So, I’ve beaten the subject to the ground. As to FEMEN, they recently according to this RT article shifted their operations HQ to France, in part due to the massive Muslim population there. Now given that most of their past antics (or those of associated artist activists like Pussy Riot et al.) involved highly aggressive demonstrations in Christian places or worship or symbols.
It is important to recognize that in my allusions and insinuations, past and present, I do not suggest that typical FEMEN supporters in the wider conversation, whether in the blogosphere, online fora, or outside the Internet’s sandbox of distractions, are disingenuous or less than sincere. I believe they overwhelmingly are sincere.
Nor do I mean to suggest that the tactical level activists are insincere, I believe that apart from a very small few individuals, each of these women protesting, much less than those sitting back-room organizing, is enthusiastic, sincere, and fired up about trying to make a difference. That does, of course, leave a small few individuals concerning whom my questions stand.
Regarding protests concerning Christian symbols and sites. Take one, like that chain sawing a Crucifix erected to honor the memory of Ukrainians killed by Stalin’s purges (and the frisson inherent in this is palpable) assaulting Church officials, or verbally harassing them, throwing objects in Churches, staging mock suicides in Churches. Religiously, take the recent campaign concerning Tunisia – one that nude protester and FEMEN sympathizer Amina Tyler herself was even taken aback by (http://rt.com/news/femen-paris-tunisia-president-813/) and so on.
It’s clear that FEMEN chiefly have two religious targets in mind. Christianity (Orthodox and Catholic), and Islam. FMEN have been explicitly quoted to the effect that their main purpose in moving to France concerned the very large Muslim population there. Given the massive abuse of women outside of both Christian and Islamic spheres, this extreme selectivity makes me wonder..
So far they have not staged any protests against ultra-orthodox Rabbis or their synagogues, and time remains to be seen whether they will branch out to protesting for Female rights in Jewish contexts.. but it’s clear that their main Axe to grind is religion in general, and not just female rights. Where are the protests against secular (other than the Barbie Doll protest, which I will not comment on) affronts to female dignity and rights?
So far this small group (quite small, one will note in all of the pictures of protests across Eurasia for the most part you see the same core 4 or 5 women, and a few others also pop up here and there) of Young, Physically Attractive, Artsy Feminist Activists only give lip service to one of the largest issues concerning female rights in their part of the world.
The massive Sex Slave exportation of Ukrainian and Russian women.
Say bro… didya just hear… a pin drop?
A protest or two gave lip service to this theme,but for the most part they repeatedly hammer away at issues such as clothing, Hijab, the right to bear one’s breasts, or Homosexual Rights and marriage – in Europe the most liberal climates in the world for LGB issues. They have targeted a joint Putin Merkel event, evidence of their basic feud with Putin’s administration in Russia and the incarceration of Pussy Riot members likely play into this. But for the most part their protests looked at across the board all focus around a small core of issues that can be summed up in this phrase:
Lifestyle Leftist Activism.
One can barely call them Leftist, they lack any systematic critique of Capitalism, its inherent contradictions, they almost never speak about Labour and Labour issues. Just the power of Putin, Church Priests, and Imams – in the most secularized age of Eurasia.
What easy targets to pick on; two of the most unpopular and conservative religions in modern Secular and progressive discourse., flash some tits, paint inchoate slogans on your body, yell about lifestyle issues closely related to two established religions. It is alright to repeatedly provoke Orthodox Christians, or to repeatedly provoke Catholic Christians, or increasingly (per their new axis of influence) provoke Muslims. But it is not so easy, in today’s discourse, to poke at certain benighted saintly beings…
One would never see them, for example, protesting outside of Yoga Ashrams about the rampant burning of brides and similar female rights issues in some Hindu communities. The massive gang rape epidemic that so many Indian Feminists are bravely protesting against, organizing patrols against, what feminist solidarity from their topless European sisters?
Nada. In a substantive form anyway.
One would never see them half nude protesting outside of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue over Orthodox Jewish modest female clothing and the hair covering that orthodox Jewish women wear (which is often pretty equivalent to conservative Muslim Hijab.
One would never see them protesting Embassies of various South and South East Asian governments over the existence of indigenous Child Sexual slavery in those countries.
One would never see them protesting Chinese events or figures or embassies regarding massive forced Abortion of Chinese women, that Chinese FEMINIST activists have long decried, in pursuit of their One Child policy, or the MASSIVE selective abortion of Female fetuses throughout Asia, but mainly in China and India.
One has not, at least yet, seen them protest Gulf Arab state functions, figures, celebrities, and embassies over the WIDESPREAD Abuse, Rape, and Murder of Filipinia or Ethiopian or Thai Female guest workers and maids, or keeping such women as Sex Slaves – Much less than the widespread indignities heaped on South Asian female workers in the Gulf, whether Hindu Indian, or Muslim Pakistani or Bengali, much less than Sudanic African ones.
But more telling to me, they only give rare lip service to the massive Sexual exploitation and rape of their own Ukrainian sisters traded in a massive import/export ring involving the Russian and Israeli Mafiya, Serbian and Albanian Mafias, and the complicity of numerous bought and paid for Government officials worldwide.
FEMEN are either village idiots with an immense aptitude for not seeing the obvious in front of them, overly excited, indeed intoxicated and narcissistic about the symbolic power they wield, or they knowingly pursue issues peripheral to very real and massive abuses of Female Rights worldwide. The issues that typically concern certain subsets of progressives often concern what they can wear or not wear, who they can fuck or not fuck, what they can eat and swill or not eat and swill, and moribund institutions of religious authority that collectively built the artistic and architectural traditions, not to mention philosophical, or Eurasia East and West, Islamdom and Christendom *alike.
It is all lifestyle radicalism, shove a frozen chicken up one’s **cunt, Chainsaw down a memorial Crucifix to victims of a soviet holocaust, insult Muslim feminists some of whom openly stated that the Hijab was a non issue for them, and claim that you can see the fear in their eyes and that they are being disingenuous due to their oppression, and so revile their religion that even the first Arab topless FEMEN sympathizer protester had to step back and say “Hey, that’s going a bit too far.”
Mock the suicide of a right wing intellectual and ideologue (one of the few cogent ones in the New Right actually, and other than Benoist probably the most intelligent out of that whole movement.. but that’s for another day) by staging a mock suicide in a church, and all of it and more around a small core subset of issues that really do not address the real, visceral, backbreaking, suffering murder and rape that real women lacking the privileged mobility of these Eurasian globe trotting FEMEN protesters (and also lacking their funding.. and salaries one imagines)
All of this is quite curious and leaves many unanswered questions in my mind.
…..
Footnote: * I say alike – much as Social conservatives and the “Alt right” may like to gnash their teeth and invent revisionist histories, the Civilization of Western Asia and Europe intimately involved the mutual collaboration and interaction of Christians and Muslims, on top of not only the bedrock of Graeco-Roman Pagan civilizations, but a MASSIVELY unacknowledged set of influences from the Pagan Celts, much of which was obscured by Roman propagandists, as well as the Hindu Indians, Egyptians, and Asyro-Babylonian Semites and other pagan peoples from pre-Islamic Arabia.
** People who freak out over the word cunt should relax. I am quite fond of the word, and I am indeed quite fond of cunts. It’s a perfectly valid Anglo-Saxon word that should not be uses as an insult or term of derision. For indeed human life emerges into the world through the cunt, and we all owe a massive debt to the cunt along with the cock. Because of Cocks and Cunts humanity exist and propagate on the world.