Show producer James Huff said on the Thursday’s AVfM Radio Program dealing with the “pussy pass,” that feminist rhetoric has become nastier and nastier in recent months.
Indeed, that is an undeniable fact.
However, in real life, the feminist activism is still relatively soft in terms of physical violence. It was amazing how the incident at the U of T shocked the MRM, considering the fact that we have been seeing, here, in Europe, some gruesome acts of vandalism throughout the year 2012 from feminist organizations such as FEMEN and Pussy Riot.
So let’s talk a bit about these FEMEN criminals who, due to the pussy pass, have avoided the jail terms that would have undoubtedly be applied had it been men who were committing the same deeds they did. The Pussy Riot organization will be addressed in another story.
What is FEMEN? If you randomly ask people on the street who or what FEMEN is, you might end up getting ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Those girls with the topless protests’ for an answer. You might as well see some people calling them ‘Russian’ for lack of a better term.
FEMEN is an organization that was founded in 2008 in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, by the former theater student Anna Hutsol. They officially claim to “To develop leadership, intellectual and moral qualities of young women in Ukraine,” and “To build up the image of Ukraine, the country with great opportunities for women.”[1]
However, just like any other feminist organization, or arguably the entire ideology, what it says on the label and what you find inside the box are two different things.
Anna Hutsol keeps saying that her organization seeks to become the most influential feminist organization in Europe and to organize in the year 2017, a feminine revolution in Ukraine.
They have became known to the public for their topless protests against the questionable morality of the Sharia Law or for the arguably moronic protests meant to push the authorities from Kyiv to install more public toilets in the Ukrainian capital city.[2]
But these are the small things. They became truly known in the year 2012 when the Ukraine hosted, alongside with Poland, the UEFA Euro 2012 football (soccer) tournament which was undoubtedly the most significant public event in Ukraine since the fall of the USSR. The Euro 2012 tournament was marked the moment when they commenced engaging in criminal acts.
At first, they attempted to steal the Euro 2012 trophy and claimed they only want to draw attention on prostitution[3]. Then, they moved to London as the 2012 Olympics commenced and claimed that allowing countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia to compete will eventually lead to sports like ‘stoning’ and ‘speed rape’ being added to competition.[4]
Of course, the fact that they attempted to initiate violence with police did not actually appear in any English language newspaper, thus the ‘poor little innocent women being victimized by police brutality’ could once again be used. If the protesters were to be naked men around an Olympics venue where there are children, nobody would have questioned the actions of the police forces and placing them on a sex offenders list would have been a foregone conclusion.
But all the aforementioned protests still seem rather innocent to a certain degree.
However, in July 2012, Yana Zhdanova, a FEMEN member, came to the airport when Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, was arriving in Ukraine and ran towards him screaming ‘Get out!’ whilst her naked back contained the following message:
Kill Kirill!
Yes, it was in English and yes she actually assaulted the Russian Orthodox cleric[5]. For that, she was awarded a 15 days jail sentence[6]. Some might say it is enough, albeit I cannot stop for a moment and wonder whether this was enough.
Think of it for a second: Let’s say a topless man comes towards Hillary Clinton shouting ‘Get out!’ whilst his back reads ‘Kill Hillary’ and motivates his gesture against Clinton as a message against her intention to push 28 million genital mutilations against men and boys in Africa.[7]. Would news reports still be in the ‘Fun’ section like the other one was in most mainstream European media? Would this piece of news go almost unnoticed? I sincerely doubt it.
But they didn’t stop there. In August, Inna Șevcenko took down, with chainsaw, a wooden cross in the center of Kiev that had been erected in the memory of the people that died during the Stalinist oppression. This took place in front of the former NKVD headquarters[8].
That’s right, monument erected from private money donated by the survivors of a real oppression, was taken down by an almost-naked feminist, because she felt that the vandals from Pussy Riot had to be set free and thus she is entitled to walk freely with a chainsaw in the center of a European capital city and take down monuments.
700 people were killed in November 1941 in Kiev by Stalin’s regime. That’s only one month out of a long-time regime and only one city. All those people were killed for disliking the predecessor of feminist ideology – Marxism-Leninism. But those people cannot be commemorated properly because the FEMEN movement says so.
Just imagine someone taking down the Washington monument or the monument that’s been placed at ground zero after 9/11. That was the sentimental value of that monument for the Ukrainian people that suffered through real oppression.
The Ukrainian authorities wanted to arrest her but the FEMEN movement organized a blockade[9] and Inna eventually fled Ukraine and moved to France where she opened a ‘training center for activists’[10] and she actually has the nerve to claim that she is being persecuted by the Ukrainian authorities.
And these violent thugs are being cried over on in the Ukrainian media because they got alienated by their families once they joined the movement[11]. Would anyone from the media even care, let alone be compassionate, if they were men? Again, I sincerely doubt it.
Some might think that calling them ‘violent thugs’ is too much, albeit in my moral compass, someone who uses a chainsaw in the centre of a major city to take down a monument is indeed a violent thug. Allow me translate a statement of Inna Șevcenko in the last article cited above:
I try to shake women in Ukraine and make them socially active. We provoke them, show that women can do it. I generally aim to organize in 2017 a female revolution. Maybe not a matriarchy, but very close to it. Enough with the male sins!
But now they are in almost every European country. On December 12 they protested in front of the Ukrainian Parliament[12] and on December 21 they protested in front of the Egyptian embassy in Stockholm, Sweden (see video[13]).
Sure, to many, they might still seem harmless and some UK feminists dissociated from their claims[14]. However, on January 1 2012, very few people were aware of their existence whilst now they have representatives in almost all European countries and in South America.
They want something very close to matriarchy, or something else.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femen
[2] http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20101119/API/1011191413
[5] http://rt.com/news/femen-topless-russian-patriarch-114/
[7] http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/clinton-determined-to-push-28-million-circumcisions/
[8] http://rt.com/news/femen-cross-pussy-riot-930/
[9] http://un.ua/eng/article/406298.html
[10] http://www.indiatvnews.com/news/world/cross-chopping-topless-activist-flees-ukraine-8798.html
[11] http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/photos/4c9787a7b35d4/
[12] http://www.rtv.net/femen–protest-topless-in-parlamentul-ucrainei-video_57757.html
[13] http://www.realitatea.net/au-protestat-complet-dezbracate-cu-pancarte-religioase_1078508.html
[14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/15/ukrainian-feminists-topless-campaign
