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Samantha DAlberti
Dr. Melina Probst-Martin
English 1102
5/11/16

Sextremism Divides Feminists

Throughout history, feminist women have employed various methods to draw attention to
and protest patriarchal institutions and laws they perceive as oppressive to women. Many of
these have been successful and as a result, granted women more rights and better treatment in
society. However, not all forms of protest are effective in sending the message feminists want to
send and sometimes go as far as creating problems within the movement. A recently formed
group known as FEMEN has become very controversial for the actions of its protesters. FEMEN
formed in 2008 in Ukraine and consists of young women currently led by Inna Shevchenko, and
has been protesting by using what they call sextremist methods. These methods involve topless
women with political slogans written on their bodies protesting in public, often performing
extreme and destructive actions such as dousing themselves in fake blood, staging mock
hangings or destroying religious images. Though their protest methods are not new, nor are they
unique to FEMEN, they have drawn both support and condemnation from other feminists. While
sextremism has gained media attention, it more often than not does not convey the message
FEMEN is trying to send and has divided feminists, harming the movement.

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One of the most obvious issues with sextremism is that by protesting topless, FEMEN is
unintentionally allowing themselves to be objectified and give in to male fantasies. FEMEN does
not view their protests this way, declaring on their official site, femen.org, Our weapons are
bare breasts! They reference this attitude often, seeing their bodies as intimidating when
presented in a nonsexual manner as a vehicle for protest. In her article, Mediatized
Controversies of Feminist Protest: FEMEN and Bodies as Affective Events, Mariam
Betlemidze, a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Utah writes, By writing slogans
on their topless torsos, FEMEN create image events that not only attract mediated attention but
also force spectators to read FEMENs discourse as they look at their bodies. Comments on the
videos of their activism reference this subversive and affective use of imagery. What she is
saying here is that FEMENs sextremism works because when people look at them, intrigued
because they are topless, they have no choice but to read the political slogans they have written
on themselves, which in turn desexualizes their bodies. However, the media often censors photos
of FEMEN protests, showing that their bodies are still being viewed as sexual and inappropriate.
Uncensored mages of protests used in the media and taken by spectators also make their way
online, where they are easily accessible. The media tends focus more on the disruptive and
sexual nature of FEMENs sextremist protests, rather than what they are protesting and why.
Betlemidze also writes, Many online responses to coverage label FEMEN members as sluts and
their actions as offensive and vulgar. YK1s comment that FEMEN are not only dummies but
provocateurs on Ukranian Sluts Pledged Support to Their Moscow Colleagues by Destroying
the Prostration Cross in Kyev represents the aggressive tone of the majority of the events
virtual audience. Betlemidzes point is that FEMEN protesters are largely viewed as overlysexual and attention-seeking women with little, if anything to say.

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In gaining media attention, sextremism relies almost completely on the shock value
created by topless, destructive protests, rather than getting people concerned about issues women
are facing. According to Julia Khrebtan-Horhager, assistant professor of communication studies
at Colorado University, in her article, Je Suis FEMEN! Traveling Meanings of Corporeal
Resistance, In the totalitarian USSR, female and male bodies were strategically and equally
de-gendered, de-sexualized, and instrumentalized exploited, in factfor the greater goal of
building that Great Socialist Future promised by the Soviet propaganda machine. According to
Soviet doctrine, public nudity, prostitution, homosexuality, and sex slavery were lucrative and
shameful attributes of the West. She goes on to further explain how FEMEN is virtually
unsupported in Ukraine and that, On many levels, the lack of support combined with the
criticism of the group in Ukraine is representative of the prevailing Ukrainian public reading of
FEMENs corporealitya simultaneously material and symbolic process of utilizing the body as
a text, a messenger, and a site of resistancethrough the lens of Soviet nostalgia. The purpose
of Khrebtan-Horhagers statements is that FEMENs sextremist protests are by and large far
more shocking to Ukrainian audiences than western ones. By relocating to France and Germany,
western European countries who have achieved higher levels of equality decades ago, FEMEN
gained a more supportive audience and safer environment, but lost much of the power their
sexstremist protests had in Ukraine. While protesters are still condemned and arrested for their
actions, western Europe is far more tolerant and supportive of them.
Another major issue with sextremist protests that creates rifts among feminists is that
FEMEN seems far more concerned with the actual act of protesting topless at the expense of
ignoring cultural contexts. As stated previously, FEMEN originated in Ukraine, a country with
Soviet social mores regarding sexuality still deeply entrenched. As a whole, FEMEN does not

