OK, so this is quite visually arresting:
The young lady - or at least part of her - is proclaiming, "VOVA! I am with you!" This was part of a Nashi-sponsored fashion-show-cum-rally (at least, that's what it looked like, judging from other pictures, which are replete with Nashi's alarm-clock logo, something the Nashisti casually appropriated from their ostensible ideological opponents, Ukraine's Pora). Commenters on the post where I saw the picture above had a variety of reactions, including:
Is MTS rebranding again? (in reference to the red-and-white color scheme shared by Nashi and a major Russian mobile telephony provider);
I get it, I get it! They're a mixture of pioneers and cheerleaders.
Nice panties, what does Putin's wife think of this?
Our answer to Uggs. (in reference to the young lady's striped valenki)
Other commenters noted that it's time to change the label - to Dima, or to Medved - or responded with variations on the olbansky word песдец - and one noted that the placement of the label was "If we consider the symbolism....not very proper."
The antics of Nashi can hardly startle one anymore, but this is sort of a new level of tastelessness, fetching though the ladies involved may be. It got me thinking about feminism, truly a dangerous road for me to go down, so I'll admit right away that I'm out of my depth in such topics and apologize ahead of time in case I offend anyone.
The thing is, feminism is one of those "Western" ideas that many Russians condemn based on a flawed understanding of the concept. The Russian stereotype of feminists can probably be summed up as "manly-dressing, unattractive women who get offended when you try to open doors for them." Now, much of this has to do with the wonderful fact that Russian women are brilliant at maintaining dignity and power even while observing certain gender roles and playing along as though they really believed it were a man's world.
But I would venture to say that at least some of it has to do with the fact that many people are uncomfortable with this "foreign" idea - feminism and female empowerment - and the changes it might represent, the aspects of essential "Russian-ness" it might leave behind, and therefore feel the need to discredit such a threatening, new, "Western" idea. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the idea of feminism* in Russia may even be as discredited as the idea of democracy.
Thus, while "feminism" in Russia conjures up (false) images of militant, asexual shrews, who in actuality represent an extreme and perhaps imaginary fringe of the movement, "democracy" also conjures up (false) images of people who mainstream Russians have been taught by the mainstream Putin-era political discourse to refer to as the "demshiza" (democratic schizos), "dermokraty" (shitocrats), or "demokrady" (demo-thieves) - in other words, the people who allegedly** brought the country the collapse and poverty of the 1990s.
As I said at the outset, I'm out of my depth here, and perhaps it's a fool's errand to try to turn a T&A pic with a suggestively placed label into some kind of pseudo-thoughtful discussion. But I figured I'd give it a shot.
*Not that there's just one "idea of feminism" in the rest of the world. Actually, this Nashistka's choice of outfits, which might get her blackballed from some feminist circles in the US as a traitor to the sisterhood who allowed herself to be objectified in the service of a male-dominated political system (I mean, talk about "the personal is political"!), might also be hailed by "stripper feminists" - no doubt this Putinista was thinking, while freezing onstage in that bikini, "By deploying femininity as a tool I [am] exposing it as a construction."
Seriously, though, I have no idea about these ideologies, and probably not much room to speculate on as a guy, even as a "sensitive, caring, romantic 90s kind of guy" (anyone else remember that funny turn of phrase?). So I decided to ask Natalia Antonova, the first person I thought of when I pondered who a reliable source about post-Soviet feminism might be. I've emailed her and asked her to respond in the comments here. We'll see if she can take time away from her own writing, commenting, and general saving of the world with the written word to pontificate in this space.
**I say allegedly because in fact the initial collapse and poverty of the 1990s was largely a carryover from the overprinting of rubles and price controls which were in effect in the USSR right up until 1991. What happened later in that decade is often blamed on people like Chubais, but why then is someone like Medvedev - who policy-wise seems like basically a market liberal like Chubais (actually, an ultraliberal like Chubais, according to Maxim Kalashnikov :-) ) - being designated Putin's heir?
