2368 likes Category: Femen Tags: femen, putin, ukraine Femen, the Ukrainian feminist group, have staged another topless attack on Vladimir Putin, as he toured a factory in Hannover this morning. >>>

BERLIN - Irina Khanova, 33, is an independent graphic designer in Hamburg. Klara Martens, 22, is studying technical environmental protection in Berlin. Both of them played with Barbies when they were growing up. And both are members of the feminist activist group Femen, founded in 2008 in Ukraine – in fact Khanova is a co-founder of the German chapter, and Martens is Berlin representative. Femen demonstrators use their bodies – which they believe women are often reduced to – as a means of protesting that reductive view of women. At first, Khanova says, Femen activists didn’t bare their >>>

Inna, founder of the French branch of Femen, at their headquarters in Paris. Last Friday, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris to meet the topless feminist protest group Femen. Originally based in the Ukraine, the organization has since spread out across the world. The idea was to film the build up to Femen's next protest, but I didn't find out quite what I was getting myself into until I arrived at their headquarters—a lofty space above a theater in Goutte D'or—that afternoon. The area has a large Muslim population and is dotted with Islamic cultural centrers, >>>

 Appearing topless, their trademark look, with “sextermination” written across their breasts, the Ukraine-based movement appeared on the rooftop overlooking the statue of Joan of Arc in Place des Pyramides, just when ultra conversative Catholics, French royalists, skinhead youth and other groups were meeting. They unravelled a two-story high red and black banner reading “Sextermination for Nazism”, and set off flares that blew smoke into the crowds below who responded with cries of “Femen die” and “Femen whores”. Joan of Arc, long-considered a French medieval hero, has >>>

The breast-flashing and fist-pumping Femen group struck again in Paris on Sunday, interrupting a rally organised by far-right groups to commemorate Saint Joan of Arc in central Paris. The four feminists appeared topless – a trademark of the Ukraine-based feminist movement – on a rooftop overlooking the equestrian statue of Joan of Arc in Place des Pyramides, where ultra-conservative Catholics, French royalists, skinhead youths, and other groups had gathered around noon. The women unravelled a two-story high red and black banner reading “Sextermination for Nazism”, while being admonished >>>

Recently members of the Ukrainian-based, global feminist group Femen staged protests across Europe calling for “topless jihad.” While American feminists today are satisfied whipping up outrage about Mitt Romney’s binders and Sandra Fluke’s right to bill taxpayers for her birth control, Femen’s Amazonian warriors dive right in to do battle in a real War on Women being openly waged by Muslim misogynists. Topless jihad – it puts a whole new spin on #MyJihad. The protests in Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Belgium, and France [here are images from the demonstrations; warning – most contain >>>

Since launching its "topless jihad" protests across Europe and elsewhere on April 4, Femen has stirred up a media maelstrom, with commentators, mostly Muslim men and women living in the West, taking to the airwaves or the Internet on CNN, the New York Times,Al Jazeera English, and the Huffington Post (and elsewhere) to call the group racist, classist, imperialist, colonialist, Eurocentric, Islamophobic, orientalist, neo-orientalist, cowardly, or, at best, naïve, and foolish. At least one of those opining veered into infelicitous nonsense: According >>>

Since launching its "topless jihad" protests across Europe and elsewhere on April 4, Femen has stirred up a media maelstrom, with commentators, mostly Muslim men and women living in the West, taking to the airwaves or the Internet on CNN, theNew York Times,Al Jazeera English, and the Huffington Post (and elsewhere) to call the group racist, classist, imperialist, colonialist, Eurocentric, Islamophobic, orientalist, neo-orientalist, cowardly, or, at best, naïve, and foolish. At least one of those opining veered into infelicitous nonsense: According to >>>

It is no surprise that FEMEN, the Ukrainian feminism group, has found the need to resort to bare-breasted demonstrations with slogans such as "Nudity is Freedom" painted across their chests. The feminist message is not always a simple one to dissipate and media attention is easily distracted by out-of-the-ordinary things. This method, however, has become ineffective enough that discussion has been centered mainly on the breasts themselves leaving little time for the actual issues. Recently, FEMEN's members in numerous countries across Europe and elsewhere demonstrated >>>

I have been following the raging online battle over the FEMEN "Topless Jihad Day" and hoped that someone would move away from the Western White versus Eastern Muslim debate and talks about Eastern European women. I read Maryna Hrushetska's article on Al Jazeera and was disappointed, as not only the author fails to provide any context to the Eastern European women's experience, but - based on it, I presume she grew up in Ukraine - also fails to understand why the debate has been raging for so long in the first place. Although (unlike Maryna) I am not a "Viking descendant Slav" but >>>