Eurotophobia and the Case of Yulia Tsvetkova

Yulia Tsvetkova: 'Living Women Have Body Hair - And It's Normal!' 

Drawing from the series A Woman is Not a Doll (2018) 

 

I. 

 

I closed a recent post discussing the case of Caterina Sforza and her provocative act of vulvic defiance in the face of her male enemies by suggesting that the latter is not something that would work today in a porno-epilated culture; i.e., a culture in which the cunt has been rendered null and void, having lost its monstrous beauty and magical power.  

 

For whilst today, there may still be some men with an aversion to or dislike of female genitalia - perhaps on aesthetic grounds, for example - there is no real horror or fear of the cunt in the old sense. Even Freudians have largely abandoned their anxieties around castration and the old folk idea of vagina dentata has become laughable; the contemporary cunt, alas, has lost its teeth as well as hair.    

Having said this ... It seems that I was being somewhat Eurocentric and had failed to consider what the case of Yulia Tsvetkova tells us about eurotophobia in Vladimir Putin's Russia ...

II.

 

Yulia Tsvetkova is a 27-year-old artist and LGBTQ+ activist, currently under house arrest and facing criminal prosecution for creating and circulating homosexual propaganda and pornography; the latter consisting of no more than simple drawings of the female body posted on a feminist website in order to counter unrealistic and stereotypical images of women (an example of which can be seen above).

 

Well, that's not quite true; even the Russian authorities have conceded that these drawings do not in fact constitute pornography. Thus the charges against Tsvetkova relate, rather, to her role as the administrator of an online community who upload explicit (if often abstract) depictions of female genitalia to a page named after Eve Ensler's 1996 play, The Vagina Monologues. 

 

This, it seems, is too much: images of vaginas worked in elaborate embroidery or painted in delicate watercolour, trigger an ancient disturbance in the Russian male psyche; a primitive fear and hatred not so much for the cunt-as-organ, but for the cunt-as-symbol - one which obliges them to consider that most dreadful of suppositions: Supposing truth to be a woman ... [1]

 

It's a supposition that subverts the entire phallocratic order and its values; one that invites us to reconsider the world from a gynocentric perspective in which truth is not something that can be clearly identified and fixed, but something hidden, ever-changing, and prone to leakage. 

 

Ultimately, in thinking truth as woman - and in terms of the cunt - is to think truth not as presence, but, rather, as absence. Thus male anxiety before the gaping vagina is essentially a terror of staring into the void; a site of sheer loss in which everything becomes zero and Man struggles to maintain his hard-on. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It was Nietzsche, of course, who first raised this supposition concerning the nature of truth; see his Preface to Beyond Good and Evil. See also chapter 3, Vol. 1, of The Treadwell's Papers, by Stephen Alexander, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), pp. 55-80, wherein I discuss this remark at length, developing a sexual politics of what D. H. Lawrence terms cunt-awareness. 

 

For more information on the case of Yulia Tsvetkova, visit freetsvet.net. 

 

Or to send an email to the Russian authorities demanding that charges against Tsvetkova are dropped, visit her Amnesty International page by clicking here. 

  

Notes on the Case of Caterina Sforza

Lorenzo di Credi: Portrait of Caterina Sforza 

 (c. 1481-83)

 
Se io potessi scrivere tutto, farei stupire il mondo!

 

 

I. 

 

Nietzsche's critique of nineteenth-century feminism is a simple one: it marks a loss of style and a surrender of intelligence:

 

"There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, of which a real woman - who is always a clever woman - would have to be ashamed from the very heart." [1]  

 

Often mistakenly thought of as a misogynist, Nietzsche seemed to have a thing for strong, smart, stylish, women who do not aspire to become more like men or demand equality, but affirm themselves as singular beings in their own right. 

 

Women, for example, like Lou Andreas-Salomé, who not only charmed Nietzsche to the extent that he asked for her hand in marriage, but also captivated Rilke and Freud. And women like Caterina Sforza, about whom I wish to speak here, with particular reference to an astonishing incident mentioned by commentators including Machiavelli and Valentine de Saint-Point ...

 

 

II. 

