Tag Archives: photos

Intersectional look at some of the Free-Amina protests

A few things upfront:
a) This is a post about FEMEN. Therefore, there will be boobs. Don’t do what I did, and look at the below pictures while in class. :-p
b) FEMEN has an undeserved reputation as sex positive because they call themselves “sextremists” and are using their naked bodies to protest. However, apparently they don’t think that the right to do with your body whatever you want extends universally: they are supporters of the Swedish Model, for example. In fact, at least one of the Free Amina photos on their site is against the background of a self-portrait-mural in which one woman holds up a sign saying “not a sex toy” and has “no prostitution” written on her chest. So yeah. Fail on that account.
c) A lot of the comments on FEMEN’s site are assorted attempts at dismissing the protesters as sluts, whores, etc., which gets mostly ridiculed and aggressively defended against on their page; that I think shows that their “sextremism” style activism has a place, in the same way that the aggressive New Atheist style of defending the right to be openly atheist does. But that doesn’t mean that either is unproblematic, or that either fits every issue and every context.
d) There were other noteworthy instances, posted in other places on the internet, but I really just wanted to work with the images FEMEN had on their facebook, and pull out a couple interesting examples. Otherwise, this post could have gone on forever.
e) All pictures are from the FEMEN facebook page.

Alright, let’s get to the actual point of this post:

1) Activists got into a closed conference at the Institute of Arab Culture in Paris, where the president of Tunisia was giving a presentation:003The target here is directly relevant: The Tunisian government is absolutely co-responsible for Amina’s disappearance, and is part of the problem she was protesting against in the first place. On the other hand, none of the pictures I’ve seen showed the activists having anything Amina-related written on their bodies, making this appear far more generically anti-Islam, and not primarily pro-Amina.

2) Free Amina protesters in Berlin climbed a fence and took photos of themselves in front of a mosque, holding signs:003Muslims make 5.4% of Germany’s population. Anti-Muslim xenophobes make anywhere from 21% (wouldn’t want to have Muslims as neighbors) to 58% (believe that Muslims’ rights to practice their religion in Germany should be considerably limited). So I’m thinking a bunch of Germans trespassing on private property of a targeted minority might not exactly send the right message; plus, what did that random mosque have to do with Amina?
One of the women in this action is of Arab descent, and had “Arab Women Against Islamism” written across her front. A number of the other protesters had directly Amina-related things written on their bodies. That reads like solidarity with Amina, and with Arab women in general.

3) A large group of activists protested near the Tunisian embassy in Paris, got arrested for their effort:003003Two pictures this time, because the visuals of that protest were amazingly evocative of suppression of women’s right to speak up (especially the first one). Images like this are why I think the FEMEN style of protest can be quite powerful; but primarily, it is powerful in exactly this way: speaking to the right of women to express themselves.
The protesters gathered near the Tunisian embassy, a clearly understandable connection to Amina’s plight; they also had Amina-related things written on their bodies, and a number of them had stylized portraits of Amina in her now-famous photo on their backs. This could be very easily read as solidarity with Amina.
The wider context of having this protest in France could potentially muddle some of the clarity of the message. Protesting for the right to naked boobs in public spaces in a country that banned veiling in public spaces might not read as “freedom” so much as “freedom to be like us”; not quite the same thing.

4) Many Middle Eastern/North African women also participated in the Free Amina protests (pictures from FEMEN, grouped together by me for easier viewing): five pictures of middle eastern women in face-veil, showing their nude chests with pro-amina messages written on themThe women in the pictures are Egyptian, Iranian, Moroccan, Algerian, and Bahraini; at least one of them is a Muslim. All their messages refer to Amina. In all these cases, their actions directly attack a form of oppression they themselves are subject to.

5) One more from France. French-Arabic women protest in front of a mosque, burn Salafist flag. Two topless women flipping off everyone; burning flag in foreground As with the German protest… why this particular mosque? That point aside, this protest of Arab women, including one Tunisian FEMEN member, standing up against their oppressors is a powerful statement; that image is a powerful visual of that fight against one’s oppression. This too looks less like a pro-Amina rally, but given the context, it’s noticeably in solidarity with her: Arab women fighting together against common oppressor.

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bonus screenshot — a piece of advice: if you don’t want to look like you’re just being ignorantly islamophobic, it would help to do a basic google search before going out to protest:screenshot of FEMEN facebook status showing protester, claiming Hagia Sopia is a mosque

A piece of cloth

me, wearing a red scarf wrapped around my head, only the eyes visible
This is a crappy picture of me wearing a scarf my dad gave me for Christmas. I’ve been wearing it like that most of the time I’ve been outside since then, because this is North Dakota, and it’s still winter. This just as a reminder that the scarf itself is not (or, shouldn’t be) what’s at issue in discussions of hijab; it’s just a convenient symbol because it’s the most prominent feature of hijab.

I have some more thoughts on this stuff, in light of the Free Amina protests and the Muslim Women Against FEMEN counter-movement; but that’s for later (hopefully; blogging right now is a bit hard for me, but I’ll do my best)

North Dakota’s War on Uteri, continued

Just got back from the Fargo rally organized by Stand Up For Women North Dakota against the ridiculously restrictive anti-abortion laws winding its way through the legislature. It was fucking cold, and I ended up standing for most of it on a 3 meter tall pile of snow and ice. Also, I was pleasantly surprised by actually getting to listen to a Republican who was a)actually one of the organizers of this rally; b)commented favorably on the importance of freedom from religion; and c)actually said that she’d expect people to hold her accountable in her office on a school board should she ever try to get religion into the curriculum. I didn’t know such Republicans even existed in this country anywhere.

