Radical Feminism in the Birthplace of the Arab Spring

[Baashi]

How to Provoke National Unrest with a Facebook Photo

Posted by Emily Greenhouse

April 8, 2013

 

In the middle of March, a nineteen-year-old Tunisian woman named Amina Tyler posted two topless photos of herself on Facebook. In one, she looks straight at the camera, her middle fingers up, with the words “**** Your Morals” painted across her bare chest, the black “O” of “morals” not quite closing over her navel. In the other, she is wearing eyeliner, or maybe kohl, and bright lipstick, her mouth compressed into a tight frown. Between a book in her right hand and a cigarette in her left, scrawled down her chest in four lines are the Arabic words ”My body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honor.”

 

Tyler founded a Tunisian chapter of the radical feminist group FEMEN a month prior, in February, after seeing photos of the group’s activists online. Based in Kiev, FEMEN counts over a hundred and fifty thousand active members and has become famous—to quote the organization’s Wikipedia page—for its “noticeably erotic rallies,” strictly topless, against groups and individuals it perceives as corrupt, including the sex industry, the Church, sharia courts, Vladimir Putin, and Silvio Berlusconi.

 

 

It may seem laughable for a group’s sole membership criterion to involve taking your shirt off and photographing yourself. But many Tunisians were not laughing. Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, has, according to Human Rights Watch, “long [been] viewed as the most progressive Arab country with respect to women’s rights.” Yet, in the two years since the revolution, Islamism has been on the rise—the Islamist party Ennahda was voted into power in October, 2011—and women’s rights have deteriorated. In a recent Times article, Chema Gargouri, the President of the Tunisian Association for Management and Social Stability, notes a worryingly restrictive direction since President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fell. “The dictatorship was pro-woman,” she said. “The hatred against the dictatorship is expressed through action against women.”

 

The ultraconservative Salafis, in particular, have gained in might since 2011. They seem ill-equipped to deal with the possibilities of public broadcasting afforded by the World Wide Web. The Salafi cleric Almi Adel, leader of Tunisia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, called for Tyler to be “punished according to sharia, with eighty to a hundred lashes, but [because of] the severity of the act she has committed, she deserves be stoned to death.” He warned that “her act could bring about an epidemic. It could be contagious and give ideas to other women. It is therefore necessary to isolate [the incident]. I wish her to be healed.” Tunisian media reported that she could be punished by up to two years in prison and a fine of up to a thousand dinars (about six hundred and twenty dollars).

 

The Thursday after Tyler’s photos went up, an Islamist activist hacked the Facebook page of FEMEN’s Tunisian branch, posting religious videos and verses. One message read, “Thanks to God we have hacked this immoral page and the best is yet to come.” Another said, “The page has been hacked and God willing, this debauchery will disappear from Tunisia.” In the meantime, news agencies frantically reported that Tyler had been committed to a psychiatric hospital, that her parents had disowned her. Bochra Bel Haj Hmida, a women’s rights attorney who says she is representing Tyler, insisted that she was home with her family. When I tried to contact Tyler through Bel Haj Hmida, she replied with a one-word email that simply said “Bonjour.” She has not otherwise responded to requests for comment.

 

In late March, Tyler told Italian journalist Federica Tourn that she believed she would be beaten or raped if Tunisian police tracked her down. She claimed that “nothing they could do would be worse than what already happens here to women, the way women are forced to live every day. Ever since we are small they tell us to be calm, to behave well, to dress a certain way, everything to find a husband. We must also study to be able to marry, because young guys today want a woman who works.” But women, she said, are ready for change: We “have reached the height of self-determination: we no longer obey any authority, neither family nor religious. We know what we want and we make our own decisions.” On Sunday, Canal Plus broadcast the first interview with Tyler since reported death threats sent her into hiding. From a village some hours from the Tunisian capital, Tyler said, “I’m afraid for my life and the lives of my family.” She told the French station that she “must leave Tunisia.”

 

In Tyler’s honor, protesters declared last Thursday, April 4th, Topless Jihad Day. A petition in her defense had fifteen thousand signers, including outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins. In capital cities, university-aged women with crowns of orange and lilac flowers painted their torsos for solidarity: “Bare breasts against Islamism,” “No sharia,” “Free Amina.” In Paris, two dozen topless women making way toward the Tunisian embassy were averted by the police. Five women stood topless, bearing signs, in front of an Islamic cultural center in Brussels. Police in Kiev detained two women as soon as they arrived at the city’s only mosque. Three demonstrated outside the Tunisian embassy in Milan. Before a mosque in frigid-cold Berlin, a protestor named Alexandra Shevchenko announced, “We’re free, we’re naked, it’s our right, it’s our body, it’s our rules.” She spoke out against religious groups. “We’ll fight against them. And our boobs will be stronger than their stones.”

