Pussy Riot: Feminist or Foe

A couple weeks ago, I did a radio piece on the trial of three members of the Russian feminist punk band “Pussy Riot.”  For anyone who spent the last month on the Curiosity or somewhere, Pussy Riot is an anarcha-feminist punk rock collective which stages public performance art pieces in Moscow’s public spaces.  In February they took their anti-government message to Christ the Savior Cathedral, to protest the fact that Patriarch Kyrill had endorsed Vladimir Putin’s bid for a third presidential term, swapping places with Dmitri Medvedev.

For their 50 seconds of free speech, they were sentenced last Friday to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”

Pussy Riot’s lyrics don’t all translate very well to English, or maybe it’s my lack of understanding of Russian politics that keeps me from grasping all the nuances.  The piece that got them in all that trouble goes in part:

“Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners crawl to bow
The phantom of liberty is in heaven
Gay-pride sent to Siberia in chains

The head of the KGB, their chief saint,
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend His Holiness
Women must give birth and love

…

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist
Become a feminist, become a feminist
…
Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin
Bitch, better believe in God instead
The belt of the Virgin can’t replace mass-meetings
Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!”

I decided I didn’t need to understand everything about their messaging to support their freedom struggle.  First, because no one should be imprisoned for artistic expression, and second, because any group that is calling for the Virgin Mary to become a feminist (although in truth, she probably was) seems like my kind of bunch.  And third, because whatever I don’t understand, I do understand that they are protesting the church’s efforts to force women to “give birth and love” and in the age of Todd Aikin and legitimate rape and Bob McDonnell’s forced vaginal ultrasound, that seems like a good thing to be doing.

Yes, I was amused by Fox News’s outraged coverage of the miscarriage of justice.  Fox apparently supports feminists who attack the government and the church, as long as they’re in Russia – which Fox apparently hasn’t noticed is not Communist any more.  (In fact, Putin narrowly beat out the challenger from the Communist Party, which is gaining popularity again.)

But if I wasted energy worrying about the hypocrisy of Fox News, I would not have much left for such important tasks as blogging.

Then yesterday, friends on Facebook were sharing a piece from RadFem hub, called “Pussy Riot: Whose Freedom, Whose Riot?” 

“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…. 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”) … who regularly engage the women in extreme and degrading women-hating pornography as part of their public “political stunts”.

The author goes on to describe in detail some of the “extreme and degrading woman-hating pornography” created by Voina.  I found it disturbing, and had no desire to go look at it for myself to see if she was misrepresenting or exaggerating it.  And in fact, I was disturbed by some of the signage at the Free Pussy Riot rally I went to, such as the sign saying, “Putin Don’t Like Pussy So He Can Suck My Cock.”  I don’t know the guys who were holding that sign, but offhand, it seemed anti-gay as well as unnecessarily using sexual imagery to express hostility.

Still I’m also troubled by the assumption that “if men collectively cheer and celebrate” something that claims to be feminist, it can’t be real.  Some members of Pussy Riot were members of Voina, but that doesn’t mean necessarily that they still are, or that they have not evolved in their thinking about feminism, or that all of the members condone everything Voina put out.  We don’t know – or at least, I don’t – why Pussy Riot left Voina and formed their own all-women’s group.  What I do know is that they seem to be serious young women.  Here are a few excerpts from their closing statements http://nplusonemag.com/pussy-riot-closing-statements:

Katya Samutsevich:

Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetic? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, the state-controlled corporations, or his menacing police system, or his obedient judicial system. It may be that the harsh, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; that otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this.

Maria Alyokhina:

Our schooling, which is where the personality begins to form in a social context, effectively ignores any particularities of the individual. There is no “individual approach,” no study of culture, of philosophy, of basic knowledge about civic society. Officially, these subjects do exist, but they are still taught according to the Soviet model. And as a result, we see the marginalization of contemporary art in the public consciousness, a lack of motivation for philosophical thought, and gender stereotyping. The concept of the human being as a citizen gets swept away into a distant corner.

Today’s educational institutions teach people, from childhood, to live as automatons. Not to pose the crucial questions consistent with their age. They inculcate cruelty and intolerance of nonconformity. Beginning in childhood, we forget our freedom. 

Nadya Tolokonnikova:

A human being is a creature that is always in error, never perfect. She quests for wisdom, but cannot possess it; this is why philosophy was born. This is why the philosopher is the one who loves wisdom and yearns for it, but does not possess it. This is what ultimately calls a human being to action, to think and live in a certain way. It was our search for truth that led us to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. I think that Christianity, as I understood it while studying the Old and especially the New Testament, supports the search for truth and a constant overcoming of oneself, the overcoming of what you were earlier. It was not in vain that when Christ was among the prostitutes, he said that those who falter should be helped.

Pussy Riot is not perfect.  Like many young women, they are grappling with the contradictions of the sexual revolution in a climate of antifeminist backlash.  But isn’t it more useful for feminists to challenge them than to condemn them as unworthy of our support?  Katya, Nadya and Masha may have, unfortunately, two years to think about the actions they’ve taken and what they want to do when they get out.  Maybe some of the radical feminists who are critiquing them want to take out paper and pen and write them letters, gently posing some questions about their performance style.

(I’m not actually sure how to write to them, but on their facebook page it says to send letters to pussriotsolidarity@gmail.com.  I’m trying to find out if there’s a snail mail address for them.)

A guy named Anatoly Karlin has provided some very interesting analysis of the case and its subtleties on Al Jazeera.