education must be not to destroy innocence, 
but rather to help innocence protect itself. 

Unfortunately, all these negative situations and 
people do exist, and until they are totally 
eliminated, young people must know what to expect. 
I think this is more of a moral question, than a 
purely technical one, even though the technical 
part, of course, has to be included.

MIM: Can you describe what age you were when you 
first became worried that you yourself were 
pregnant or could become pregnant?

Hari: I was almost twenty years old, and I was so 
afraid that I had become pregnant after I kissed, 
just kissed with somebody a few times.

MIM: What did you do when you thought you were 
pregnant?

Hari: The only thing I could think about was if 
it's true, how to commit a suicide? I wasn't in 
love with that person. It was a mistake: I just 
conformed to him. Probably, that was one of the 
reasons I was thinking about suicide rather than 
abortion.

MIM: Abortion was legal, right? How did you regard 
your right to abortion at that time?

Hari: Of course, I had a right to have an 
abortion. Abortion was totally legal, but totally 
stigmatizing for unmarried women of my 
nationality. It wasn't considered that there's 
anything morally wrong with abortion itself.

The only problem was who is going to have an 
abortion. If it's a married woman of a certain 
nationality, it's one thing, but if the situation 
involves an unmarried twenty-year-old Russian, 
it's totally different. The abortion would 
disclose a sexual relationship she was involved 
in, and confirm the double standard: the view of 
Russian wimmin (and generally white wimmin) as 
"loose" or "sluts" no matter what their actual 
sexual behavior is [in the Caucasus.]

MIM: If you had failed an exam that week in 
college or suffered some other loss, do you think 
the outcome of that time might have been 
different?

Hari: Oh, I would hate that man so much. Even if 
he didn't make me pregnant (it's impossible to 
become pregnant after kissing, fully dressed, 
isn't it?) But unless I got hit by a car and 
became permanently disabled, I don't think the 
situation would be more or less painful. Yes, I 
could try to commit suicide, but only if I was 
really pregnant. Failing an exam would not add 
much to the fear and stress. After all, do exams 
really matter, if you plan not to live anymore?

MIM: So do you agree that sex education is a life-
and-death question for a portion of the 
population?

Hari: Yes, if you mean by sex education preparing 
young people for all possible situations they may 
encounter when they grow up, giving them some 
guidance, and teaching them what they should try 
to be themselves--definitely not encouraging so-
called "experimenting with their bodies," 
definitely teaching them that sex is not only a 
body function, like digestion, for example.

MIM: Did you ever date someone from another 
nationality for whom the family thought marriage 
with your nationality would be wrong? Were you 
aware of views regarding the children of mixed 
nationality marriages? How did the nationality 
question affect gender hierarchies?

Hari: Nationalities that enjoyed affluence and 
power (there was a whole hierarchy of who is most 
affluent, who goes next, next, next) felt 
absolutely free to say openly that marrying people 
of different nationalities would contaminate their 
blood. This is especially true if those affluent 
people were men. Children of mixed marriages, if 
they happened, usually were accepted by society, 
but they definitely had more problems, than 
[supposed] purebreds. [MIM would point out that 
technically there are no biologically purebred 
nationalities, only the ignorant belief in such, a 
belief which takes on a definable life of its own. 
In the case of small nations such as some First 
Nations in North America, MIM can support efforts 
to oppose inter-national marriage--for reasons of 
culture, not biology.]

MIM: If we teach children what to expect from all 
the various types of adults and children 
expressing diverse sexual interests, if we teach 
about nationalities and inter-marriage and if we 
explain the rights of all humyns so as to avoid 
stigmatization and unnecessary conflicts leading 
to suicide or other asocial outcomes, and if we 
teach children about diseases, what else would you 
like to see taught in sex education?

Hari: Sex has a meaning only when it's an 
expression of love. Age, race, marital status, 
etc, don't matter. Don't try it if you don't know 
what love is. Don't try it if you know this is not 
love--you will reduce the ocean to a puddle. Very 
few people are lucky enough to love one person all 
their life (that would be so wonderful), but if 
you think that right now, for this very moment 
your lover is the one you want to live and die 
with, then it justifies everything. I know, it's 
subjective, but aren't all reasons we have sex for 
subjective anyway?

MIM replies: We distinguish between the objective 
causes of behavior, including sex, and the 
subjective manifestations of those causes. People 
fall in love for objective reasons including 
similarities of geography, class, education and 
other factors and those factors are measurable. 
For example, we can know how far apart the average 
married couple lived while dating, measure that 
and take an average.

Our interpretation of the above is that Hari 
believes that for sex to be safe for all people 
emotionally and physically, it has to be in a 
context of love. There may be people of both sexes 
and sexual orientations who view sex as routine as 
digestion, but Hari's suggestion is that there 
will be at least some people who do not. Is that 
right?

Hari: Yes, it is. If there are even some, very few 
people who may be hurt by those proponents of 
digestion theory, then it's much better to educate 
them [the proponents of digestion theory] while 
they are still young, to make them more humane, if 
it's possible. Otherwise, people with the non-
digestion view of sex are always going to be 
victims of others, and it's not fair.

MIM replies: Right now under the patriarchy MIM 
promotes forever monogamy as the best possible 
practice. This means we think that people should 
avoid moving from one partner to the next or 
having multiple partners because this just 
increases the power games involved in 
relationships under the patriarchy. This is the 
best way we can find to have relatively consensual 
interpersynal relations in a patriarchal society 
while we fight for an end to the patriarchy.

[To be continued.]