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Image Credit: NYTimes
From the New York Times: “Subverting a traditional symbol of segregation and oppression or reinforcing it?”
If you ask me the more traditional form of oppression is colonial minded Western liberals telling women from other cultures what they should be wearing.
Yes, I am sure there are a minority of Muslim women who feel oppressed by having to wear the burqa or hijab but that doesn’t excuse the sort of thing you are seeing in France where women are being forced to either stay indoors or go into the streets dressed in a way that makes them feel naked.
As for the patronising crap from Western feminists telling women who want to wear the burqa that they are being oppressed by wearing it … well maybe they should be looking to their own stilettos and idiotically impractical and overpriced fashion ‘must haves’ before deciding who is being oppressed.
It’s so often the same women who insist they should be able to go anywhere wearing whatever they like who are attempting to deny their Islamic sisters the same privilege.
BTW, I see no moral distinction between the actions of FEMEN activists flashing their breasts at Muslims and telling them to take off their burqas and those of their bible-toting neck-to-knee-clad grandmothers who sailed off to Africa and the Pacific to tell the women there that they had to cover up their own breasts.
I suppose it would be relatively easy to judge the Swedish mosque action of FEMEN if the women who protested were all Swedes who identified with the dominant culture of that country, and those they were protesting against were all Swedes who were recent immigrants and muslims, “racialized” or “ethincized” by the dominant culture as the other. That doesn’t appear to be the case. The debate over modesty and women’s dress takes place “within” and “between” cultures, if that spatial metaphor for the sources of identity still has any life in it. What with intersectionality and all that.
Here’s FEMEN protesting at Germany’s Next Top Model show: http://femen.org/en/gallery/id/204
Perhaps I am missing your point, but for the life of me I can’t see how FEMEN’s recruitment of Westernised (former?) Muslims like Aliaa Elmahdy and Amina Tyler legitimises either their agenda or their methods. Any more than the use of local converts by missionaries to criticise their ‘pagan’ sisters legitimised theirs. Or that Ayaan Hirsi Ali legitimises the Islamophobic agenda of the American Enterprise Institute. Or that the neo-feminist use of former sex workers to drown out the voices of current ones legitimises theirs. Or that the Mineral Council of Australia’s use of Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton and other Uncle (and Aunty) Toms legitimises theirs.
Maybe the debate over dress ‘between’ cultures is valid, but to claim to be speaking out for other people regardless of what those people are saying is not.
What I don’t see is any of the feisty and articulate feminists across the Muslim world – of whom Faiza S. Khan is only one of many – speaking out in support of FEMEN. Quite the contrary in fact.
FEMEN may be vocal supporters of my heroes Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, but Pussy Riot they ain’t.
It just looks like more neo-colonialist Islamophobia to me.
As if we didn’t have enough of that already.
BTW, I am a wholehearted supporter of intersectional and anarcha-feminism – if that wasn’t already obvious
Having mentioned Amina Tyler I probably need to clarify my attitude towards the debate she has triggered.
I think her initial protest was valid and abhor the threats made in response to it.
I think FEMEN’s initial protest against those threats were valid.
I do not think FEMEN’s extension of that protest to one against all wearing of burqas and niqabs was, though I can see that solidarity with Amina Tyler was part of their motivation.
I do not think Amina Tyler’s understandable joining up with FEMEN legitimises the extension of FEMEN’s protest.
I’m not sure why my previous comment revealing that Amina Sboui (Amina Tyler) quit FEMEN after
condemning it for Islamophobia was moderated out. Perhaps
someone at IJFAB has an ideological commitment to FEMEN. If so,
maybe the revelation that FEMEN was founded by and is
controlled by a man will shake some of that commitment.
Australian filmmaker Kitty Green has spent a year making what was
intended to be a pro-FEMEN documentary but during the time she
spent with the ‘movement’ she discovered that it was masterminded
and controlled by Ukrainian businessman Victor Svyatski. “It’s his
movement and he hand-picked the girls. He hand-picked the prettiest
girls because the prettiest girls sell more papers. The prettiest
girls get on the front page… that became their image, that became
the way they sold the brand,” explains Green, “Once I was in the
inner circle, you can’t not know him. He is
Femen. It was a big moral thing for me because I realised how this
organisation was run. He was quite horrible with the girls. He
would scream at them and call them bitches.” Svyatski himself is
unapologetic. “These girls are weak,” he says, “They don’t have the
strength of character. They don’t even have the desire to be
strong. Instead, they show submissiveness, spinelessness, lack of
punctuality, and many other factors which prevent them from
becoming political activists. These are qualities which it was
essential to teach them.” However he does admit that perhaps “in
his deep subconscious” he founded the movement to get girls. A
FEMEN member describes the relationship between the girls and
Svyatski as ‘akin to the Stockholm syndrome’. “We are
psychologically dependent on him and even if we know and understand
that we could do this by ourselves without his help, it’s
psychological dependence,” she says.