A Russian philosophy journal has retracted a paper about lesbian fashion magazines, citing a newly passed law that bans “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences.”
The journal Logos, which describes itself as “the leading Russian-language journal in the fields of philosophy, social sciences, humanities and cultural studies” and counts the philosopher Slavoj Žižek as a member of its editorial council, earlier this month retracted a paper titled “Looking good: The lesbian gaze and fashion imagery.”
The paper, by Reina Lewis of the London College of Fashion, still appears online, but an entry on the Russian database eLIBRARY indicates it was retracted for being “in violation of standards.” The notice continued:
The retraction was issued by the decision of the editorial board due to the presence of signs that fall under the scope of Law No. 217471-8 “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation (regarding the prohibition of propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences)”.
The abstract of the paper stated:
This paper is concerned with the different forms of pleasure and identification activated in the consumption of dominant and subcultural print media. It centers on an analysis of the lesbian visual pleasures available in reading fashion articles in the new lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines. This consideration of the lesbian gaze is contrasted with the lesbian visual pleasures obtained from an against-the-grain reading of mainstream women’s fashion magazines. The rise of lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines fueled by the pink pound (the commercial potential of appealing to non-heterosexual consumers) has turned eroticized lesbian visual pleasure into the overt purpose of these magazine, rather than a clandestine pleasure obtained through a transgressive reading of dominant cultural imagery.
In contrast to the polysemic free-play of fashion fantasy through which readers derive lesbian pleasure in the consumption of mainstream magazines, responses to the fashion content in the lesbian magazine Diva suggest that readers in a subcultural context deploy a realist mode of reading that demands a monosemic positive iconography. To consider the different ways in which lesbians read mainstream and subcultural print media the author uses the concept of subcultural competency and suggests that the conflict over Diva’s fashion spreads may be linked to changing patterns of identification and the use of dress for recognizability.
At the beginning of December, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law “completely banning propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations, gender reassignment and pedophilia,” the state news agency TASS wrote. According to TASS:
The country’s mass media watchdog will be authorized to put websites with the propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations, pedophilia, and gender reassignment on the register of prohibited resources subject to blocking. It will also be authorized to determine the procedure of internet monitoring to spot such sites.
Reuters reported that individuals could be fined up to 400,000 roubles (about $5,800) and organizations up to 5 million roubles (about $72,400) for violating the law, and foreigners could be arrested for 15 days and deported from the country.
We emailed Lewis for comment and got an out of office reply.
We asked Valery Anashvili, editor in chief of Logos, whether the journal had received any indication from the government that the paper violated the law, and didn’t receive any response. Anashvili is also editor-in-chief of the Gaidar Institute Publishing House and the Delo Publishing House of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].