Seriously, is it just me or is it kind of funny to hear Gryzlov talk about the Chairman of Gazprom being the "most socially oriented candidate" (I wonder if he meant, "from among the group acceptable to Putin"?) leading a government focused on raising people's quality of life. It's almost as funny as the idea of that famous "statist with a US passport" (and founder of a "youth movement" that's both less famous and less Soviet than Nashi, one with pre-Soviet roots) Boris Jordan "consider[ing] the life of an average citizen" from his near-oligarchic height.
15 comments:
"Now, much of this has to do with the wonderful fact that Russian women are brilliant at maintaining dignity and power even while observing certain gender roles and playing along as though they really believed it were a man's world."
I've always had a little problem with this rationalization for the weakness of feminism in Russia. You hear it all the time, but my take is that it is a rationalization, not an explanation. The counter-evidence to Russian women's maintaining power and "pretending" it's a man's world? Look at the rates of domestic violence against women. Or the wage gap. Or any number of other measures.
There's a lot of serious work to be done on Nashi's ideology, Russian nationalism and gender. (And sexuality, for that matter.) The problem is that their antics are almost irresistable to dismiss as nuttiness, but the thing is that somehow, that woman in the bikini makes sense of what she is doing as contributing to some larger cause. What that cause is, and how she's contributing to it (in her mind)--I think that's potentially fascinating!
Thanks for a post that, maybe, starts us down that road.
I agree with Buster's first paragraph in his comment above.
I have a question, though, are we sure that this event was not a spoof? How much ironic humor was involved in it? Or am I giving them too much credit?
Buster, you're right, of course, I just don't want it to seem like I am dissing Russian women for not being "feminist" when they have so much going for them in spite of the various obstacles placed in their way by society. Like all Russians, they know how to vyiti iz polozheniia and make something out of nothing - it's a trait I admire, even if it's engendered (so to speak) by living in a difficult environment.
Domestic violence - in early 2006, I was talking to someone in the ABA's Moscow office about perhaps doing some work for them that summer; the guy mentioned that their main initiative at the time was working with the MVD to develop domestic violence enforcement procedures. Sensing that such work (while unquestionably admirable and worthy) would be like beating one's head against a wall, I sort of lost interest - not that the guy I spoke with seemed to have any interest in me working for them, or in much of anything at all, for that matter.
Anyway, I agree with you that there is much "serious" work to be done on Nashi, at least if they survive this election cycle (and I suspect they will, as they are useful for all kinds of things), but I wasn't trying to be too serious about this subject. I obviously wouldn't, though, just dismiss it as nuttiness, although I agree that it's easy and tempting to do so.
Kolya, you raise an interesting question. I don't know how seriously those involved took it, but it was a Nashi-themed fashion show, and this young lady was willing to parade in freezing weather in public with a shout-out to Vova plastered across her crotch. It must mean something, right? On the other hand, I'm sure that some/most/all involved see the Vova panties with at least a bit of irony.
It shows how much faster the irony cycle is nowadays - it took Lenin and Stalin decades for the symbols of their cults of personality to become kitschy objects of irony - by placing Putin in such a compromising location, which would seem to require at least a bit of a sense of humor about the vozhd', Nashi (not to mention that designer with his pricey T-shirts, some of which IIRC feature VVP's stylized mug) have turned Putin into kitsch not as an echo of his cult of personality but rather as (a witting or unwitting) part of the very establishment of the cult!
OK, that may be the worst run-on sentence I've ever written, but hopefully it gets the point across.
I'm still optimistically waiting on the busy Ms. Antonova to share her thoughts about all of this...
There's so much that can be written about gender and feminism in Russia, but I think you do pretty well for a short summary. I'm not entirely sure that feminism is a foreign/western concept that Russians interpret in tandem with liberal democracy, though. More than one Russian woman has told me that the hyper-femininity of women in today's Russia is actually a reaction to a sort of Soviet feminism, where women were encouraged by the state to do un-feminine, un-glamorous work in factories and such.
In any case, those pink striped valenki are awesome and I'm hoping that Ded Moroz brings me some. But wait, are the valenki also Vova-branded? Oh, I hope not!
Megan, thanks, I was hesitant to even raise the issue because it's a controversial subject which I haven't thought about too much myself - often a recipe for pissing someone off. A case in point - someone at a website called Eurotrib has decided that I have a "messed up idea of feminism" (scroll down a ways) based on this post. I guess the disclaimers were not enough.
