Rise of the naked female warriors

[Blue_Tires]

Known for its topless protesters, Femen is a worldwide movement against patriarchy. But are the activists' breasts obscuring the message?

One day last summer, Inna Shevchenko went into a forest outside Kiev, to learn how to use a chainsaw. The lumberjacks who were instructing her couldn't work out why she was so keen. "They thought I was just a crazy blonde," she says, shaking her white curls. "I was acting like: 'Oh really?'" She affects a coy, clueless demeanour. "'That's how you do it? Great!'"

The next day she went to a hilltop overlooking Kiev, and stripped to a pair of red denim shorts, worn with heavy boots, leather gloves, and a mask to protect her eyes. The Pussy Riot verdict was due that day, and in tribute to the Russian punk activists – and to mark her opposition to all religions – Inna proceeded to chop down a 13ft wooden cross that had been there since 2005. Despite her preparations, it wasn't easy. "When I started to cut it, I thought, 'it's not possible to destroy it,'" she says. But after seven minutes it fell, and she posed against the stump for invited journalists. With "Free Riot" scrawled across her bare breasts, she held out her arms to mirror the figure of Christ now lying on the ground.

Death threats arrived instantly. She says there were official calls for her arrest, and Russian TV reported that the cross was a memorial to the victims of Stalinism. Inna denies this, but Ukrainian journalists repeated the claim, and anger towards her sharpened. Men she suspected of being secret service agents immediately began milling outside her apartment, and a few days later, she was woken at 6am by the sound of her front door being kicked in. She escaped, jumping through a back window, then down from a first floor balcony, and made her way to Warsaw with $50, a mobile phone and her passport. She feared jail if she returned to Kiev, so some days later, she travelled to France, where women had expressed interest in joining Femen, the feminist group she runs with three Ukrainian friends.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/20/naked-female-warrior-femen-topless-protesters

[BainsBane]

1. I have to say I've felt a bit alienated from them

because they all appear to look like models. This paragraph deals with that issue, however: "The group has been accused of deploying only young, slim, beautiful women. But a new book about Femen, just published in France, features photos of women of different shapes and sizes on demonstrations, pictures I've never seen elsewhere. The media, unsurprisingly, pick the most obviously attractive photos. Inna says they have never chosen women according to their looks, or weight; the only proviso is that they have to be well-prepared. "There are a lot of girls who are very strong physically, but they cannot show aggression, they cannot imagine how they will react if someone tries to grab them." The movement is non-violent – Inna calls it "peaceful terrorism" – but she has been injured more than once, and was badly beaten during a recent action."

It appears that the media chooses to focus on groups members who fit hegemonic notions of beauty.

[ismnotwasm]

2. I'm not a nudist

But I think nudity can make a useful statement and am personally not very modest. The hope here is that the performance art can overcome the inevitable objectification that these women will experience. That is a difficult thing to fight.

[jollyreaper2112]

3. Well now

As a progressive I love the idea of protest, as a man I like the idea of bare breasts, but again as a progressive I then feel guilty for being distracted by boobies from what the point is.

It works as a shock tactic but it's hard to say whether it helps highlight or marginalize the issue. It's like if you protest an injustice by killing the oppressor, you risk the easy caricature of terrorist and the message is lost.

Same question can be asked with groups like Code Pink. They get headlines. Do they change minds? The tame protest groups that cooperate with authorities, those are the ones you never hear about because they don't even need to be marginalized, there's nothing worth covering.

I don't have an answer for this. Would people pay attention to Gaga for her singing alone or does she need the antics to keep tongues wagging?