The struggle in sparkles

I studied abroad for a long time, and all my most remarkable friends lately are foreigners.

Now I am in Moscow and most miss the ease of female communication. When you can first discuss the appropriateness of the word “rape” in a figurative meaning and condemn the antifeminist position of the company - the developer of computer games, and then begin to praise boots and lipstick.

In Moscow, lipsticks separately, feminism separately. Familiar feminists do not approve that I am happy to paint and most often are lazy to turn this ritual into subversion, and the rest of the familiar women shy away the words “feminism” - for them this is at best a new manifestation of my eccentricity. Like my lipstick, when it is black - they will never begin to take seriously.

But on Russian television, as I see, they constantly show the television series “Sex and the City” - so far. Once upon a time, classmates and I hunted all over Moscow for pink ballet packs to become like Carrie Bradshaw. Then we felt something for which we had no words at the age of 16-freedom to be ourselves, even if they look askance at you in the subway. This, in fact, was the great triumph of “Sex in the Big City”, in the appearance of a simple series, built on the principles of capitalist heteronormativity. He showed feminism as feminism could be - with an infinite number of options.

Only since then, unfortunately, all the wonderful meanings flowed through the fingers, they were obscured by unsuccessful sequels and numerous domestic clones of the series, where they did not think to break the gender paradigm. At the same time, I clearly see that the craving for self-identification as women has most Russians who allow this to socio-economic conditions. For example, the public audiences popular among the women's audience on the VKontakte social network are full of demotivators in which manifestations of human weakness (to be jealous of a loved one for each person they meet, to remind themselves with “likes”, etc.) are explained by a gender affiliation.

“So, in a woman, to be honest”-as if with a breath, these variegated pictures say, and their high school students who are rebuilding unconsciously become part of a social community. The question here, of course, is how the women themselves are aware of this community and everything that is attached to it - equal rights, for example, and the rights are completely special, namely female, understood as an opportunity, without the intervention of the state and man, to dispose of their own reproductive system.

There is a clear obstacle with the first. If you take it again for an example of VKontakte, then one of the most popular memes there is about the duty of a woman to cook borscht in the kitchen. Reproductive rights are a shy bomb. Now in Western countries, the most powerful tremors to feminist and near -feministic activity occur precisely against the background of a variety of oppression of these rights. Women who are aware of themselves by citizens are ready to endure quite a lot, but not an attempt by the state (or church, since it went) to control their uterus.

One of the latest examples is the election of the governor in Virginia, where the Democrats candidate Terry Macoliff won. Macoliff is far from the ideal, he is known for his dark transactions and corruption. But all the same, voters, and especially unmarried women, preferred him to a candidate from Republicans Ken Kuchchinelli-who, among other things, compared somehow the abortion to slavery. And every time I can’t explain to the next Moscow acquaintance that she, with her stunning career and independence, was a full -fledged member of society and could dream of how to get married, I think that one day the bomb explodes.

In the end, the Russian authorities were already very, very close to the completion of work on the bills of restrictions on abortion-both surgical and drugs. Specific steps in this direction, for example, adoption of a prohibiting law, are clearly not far off. On the one hand, I cannot imagine anything more woeful than such a law. This is a catastrophe at the same level with the suspension of transplantology - after all, Russian women will not become pregnant, but they will begin to get rid of unwanted children in illegal, unsafe clinics, even more risky grandmas methods or completely murder of newborn. The most inextricable layers of the population will become most of all from this - for example, minor pregnant women, residents of the poorest hinterland.

On the other hand, if the state really dares to encroach on our reproductive law, then it is precisely those women who have a socio-economic opportunity to realize themselves competent. Honestly, I know only an insignificant number of heterosexual women (it doesn’t matter if they are aware of themselves feminists or not) who would never have made decisions to terminate the pregnancy - albeit even the alleged and so -called means “next morning”. I am sure that they will not be able to remain indifferent when they will take the right to this decision.

It was then that, probably, the social community will also gain the shadow of freedom, for which someone wants to compete. But should this happen at such a price? Indeed, in Virginia, women had the right not to choose the governor of Mizogin, and the Russians have no such luxury as the right to choose (or change) of power. Therefore, no matter how reproaching the views of my acquaintances of my radical feminists are, no matter how much I wanted, so that it was possible to speak with Moscow girlfriends at the same time and on the same emotions about manicure and the refusal to shave armpits, I see that only conditional Carrie Bradshaw can change something here.

The same, only another. Not New York Lina Danam, but her own and new. Pop cultural excellent feminism, attractive, appetizing, even sometimes decorated with sparkles, pink rhinestones or sprinkled with vanilla, to the sugary sweet, this country is now more necessary than any other-honest, ideologically verified, intellectual.

Katya Kazbek-feminist, LGBT research, publicist, citizen of the world

The author of the text did not receive rewards for him. The author’s opinion may not correspond to the point of view of the editorial office