Drawings of vulvas and pictures of same-sex families: how the trial of Yulia Tsvetkova developed

The persecution of the artist and femme activist from Komsomolsk-on-Amur began back in 2019, but the case of Yulia Tsvetkova became widely known only in 2020. For some time the artist was under house arrest. In March 2020, it was replaced with a written undertaking not to leave. In June 2020, Tsvetkova was charged with distributing pornography , and then the case was sent for further investigation several times.

In total, four administrative protocols were drawn up against Tsvetkova for promoting non-traditional sexual relationships among minors due to the administration of a public page on VKontakte and the publication of images on LGBT and body-positive topics on social networks. Only two of them eventually reached the court; for both, the court imposed fines of 50 thousand rubles.

In addition, the artist is a defendant in an administrative lawsuit to close the public page “Vagina Monologues” due to the fact that it allegedly disseminates pornographic images, and is also a defendant in a criminal case regarding the distribution of pornography.

The exact reason why a criminal case was initiated is unknown. Perhaps it was either Tsvetkova’s series of works “A Woman is Not a Doll,” which she published on social networks. In the pictures from this series, the artist schematically depicted naked women, accompanying the drawings with the captions “Living women have fat,” “Living women have cellulite,” “Living women have periods.” However, the immediate cause for criminal prosecution was five stylized images of vulvas from the public page “Vagina Monologues”, aimed at removing the taboo from female physiology.

At the end of March 2021, during the preliminary hearing, the court closed Tsvetkova’s trial to journalists and listeners, citing the fact that “during the consideration of the case, intimate aspects of the lives of the participants may be disclosed” and “materials classified as pornographic by the prosecution will be considered.”

“Nothing foreshadowed that the process would be closed,” notes Tsvetkova’s lawyer Alexander Pikhovkin. — No legal grounds were provided for closing the process. The court, apparently, simply considered that our society is not mature and conscious enough to listen in an open trial to a dispute about the admissibility of public discussions regarding women's health and female physiology. As a result of the closure of the trial, the public was deprived of the opportunity to learn first-hand that the victims did not consider themselves victims, the witnesses did not see what they were testifying about, and the forensic examination was carried out by an expert with an outstanding criminal record.”