AnonymousRiot Grrrl is actually really damaging in a lot of ways. Kathleen Hanna is incredibly cissexist and racist. I encourage to you be mindful of the music and things you consume. Enjoy riot grrrl but realise how awful a lot of people in the original movement were.
a lot of people seem to have that problem. i’m not sure what to say because this is a tumblr issue, not a mod issue.
The punk rock group was found guilty on Friday of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. The rockers laughed while the verdict was read, although they could face up to three years in prison. Outside the courthouse, about 1,000 of Pussy Riot supporters are chanting “Shame!” “Fascists!” and “Freedom to Pussy Riot!”
In the rest of the world, they’ve been hailed as heroes; young and brave freedom fighters in a society where political liberty is slowly being eaten away. But in Russia, their prank concert at the holiest spot in the Russian Orthodox Church at which they wore short sexy dresses, colorful tights and their now-famous bright balaclavas, angered a great many people. It was as if a group of men had mooned the Wailing Wall or a band had played kazoos during a Catholic wake—a provocative and deeply offensive act to Russian believers.
Which is why, on the eve of their sentencing on charges of hooliganism, many Russians would feel no sympathy for the three young, skinny girls imprisoned since February, when they sang a “punk prayer” that asked the Virgin Mary to expel President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin, using a traditional intercession prayer in Orthodoxy, and a church, for their act of political satire.
Pussy Riot has indeed been that—a riot; sparking demonstrations, and a sympathy movement, around the world.
Before their appearance at the church, Pussy Riot was a fringe activist group. Nobody had paid much attention to the band’s previous appearance in the center of Moscow’s Red Square featuring smoky fires and a song with the chorus “Putin Sucks.” And so, while Russians don’t necessarily disagree with the band’s political protests, many were offended by their barbs aimed at the church, and what they saw as scandalous sacrilege.
Political observers say the decision to imprison the girls was the result of a deal struck between Putin and the church, without much involvement by the Kremlin’s administration. And for Putin, of course, there is not much political cost in punishing critics who are already despised by a large part of the population. At the beginning of the trial, nearly half those polled said a punishment of two to seven years in prison was appropriate.
The Pussy Riot performers, meanwhile, argued that they were justified in using the church. Their act was motivated by the decision of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill to endorse Putin in the presidential race, debasing the church, in their view, by involving it in politics.
The band members believe there was a hidden meaning—that Putin wasn’t going soft but that rather he is afraid of their “war.” Senior clerics in the church and members of Putin’s government have been hinting that the girls could not have thought up the act on their own, and suggest a sinister plot involving foreign governments and media publications. ”Russian nationalists, who the Kremlin is very much afraid of, would have killed the girls if they were not in jail,” a pro-Kremlin political expert and deputy rector of Plekhanov university, Sergei Markov, told The Daily Beast. Nationalist leader, Alexander Belov, confirmed that “indeed, there are quite a few radical nationalists eager to kill the girls.” The leader of the nationalist Eurasia movement, Alexander Dugin, concurred, saying “the entire band should have been burnt by fire long ago.”
While I can understand that people are upset that the band selected a location that many revere as ‘holy’, I really do not see how three women are engaged in some sort of secret plot. The parts I emphasized are important because it shows how readily society is ready to murder those who choose public platforms to voice their opinions. In this case, they are being sent to jail and I feel that sentence is a bit ridiculous. Think I might have to make some Pussy Riot patches for fun.
I don’t personally know, but maybe one of our lovely followers does? Send us any information you might have! Or contact this lovely person yourself :-)