Oh, and just to clarify, I wasn't really suggesting that feminism and liberal democracy go together in the Russian mind. I was just trying to say that I think the misconceptions which exist about "feminism" are or look similar to (while being mostly independent from) the misconceptions which seem to increasingly exist about "liberal democracy" (I put both terms in quotation marks, of course, because everyone has their own definition for each of them).
I'm pretty sure the Valenki (aka "Russian Uggs," which I thought was a funny characterization - after all, valenki have been around for centuries and Uggs seem like a fast-fading fashion phenomenon) are not "with Vova," but who knows. I remember reading something in the Moscow Times long ago about a company marketing valenki as a fashion item.
Oh, and thanks for that link to Natalia Antonova. She's great and I've added her to my blogroll.
I just read that Eurotrib thing, and I think the writer misread you. I certainly agree with much of what she said about Russian women, but I don't think that what you wrote contradicts that point of view. It's true that the word "feminism" itself seems to carry mostly negative connotations in Russia in exactly the ways you mentioned.
Let's face it, feminism in the US doesn't have the most positive connotations in many circles. Like it or not, femi-nazi has entered the lexicon on behalf of the political right in the US - the same political right that has won the last two presidential elections. Hilary Clinton is demonized for reasons I'm far from understanding, to the extent that she is now the #1 gag gift of the Christmas season (The Hilary Clinton Nut Cracker, if you haven't yet noticed).
At least in terms of medical leave during pregnancy, Katja feels Russia is ages ahead of Russia. We have this strange dichotomy here of acknowledging women need time off during pregnancy, but pushing them back to work almost immediately (or onto welfare rolls). Be strong, American woman, and put your child in daycare!
So, I think our (American) reaction to many of these aspects of feminism, gender-relations, what have you - are warped by our idea of what we THINK we are, rather than what we truly are in the US.
ps ~ yes, some of these young women are cute, but let's not forget they would have nothing to do with you, evil American!
Wally, I guess I can't speak for "what we truly are in the US," but I would hesitate to project the views of the Bush electorate onto the country as a whole. After all, it was barely (less than?) half of the popular vote, and that only counts the people who actually go vote. And the "political right" didn't exactly set things afire in the '06 midterm elections.
In any event, you're right, of course, that "feminism" gets maligned by many in the US as well. But the view of the word (whatever it means) is I think much more monolithically negative in Russia. In the US, at least there is a large group of the population (though maybe predominantly in the "blue states") which doesn't reject "feminism" (again, whatever it means exactly) out of hand.
Without wanting to venture too far into the realm of US politics, I think Hilary gets flack more for being Bill's wife than for being a woman. I've decided I'd rather see Obama become president, not just because he is less off-putting and carries less baggage but because I'd rather not have to hear about "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton" from Russian interlocutors when discussing Putin's potentially perpetual role at the pinnacle of Russian politics.
Medical leave during and after pregnancy - I think in the US it depends on the employer. Having just been involved in the easy part of having a child (the man's part), I don't think the situation in the US is horrible as long as you have a decent employer - my wife got 60% of her pay for 3 months, and would have received 100% if she had been in her job for more than a year. But in the background of the whole situation was and is with the fact that she doesn't want to give up her job because it is our source of health insurance; we never really thought about taking advantage of whatever the FMLA provides in terms of time off; and US insurers seem to treat pregnancy and associated benefits as something like an illness, which is odd. But this is part of the American ethic, I think - deal with it yourself, and prepare to be hosed if you don't have the funds to cover things. I don't think it's really a dichotomy - having a child is a choice people make, and society is prepared to sanction it only to a limited degree. Perhaps this is because there is no "demographic crisis" in the US, perhaps it's because we did not have a state-sponsored effort to mobilize women into the labor force; there are lots of reasons for the differences between the US & Russian treatment of maternity leave.
