It’s another episode of Spot the Misogyny!
The Russian punk group who was recently sentenced to two years in prison has already been covered to death by other sources. Though it does raise an issue about how willing people are to notice misogyny when it happens in other countries, but turn a blind eye to it when it happens in their own.
There is nothing feminist about the name “Pussy Riot”. Neither is there anything feminist about the name “Slutwalk“. These groups named themselves what they did because they knew there was no hope of getting attention or press coverage unless they performed the requisite presentation-of-women-as-sex-objects as bait. They console themselves that they’re being ironic, or “reclaiming” misogynist terms. But no matter how hard you scrub, the stench of oppression still seeps from these words. Who are they fooling, exactly?
Not the polite liberal sexists. You know who these guys are. They’re the intended audience for all of this sexual posturing. They’re the guys who read the papers and watch the news to see what girls who label themselves “sluts” are doing. They are enthusiastic collectors of “pin-up” and “erotic” art. They show up to support the “slutwalks”, hoping to see women liberating themselves from their clothing, so they can indulge in a spot of politically correct eyeball rape. They call themselves feminists.
Polite Liberal Sexist
Any woman who takes a seriously critical look at these men is dismissed as a “prude”. And not just by polite liberal sexists, but by “Not-My-Nigel”-ing hetero fakefems who see these men as their last hope for a heterosexual relationship, so align themselves precisely with what these men want. What do they want? The same kind of pornulation and objectification as all the other oppressors want – only their variety thereof is supposed to be “subversive” and “ironic”, so no one has to be held responsible for it.
Polite liberal sexists know exactly what Pussy Riot means. It means they can use a word which is understood to be degrading sexual slang for female genitalia and not only get away with it, but pat themselves on the back for supporting Freedom of Speech! While digging each other in the ribs and snickering.
https://twitter.com/kirkunit/status/236462513213018112
Hey, women?
Irony doesn’t work. Subversion doesn’t work. The men who oppress us don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. They look at our carefully crafted “subversion” and see only submission. That’s not because we’re fooling them, but because we’re fooling ourselves. Irony is just another flavor of compliance. Rebranding compliance as subversion only diverts our energy from real resistance.
Best of luck to those Russian women. I hope they don’t have to serve the whole two years in prison. But fuck their creepy abusive husbands who put them up to that shit, and who now travel around the lecture circuit, raking in donations and being hailed as heroes by a media largely made up of Polite Liberal Sexists themselves, while their wives languish in prison.
Exiled Stardust 
Well said. “Freedom of Speech” is predicated on absolute equality; where the playing field is not level, where the discourse is continually hijacked by the yes-dear-but-not-really-listening, privileged oppressor, the concept is meaningless, and the last refuge of scoundrels.
We’re lucky if they’re not really listening. Otherwise they’d be calling us “bitch”, “slut” and suchlike.
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