 

On its Facebook page, FEMEN has issued a call for a new Arab Spring in a strongly worded statement against the “lethal hatred of Islamists—inhuman beasts for whom killing a woman is more natural than recognising her right to do as she pleases with her own body.” It pleads, “Long live the topless jihad against infidels!” To borrow their vernacular, “sextremism” in the name of “titslamism.”

 

It’s easy to mock the tactics and language of FEMEN; posing naked is probably not the most effective way to fight the objectification of the female form and person. It’s even easier to lament the violent cries against Tyler. But as the blogger Sara Salem writes, it’s more complicated than a war between evil feminism—the cry of the Salafists—and evil Islamism, that of FEMEN. Some question the effect that online activism has in the real world, but Tyler’s image has no doubt provoked real consequence. To which she is the wiser: she told Canal Plus that she wants to leave Tunisia and study journalism abroad. In the digital age, no editor or mediator gets to decide how to frame a public battle. A woman has a room, a body, a camera, and a Facebook profile of one’s own.

 

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/amina-tyler-topless-photos-tunisia-activism.html

[AfricaOwn]

These over-sensitive heathens cried over Obama calling Kamala Harris "the best-looking attorney general" at a fundraiser recently. They're the most irritating, annoying folks on the face of the earth.

[Wadani]

The Faminazi are a plague.

[Wadani]

Apo, u do realize that u share a lot in common with them though don't u? Most of them are athiest commies like urself

[Wadani]

Apophis;936381 wrote:

Yeah but their uppittiness and optimism offends my Stalinistic morals

[Safferz]

[Wadani]

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/04/femen-stages-a-topless-jihad/100487/

 

Safferz, honestly r the women in the link I posted normal? They are in a crazed feral state, a psychological trance of sorts, divorced from reality, brought on by their pathological hate for men, order, accountability and morals. They are the complete antithesis to everything a Muslim woman should be. Too bad many Somali girls have been spooked with the spectre of 'patriarchy' and have been converted to the mindless and hate-filled drones that swell the ranks of todays feminist movement.

[Safferz]

I actually dislike Femen, but not for the reasons you do. I think they're quite racist and I don't agree with their tactics. But patriarchy, violence against women, sexism, etc are all very real issues that need to be dealt with.

[AfricaOwn]

Wadani;936408 wrote:

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/04/femen-stages-a-topless-jihad/100487/

 

They are the complete antithesis to everything a Muslim woman should be. Too bad many Somali girls have been spooked with the spectre of 'patriarchy' and have been converted to the mindless and hate-filled drones that swell the ranks of todays feminist movement.

Be careful there, these heathens don't like the idea of gender roles.

[Safferz]

AfricaOwn;936427 wrote:

Be careful there, these heathens don't like the idea of gender roles.

And I suggest you be careful and stop playing around with takfir.

[SomaliPhilosopher]

Africaown, you employ such words as "heathen" failing to realize these people stand naked to the word exposing their breast to their friends, familys, bystanders, in essence the world. why? because of the likes of you. They are protesting you my friend. you drive, fuel, and energize such "heathens"

 

It is said satan whispers to the creatures of adam. You scream my friend. you scream

[ANWAR]

all Radical Feminism are ugly so it is no wonder that they want to show their boobs......

[Wadani]

Safferz;936416 wrote:

I actually dislike Femen, but not for the reasons you do. I think they're quite racist and I don't agree with their tactics. But patriarchy, violence against women, sexism, etc are all very real issues that need to be dealt with.

Yes they are quite racist with their euro-centric standards for freedom and progressiveness. As for their tactics, it's nothing but reactionary shock tactics that ultimately serve a purpose opposite to their objectives. It's akin to al-shabaab's draconian methods meant to usher in an era of Islamic piety paradoxically leading to a sizable growth in Somali secularists. It's basic physics, the harder u swing the pundulum in one direction the further it will swing in the opposite direction.

[Che -Guevara]

Silly stuff.

[Wadani]

Safferz;936437 wrote:

And I suggest you be careful and stop playing around with takfir.

I wouldn't go as far as making takfir on them, but there is no denying that many of the tenents of feminism (in its western form) are un-islamic.