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seem to understand that these mores do not exist everywhere in the same way. On femen.org,
sextremism is listed as part of FEMENs ideology. By insisting topless, destructive protests are
necessary in every instance, FEMEN is shutting out people who would rather fight oppression in
other ways, which could be more effective in other circumstances. In addition to this, FEMEN
protesters have tended to appear clueless as to the meaning behind some of the places they have
chosen as protest sites. The most notable time was when Inna Shevchenko used a chainsaw to cut
down a cross to show solidarity with Pussy Riot, a feminist punk rock band from Russia who had
three members arrested for a protest in a church. In denouncing patriarchal religion and
protesting Pussy Riots arrest, Shevchenko overlooked the important detail that this particular
cross was a memorial to victims of Stalinist oppression and a famine in the 1930s. Betlemidze
states in the cross-sawing event of 2012 in Kiev, Inna Shevchenkos hands do the extreme
opposite of a feminine touch as they are not caressing, but destroying a religious object. She
believes that this is a good example of FEMEN subverting feminine imagery to affectively
protest, however, according to Olzhas Auyezov in the article, Ukraine activist cuts down cross
in Russian female punk rock band protest, Femen's move seems certain to trigger outrage, both
among religious groups in the predominantly Orthodox Christian country and among relatives of
the millions of victims of famine and repression that took place under Soviet dictator Joseph
Stalin. This shows that in her desire to protest and show solidarity with Pussy Riot, and to shock
spectators, Shevchenko overlooked the meaning behind the cross and as a result people were
more enraged that a memorial had been destroyed and religion had been attacked. They did not
seem notice or care about the political message Shevchenko was trying to send, and as a result
few addressed the issue of patriarchal religion.

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Perhaps the biggest issue with sextremist protests is it often perpetrates what it aims to
stop by telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies, and speaking for other
women, rather than letting them use their own voice to protest the patriarchal institutions. In this
way, FEMEN is substituting one extreme from one side of the spectrum (women need to be
covered) for another (women need to be naked). FEMEN has come under a lot of fire for
protesting the act of veiling done by Muslim women. The article title Hijab Day: Theres No
Such Thing as a Feminist Who Supports The Hijab written and posted by Shevchenko on
femen.org says everything about their views on veiling. The article goes on to describe the
background of the hijab as oppressive, and while Shevchenko brings up many regimes in the
Middle East where veiling was required by law, as well as how many women stopped veiling
when no longer required to, she also states, it is a moral crime to claim that hijab is a
choice or freedom for Muslim women, as long as there are still millions that are forced to
follow the required code of conduct of hiding yourself in many countries and communities until
today. Shevchenko, who is not a Muslim, is arguing that Muslim women who do not live in
oppressive countries cannot claim freedom of choice in expressing their identities with what they
wear on their own bodies. While advocating for a womans choice to reveal as much of her body
as she wants, FEMEN has turned around and claimed that a womans choice to conceal as much
as she wants is inherently oppressive and patriarchal. This hypocrisy as well as blatant attack on
Muslim women has been condemned by feminists worldwide. Muslim women have spoken out
against FEMEN, notably saying that FEMEN does not speak for them and calling the group
Islamophobic. As Elizabeth J. Natalle, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina
Greensboro writes in her article FEMEN and Feminism Without Boundaries, In Paris, joined
by Arab women, the four core members of FEMEN arrived at a popular tourist area dressed in

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niqabs. They promptly stripped off their niqabs to stand topless in panties with slogans painted
on their bodies, including Islamist = sadist, France, strip off your clothes, and Rather
naked than in a niqab! Such slogans were offensive to the very people FEMEN was claiming
to be fighting for as Natalle continues, writing, the Internet response from Muslim women in
other countries was decidedly negative. She goes on to describe another protest called
International Topless Jihad Day by FEMEN, which took place outside the Great Mosque of
Paris. FEMEN burned a Tawhid flag in support of Amina Sboui, a Tunisian member who was
currently in jail. Natalle writes, The response from feminists against FEMEN was stronger:
Members of FEMEN quit the organization over the choice of protest site; Amina Sboui called
FEMEN Islamaphobic; and women in Egypt marched against FEMEN in burqas and with their
own flags. The fact that members of their own organization quit after this protest, as well as the
very member they were supporting denounced it is proof that sextremism is causing more harm
than good. With these protests, FEMEN alienated women who could have helped their cause by
attacking their identities and speaking for them.
While FEMEN has protested many serious issues women face worldwide, their
sextremist methods are not always effective. While usually shocking and attention-getting, their
topless protests often result in objectification and sexualization, as well as dismissal by people
who view it as a fad or nuisance. Because members seem to lack understanding of cultures
outside of Ukraine, their messages are often lost or misinterpreted by western audiences.
FEMEN members themselves seem to often get lost in their own protests, focusing more on the
shocking images they are trying to project and the destructive actions they are taking rather than
the message they are attempting to convey. By attempting to become a more global organization,
FEMEN has started speaking for other women without fully comprehending their cultures or

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problems, and has not only ended up attacking other women, but becoming similar to the
patriarchy they seek to destroy by telling women what they cannot wear. These problematic
issues add up to show that sextremist protests divide feminists and create rifts between women
rather than unite them against the patriarchy.