In Russia, you are right that people are protected more on the books, and the length of maternity leave envisioned by Russian legislation (i.e., the length of time for which a woman has a right to return to her previous position) is much longer - I think that it remains, as it was under the Soviet KZoT, up to 3 years, as long as the woman keeps the employer informed. In practice, though, much is also up to the employer. For instance, after 3 years it's hard to imagine someone really getting their exact same job back, unless it's in a place with a non-dynamic work environment. Also, women receive only a government-set minimum during maternity leave (in 2005, this was about 11,000 RUR/month - dandy for a village but a pittance in Moscow). I believe that the employer files and the Social Fund pays this amount, and I don't think employers are obligated to pay any compensation to maternity-leave employees, although in practice I'm sure that the better Russian companies pay at least a few months' salary. The situation pre-2003 was an interesting one - the woman would receive her full salary for 6 months or a year (can't remember which), and it was paid by the Social Fund also on filing by the employer, which made for some startled reactions by the Social Fund bureaucrats when such filings were made on behalf of highly compensated Russian employees of western companies.
yeah, but many, many people in the U.S. don't have insurance *or* a decent employer. Also, to an extent having a child is a choice, to a greater extent, it's not. Most people have children at some point. It's simply part of being human, and to treat it as an illness or a pure choice or something that society may or may not "sanction" is foolish. Children are people who happen to require more daily care than adult people, and as such, society should make it easier for parents and others to provide that care.
I say this, incidentally, as someone who decidedly does not want children of my own.
Lyndon, I agree with what you wrote. Having said that, I think the maternity leave policy in the US is woefully inadequate. Much too much depends on the employer, and, as Joy wrote, many people don't have health insurance at all. I have not checked in years, but for better policies we should look at the Scandinavian countries and probably Canada.
As to feminism in the US, I've noticed that even self-described feminist often disagree on what feminism is. And the right, of course, only uses the most extreme feminists to broad-brush all feminists.
As to the US in general, one thing to take into account is that despite TV and all that, Americans are quite parochial. In the ward of my previous home (in Maryland--predominantly white and not a college town), Bush got a distant third place in the last two presidential elections. This is one America. While the America of a town in Utah is quite another. Of course, such totally opposite election returns reflect many other differences. Granted, these are two extremes in the spectrum, but the point is that these two Americas are quite alien to each other.
Joy, you're right on all of those points. I guess I thinking of the situation in the US relative to the situation in Russia (although "comparisons" are always a slippery slope), and in that light I don't think it's so bad (i.e., in Russia many people also don't have employers who are willing to follow the letter of the law on maternity leave; many people also don't have access to decent health-care; etc.).
As for the "choice" thing, I was just putting forward an argument that I think many people make and which is a popular one in the American political mind - "personal responsibility," etc. Of course it's an argument that doesn't always hold, and I happen to agree with your statement that society should make it easier (as someone who wanted kids and now has one, and by the way I highly recommend it, although of course I didn't have to give birth).
Incidentally, I was intrigued yesterday to see a heated discussion on one of the most-read posts in the Russian blogosphere about how much responsibility people should take for themselves when they have children.
"Medical leave during and after pregnancy - I think in the US it depends on the employer. Having just been involved in the easy part of having a child (the man's part), I don't think the situation in the US is horrible as long as you have a decent employer - my wife got 60% of her pay for 3 months, and would have received 100% if she had been in her job for more than a year."
My aunt in Germany got 6 months off work with 100% pay. :)
This was 15 years ago; Germany may have changed since then.
Kolya, you are right that we should learn from other countries with respect to health care, and I am happy that at least it appears the debate has progressed to that level in the political "mainstream," so that health care for everyone is a possibility. On the other hand, part of the American parochialism you correctly point out is that while I am happy to see these views come into the mainstream, others regard them as "socialism (said with a sneer)."
By the way, Natalia Antonova has posted her thoughts on Nashi and feminism here.
Gee, Lyndon, it's kind off boring to agree with you so often.
You wrote:
"...part of the American parochialism you correctly point out is that while I am happy to see these views come into the mainstream, others regard them as "socialism (said with a sneer).""
Right you are! This reminds that over twenty-five years ago (I may be the oldest commenter here) an American friend, who knew that I was not an admirer of the Soviet regime, asked about what I liked and didn't like about the US. Among the dislikes I mentioned the lack of universal medical coverage. He looked at me in surprise and said, "But that's socialism!" He was a smart and good-hearted fellow, but the idea of universal health care sounded sinister to him.
Post a Comment