Do women who have had sex always tell lies?
The hamsters and their omega orbiters scuttling about the comments are the cherry on top.
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Every now and again the rhetoric of patriarchal power reveals itself in a way that – were it not so pernicious – one would almost call poetic.
Last week in Moscow, Madonna lent her voice to the growing international condemnation of the trial of members of the feminist performance art group, Pussy Riot. During a concert she stripped off her shirt to reveal the group's name emblazoned on her back, before donning a version of their trademark balaclava for a slow rendition of Like A Virgin.
How, we wondered, would the Russian authorities respond to this brazen act of feminist solidarity? For the deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, the answer was obvious. On Wednesday night on Twitter, he as good as called the queen of pop a whore. Madonna's benediction – as it were – of Pussy Riot was beautifully apt. The charge of "hooliganism" against three members of the group relates to the performance last February of a "punk prayer" in which they exhorted the Virgin Mary to "put Putin away".
In a recent Guardian interview, a member of the group still in hiding explained that "the main concept was to appeal to the Virgin", to ask her to "protect the political system" because "the Virgin is the protector of Russia". While superficially an act of naive superstition, one suspects the women were not really banking on their leader being summarily swept away by divine intercession. Just like Madonna before them, the insolent political power of their gesture came from self-consciously reclaiming that great emblem of patriarchal oppression. They wanted the Virgin to abandon the patriarchs, switch sides, and "become a feminist". They wanted her pussy to riot.
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The hamsters and their omega orbiters scuttling about the comments are the cherry on top.