A Analysis of FEMEN’s View of Muslim Women

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Introduction Last year, the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN caused controversy when they protested topless in front of mosques to support Amina Sboui’s own topless protest in Tunisia. The controversy the group created was not so much about their support of Amina as much as it was about the way in which they decided to protest and their belief that Muslim women do not have a voice and need rescuing. After looking up interviews and articles from both sides of the controversy, it seemed that FEMEN has fallen into an orientalist view of Arab and Muslim women, which has many parallels to the headscarf controversy in France. In this paper, I argue that FEMEN’s “Topless Jihad” campaign is racist in two ways: First, in their orientalist view of Arabs/Muslims as the “other” that needs to be saved; and, second, through their belief that western values are superior and more “modern” than Arab/Muslim’s beliefs (mainly in regard to the headscarf issue). Understanding FEMEN Before delving into the FEMEN controversy, we will first take a moment to define and understand FEMEN as a movement. According to their website: “FEMEN is an international women’s movement of brave topless female activists painted with slogans and crowned with flowers. FEMEN female activists are the women with special training, physically and psychologically ready to implement the humanitarian tasks of any degree of complexity and level of provocation. FEMEN activists are ready to withstand repressions against them and propelled by the ideological cause alone. FEMEN is the special force of feminism, its spearhead militant unit, modern incarnation of fearless and free Amazons.” According to this definition, FEMEN members define themselves as feminist activists... ... middle of paper ... ...gitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1713&context=honorstheses • Miller, Anna L. "FEMEN's 'Topless Jihad'" The Nation. The Nation, 1 July 2013. Web. http://www.thenation.com/article/175056/femens-topless-jihad# • Nagarajan, Chitra. "Femen's Obsession with Nudity Feeds a Racist Colonial Feminism." TheGuardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 11 Apr. 2013. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/femen-nudity-racist-colonial-feminism • Nelson, Sara C. "Inna Shevchenko Responds To Muslim Women Against Femen's Open Letter In Wake Of Amina Tyler Topless Jihad." The Huffington Post UK. N.p., 8 Apr. 2013. Web. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/08/inna-shevchenko-muslim-women-femens-open-letter-amina-tyler-topless-jihad_n_3035439.html • Scott, Joan Wallach. The Politics of the Veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Print.

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