One Sochi, Anti-Gay Russia Line of Attack: Putin's Repressed

If the point of these posters from a protest in London on Saturday was simply to mock Putin, maybe there is more to it than that. Taking almost every photo-opportunity he can to demonstrate his masculinity, Putin seems like nothing if not the poster child for repression. That’s not to insinuate anything about Putin’s sexuality, by the way, except that he functions as the model for a society that not only denies homosexuality and persecutes gays, but in so doing, also denies that sexuality operates on a continuum.

It’s this fact that makes this Business Insider photo post so amusing. Because, in aggregating 39 photos that illustrate what a “badass” leader he is — badass substantially overlapping with “man’s man,” it’s also funny in that gallery seeing him in that fur hat, or holding the chick, or feeding those goats. It’s not just a photo editor inserting a few pics that go against type but also an acknowledgment, at some level, that the nature and expression of gender is not “unipolar.”

In the next weeks and months leading up to Sochi, there is going to be a flood of images, and I imagine, visual provocations pushing back on Russia’s primitive stance on homosexuality. (UPI set the table recently simply by publishing this beautiful photo of U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir.)

In that span, you can expect more imagery that lands a direct hit on the silly assumption that a clear dichotomy exists between the Russian male as exemplified by Putin on the horse, Putin out hunting and the Putin on the poster.

(photo 1: Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press caption: Protesters held signs depicting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in London on Saturday. Via Gays in Russia Find No Haven, Despite Support From the West (NYT).photo 2: Alexei Druzhinin/Pool – Reuters/RIA Novosti/ caption: Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visits an agricultural exhibition at Russia’s Exhibition Centre in Moscow October 11, 2008.