Harassment and regime

Why the fight against harassment is a policy

Policy in Russia is understood mainly as the question of which Putin will sit in the Kremlin. By the way, I believe that in the great future the president’s post should be abolished, and the Kremlin is open to pedestrians and made by the museum. In order for the young Russians to walk there and be amazed at our medieval wonders and wilds, as the Swedes walk along the Hamlast among the monuments to dead white men.

However, this is not about that. I think that politics is the question of who and how makes decisions about the joint existence of people and who has the right to speak / right of voting.

It is for this reason that the problem of gender equality and harassment is fundamentally political, on how we answer it now, it depends on which society we want to get as a whole - from family relations to the Kremlin laws.

The topics related to Gender are so annoying all participants in the public dialogue, since it is here that the real political split and political struggle are now. Who believes that politics is a boring commentary on the political scientist on TV, has no taste for it at all.

In order to protect democratic values, that is, the requirement to be considered the opinion and interests of citizens, we must protect the right of women to talk about the experienced violence, injustice and inequality.

It is impossible to dream of democracy in Russia, having sealed their mouth to half the citizens on a gender.

It is impossible to recognize the right to criticize the government by refusing women (and not only them) in the right to publicly criticize their unscrupulous partners or colleagues at work.

The argument that criticism of the “regime” is much more important than any stories about harassment does not make sense at least for the reason that it is not for you to decide what is important for other people. If you still do this, know: you are the "regime".

Metoo's destructiveness for reputation in the West was due to the fact that, thanks to the democratization of media, ordinary people - secretaries and interns - received the right to speak with an unlimited audience directly and demanded political rights for themselves: inviolability of bodily borders, respect for their dignity, and institutionalizing the right to speech.

None of them demanded anything that would not be guaranteed by democratic constitutions, but de facto was not performed due to the vertical, hierarchical structure of the industrial society, on the top of which men always were.

Moreover, the intuition of radical feminists that gender violence and inequality is a fundamental form of power (and is not a derivative of economic or legal inequality), it seems to me extremely believable in the epistemological sense, as an heuristics for further political steps.

Women who have taken themselves the right to vote are now the most “revolutionary group”,

Or, if you like it more, a group that contributes to the effective democratization of society.

If you want to live in a free country, support feminists, protect the victims of domestic violence, sacrifice asylums, learn to respect other people's borders, forget about "traditional female duties."

What is now happening with scandals about the Harassment in the liberal environment, a very good sign - we started moving towards democratization.

This column is written in the first person and in the genre does not resemble the "letter from the editorial office." But colleagues asked not to change anything in the text. So I do.