Anyway, the rally (and its sister rallies in Bismarck and Grand Forks) was specifically a call for the governor of ND to veto proposed laws which have made it through both house and senate, and which should land on his desk sometime today. Three of them I’ve mentioned in my previous post on this, while the fourth one is one that had previously escaped my attention. The bills are: SB2305, a TRAP law designed to close down the last clinic in ND; HB1305, meant to prohibit “abortions for sex selection or genetic abnormalities”; HB1456, a “heartbeat” bill; and SB2368, which is the one I’d previously missed and which actually proposes to cross out the “within present constitutional limits” part and replace it with a “state’s compelling interest in the unborn human life from the time the unborn child is capable of feeling pain” line (among other shit*; basically, this is an attempt at a 20-week-abortion ban), and which also includes this last minute attempt to block the federal sex-ed grant that NDSU received and that was finally unblocked as (currently) perfectly within ND law (emphasis mine):

Except as required by federal law, no funds of this state or any agency, county, municipality, school district, or any other subdivision thereof, or institution under the control of the state board of higher education, and no federal funds passing through the state treasury or a state agency may be used:
1. As family planning funds by any person or public or private agency which performs, refers, or encourages abortion; or
2. To contract with, or provide financial or other support to individuals, organizations, or entities performing, inducing, referring for, or counseling in favor of, abortions.

As of this moment, the bills have neither been signed nor vetoed by the governor; and this morning, when asked, all he had to say on the topic was basically “blah blah flood is more important blah blah won’t comment until they’re on my desk” (audio found here. And even if he vetoes it, the same shit that just went down in Arkansas can also happen here: the veto can still be overridden. I don’t know that there’s much hope that it won’t come to that, one way or another. (UPDATE: ND Governor Dalrymple is a douche canoe)

And even if by some miraculous event the laws get vetoed AND the veto won’t get overridden, there’s still SCR4009, which also has been passed and which means ND will have a referendum on a personhood amendment in 2014.

Worst state for uterus-bearers, indeed.

UPDATE: here’s a picture, and here’s the InForum article about the rally

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*for example: they define abortions for ectopic pregnancies and to remove dead fetuses out of existence; it excludes even major psychological damage from the “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function” which would allow for an exception to the law, and specifically excludes being diagnosed as suicidal from being a medical emergency;

a kitteh and an announcement

I was hoping to squeeze in a blog post this week, but it’s been too busy and I’ve not been feeling well enough for it, so no blogpost this week. No blogpost next week either, because I’m about to leave for a field course, and I won’t be back until the 17th.

I should have an article at Secular Woman published later this month, so there’s that to look forward to.

And in the meantime, enjoy this picture of Dusty:005

Necromancy, kittehs, and a link dump

Necromancy:

    I’m reviving my blog. The ultimate goal will be 2-3 posts a week, of which one will be a regular post, one will be a link-dump, and the optional third will be either another regular post or one of the more extensive projects I’ve been putting together (currently still working on putting together a few essays on 19th Century women’s rights activism, for example; and I also hope to get to another such project either on Backlash or on Intersectionality). That goal won’t be reachable until after my Cthulhu campaign ends, since right now, instead of writing blogs, I’m inventing more and more ways to try to drive my Investigators insane and/or kill them off. And at the very latest, a regular schedule should become very easy in August, when I begin my 1-year-break from university.

Kittehs:three fluffy cats cuddling on the floor

Link dump:

    a favorite MRA talking point refuted: no such thing as “women and children first”

    an example of PHMT that would have been easily fixed if we had an Equal Rights Amendment: Man accused of fraud after taking on his wife’s name

    from the WTF department: gun buyback nets a missile launcher

My Summer Vacation: A Visual Essay

I was supposed to travel to the East Coast at the beginning of the break, but that didn’t happen due to exhaustion and illness. Instead, I got to spend my money on medical bills, instead. First there was the mystery chest/gut pains, which never got explained but were either anxiety attacks or my tooth infection spreading; then, there was the tooth extraction, which the dentist called the most difficult extraction he’s ever had to perform. And then, to top it all off, this happened:
the problemthe culprit:the cause of the problem anyway, so I’ve been stuck with astronomic helthcare bills ever since, as well as having cabin fever from being stuck with these for 6 weeks now (and as a side note, that type of crutch is way more cumbersome and uncomfortable than this kind. why the fuck do American hospitals hand out the former, rather than the latter?!).
This of course also means my garden was completely overrun by weeds, since trying to do gardening with a broken foot is rather difficult.

On the positive side, I did finally manage to paint a miniature in such a way that I’m really happy with the end result:Druid Wilder
Now I’m working on these two guys, and hopefully they’ll work out just as well:

And last but not least, apparently we own three cats now. Couple days ago, boyfriend’s mom dropped of a kitteh with us (she doesn’t like it, because it starts fights with the older, sedate cat she has). we haven’t named him yet, so for now he’s “twerp” or “bouncy”:
The End