Free Pussy Riot: Radfem Hub asks whose freedom and whose riot?

Please get over to Radfem Hub and read this amazingly cogent piece on the Pussy Riot phenomenon. Seriously, even Twisty is linking to this;

The aforementioned Radfem Hub post gleams like a golden jaundiced eye at the very pinnacle of world class patriarchy-blaming.

…and Twisty never links to other feminist blogs.

Here’s a snippet from The Hub:

I found it suspicious that Pussy Riot was getting so much media attention, even for pseudo feminist standards. You can measure the degree of feminism of an action by how men react to it, and if men collectively cheer and celebrate it, then you can be pretty sure there’s something wrong about it, or that it doesn’t somehow support our liberation from men. And as far as I can recall, even the slutwalks didn’t get as much coverage or public appraisal. What was it that men liked so much about Pussy Riot?

Well, under closer inspection I discovered that the high level of coverage was related to – though indirectly – promoting men’s right to women’s sexual subordination and the pornification of our movement. The arrested women actually form part (and are victims of) a mixed anarchist group called “Voina” (meaning “war”), founded in 2007 by two men called Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaïev, who regularly engage the women in extreme and degrading women-hating pornography as part of their public “political stunts”. Some of Voina’s men have actually already been incarcerated in 2011 for hooliganism – which is punished for 7 years of prison in Russia, but their bail was paid for by an artist named “Banksy” four months after their imprisonment. (More information can be found here and here)

Included in their anti-government actions are a “public orgy” in the national museum of biology in a room full of stuffed bears, where several men anally penetrated their female partners in a position of submission, including one heavily pregnant women, as a metaphor to “bugger/fuck Medvedev”. “Medved” means “bear”, hence all the stuffed bears – this was meant to be symbolic, artistic and revolutionary according to the activists. Here the male anarchists literally used women as dead bodies or receptacles through which to make a political point to other men. Violating women as a means to offend other men is nothing else but an age-old patriarchal mechanism – behind which the intended target are us, for men to bond over our annihilation.

Another planned stunt in the name of “sexual freedom”, inspired by extreme forms of pornography such as zoophilia/ necrophilia, includes a member of Pussy Riot masturbating with a dead chicken in a supermarket under the watch and camera of the anarchist males, after which she inserts the dead chicken entirely into her vagina and hobbles with the chicken inside her out of the supermarket.

The president is presumably Oleg, and the woman in question, apparently his wife – a situation which would qualify as domestic abuse and sexual slavery given the level of violence, women-hatred and humiliation directed at the women involved. The woman is reduced to a corpse to be ‘stuffed’ in the most degrading and insulting way. No woman would desire such things as inserting a dead chicken in her vagina in public were she not under heavy control and terror. Also of note is the fact that one of their children was brought to this stunt, visibly no older than four. Sexual exhibitionism in the presence of children may also qualify as child sexual abuse. How deeply has women-hatred sunk into men’s minds, that they are incapable of imagining a riot without it being a by-the-book copy of a gonzo porn film? Here again, we see men instrumentalising women and using sexual torture of women as a means to communicate a political message (which if not totally vacuous, communicates nothing other than their hatred of women).

Perhaps the most saddening action of all consisted in filming one of the women naked, covered in cockroaches, meant to be understood as “sexy”. The association of women to filth and parasites to be eliminated couldn’t be clearer. This is women-hating, genocidal propaganda at its most dangerous form. Voina’s men give the world to see where women’s place must be, even when fighting against authoritarian regimes: head down, underneath men and fucked by them.

If we want justice for the women imprisoned and to show true solidarity, we need to not only denounce the injustice by the Russian state, but also denounce the violence by the men from Voina. We need to recognise and openly denounce the pandemic levels of sexual violence present in most male-centric leftist or anarchist activist groups, whereby women are often pimped by the men of the group for pornography or expected to submit to extremely violent or degrading acts in the name of “sexual freedom”. What counts for these men is to fight for men’s total public access to women, especially militant women, because it really serves to put all women back in line. The weapon of mass destruction against women is the penis and this is why all men are focusing on making Putin look bad while they say nothing about the bastards of Voina.

For our sisters, for all women, we need to say out loud that this is not feminism.

This NOT feminism! The malestream media have created a false dichotomy here; the patriarchal pigs in the Putin regime=bad/the noble heroic male lefty activists of Voina=good. The reality is that all of these men are woman-hating pigs and the women of Pussy Riot have simply been tossed from the patriarchal frying pan into the patriarchal fire. In the so-called free world they are being raped by their so-called comrades. In the Russian carceral system they are at the mercy of their guards, behind closed doors and iron bars, far away from the public gaze. Human rights standards in the Russian prison system are pretty much non-exisitent for any incarcerated person. As an advocate and an activist for women ensnared in the NSW prison system, I say the same thing I say regarding all women who are locked up by the state, free them now. But I am also saying this is NOT feminism.

From Hoyden About Town who appear not to have received the memo yet:

We are talking highly principled, seriously thought-through activism here.

Get with the program, Hoydens. How embarrassing for Australian feminists.

Edit: Hoyden is now giving Twisty all the credit for uncovering the misogyny underpinning Voina, after I pointed out the lack of critical thinking in their commentary. That women’s work should be acknowledged and given credit for is one of the fundamental principles of feminist thought. You’d think feminists would know that. So disgusting.

Edit 2/09/12: Ah it’s ok now, Helen has spoken up at Twisty’s and announced that she just didn’t want to link to tranphobes bwhahaha. Cos that’s a reason to erase the work of women. Being non trans-inclusive somehow diminishes the brilliant work that the women at Radfem Hub do, in the interests of ALL women, even the funfems at Hoyden. It’s also not really the erasure of women’s work because I criticise Hoyden occasionally.

I’m the cause of the trouble upthread i.e. the commenter at Hoyden About Town. I *explicitly* linked to the thread here because, as I stated, the ideas came from a second source but I refused to link to a transphobic blog. The link to this thread provides anyone who wants to the wherewithal to find the source of the info. I feel that’s quite above board and as clear in attribution as necessary. Linda has an ongoing vendetta with Hoyden about Town and her comments need to be filtered through that knowledge

But it’s fine to link to MRAs.