 

Caterina Sforza (1463-1509) was an Italian noblewoman, raised in the refined Milanese court who, from an early age, was noted for her bold and impetuous nature. For whilst, like her siblings, she received a classical education from her tutors, her grandmother encouraged Caterina to also take inspiration from the notorious condottierri from whom she was descended. 

 

A skilled huntress, Caterina also loved to dance, conduct experiments in alchemy, and involve herself in the complicated - and violent - politics of her day. Invariably, this brought the independent-minded and free-spirited woman into conflict with some powerful men, including Cesare Borgia, who at one time had her imprisoned.     

 

Following her marriage to Girolamo Riario, Catarina went to live in Rome with her husband, who served his uncle, the Pope. Upon her arrival, in May 1477, the fourteen-year-old Caterina found the city buzzing with cultural fervour and political intrigue; a city in which material interests and the desire for power far exceeeded spiritual matters.

 

Although Caterina's husband told her not meddle in affairs of state, thanks to her extroverted and sociable character she quickly integrated into aristocratic Roman society, becoming much admired for her beauty and highly respected for her intelligence. Before long, this young woman became an influential intermediary between Rome and other Italian courts, particularly Milan.   

 

Unfortunately, following the death of Sixtus IV, in 1484, the lives of Caterina and her husband were thrown into turmoil ... Riots and rebellions spread throughout Rome and their home, the Palazzo Orsini, was looted and almost destroyed. 

 

Then, worse, in 1488, Girolamo was killed and Caterina found herself at the mercy of her enemies, which leads us to the incident that I wanted to discuss in particular ...

III.

 

According to legend, Caterina was besieged inside a fortress and when her enemies threatened the lives of her children whom they held captive, she stood on the walls, exposed her lower body and, pointing to her cunt, cried: Do it! Kill them in front of me if you want to! I have what's needed to make more! 

 

Now, true or not, this is an astonishing act not only of defiance, but of what Baudrillard terms seduction. 

 

For the effect of this genital display was to render her enemies uncertain of how to respond. Not knowing how to reply, or what to do, they backed down and backed away, sparing her children. Caterina had effectively stripped them of their power and agency, reducing them to impotence. Baudrillard also describes this as the revenge of the object. 

 

Caterina was one of the few women discussed at length by Machiavelli in his writings: if he only briefly mentioned this act of genital defiance in The Prince, he recounted the story at some length and with a certain vulgar relish, in both his Discourses on Livy and Florentine Histories.   

 

And, four centuries later, Valentine de Saint-Point also recalls the story in her Manifesto della Donna futurista (1912) [2]. 

Arguably, what this demonstrates is that prior to our epilated culture of feminism, digital pornography, and labiaplasty, when a woman lifted up her skirt and displayed her cunt, it invoked profound horror in male onlookers. Indeed, even gods, demons and insects were disconcerted by this apotropaic act of magical indecency.

      

Sadly, however, the cunt has now been rendered null and void having lost much of its monstrous beauty and magical capacity. Women have been fatally exposed in the name of sexual emancipation and and close-up images of their exposure are today endlessly circulated via the media; an act of violent and systematic exorcism [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), Pt. VII, §239.       

      Nietzsche continues in this important section for an understnding of his sexual politics: "That in woman which inspires respect and fundamentally fear is her nature, which is more 'natural' than that of the man, her genuine cunning, her beast-of-prey suppleness, the tiger's claws beneath the glove [...]." I don't know if Nietzsche was thinking of any woman in particular here, but it's interesting to note that Caterina Sforza was nicknamed La Tigre.   

 

[2] See the recent post on Valentine de Saint-Point and her two Futurist manifestos: click here.

 

[3] I'm self-plagiarising here from an earlier post on Torpedo the Ark, entitled Anasyrma: Upskirt Politics and Vulva Activism (15 Nov 2013): click here. 

 

Readers interested in knowing more about the heroic women of the Renaissance - rulers, philosophers, artists, saints, consorts, courtesans, etc. - might like the following site on Tumblr: Fuck Yeah, Renaissance Women! Several posts on Caterina Sforza can be found here.

 

For a (kind of) follow up post re: vulva activism and the case of Yulia Tsvetkova, click here.