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 >>>

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Despite both the influence of the West over the impoverished ex-Soviet Bloc, and its westernisation after 1989, eastern Europe often seems worlds apart from its richer counterpart. That's an important context to remember when considering the Ukrainian feminist collective Femen. They come from a country with an extreme and enormous sex industry, widespread abuse of women, and also "third world" levels of poverty. Femen's performances often take place in eastern European countries known for their lack of respect for human rights, like Belarus, >>>

17:40 15/04/2013 PARIS, April 15 - RAPSI. An investigation has been launched against FEMEN activists who staged a topless rally in Paris' Notre Dame cathedral after Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Philippe Lalliot told reporters Monday. He refused to comment on the punishment that the women may face for taking their clothes off in church or if Russian and Ukrainian nationals were among them. On Feb. 12, eight young women - reportedly one Ukrainian and seven French citizens - penetrated the cathedral the day after the pope’s resignation wearing long coats. >>>

Vladimir Putin might now be dead. "We could have shot him," says Klara Martens. When she and her friends arrived at the venue in Hanover, where Putin was attending a trade fair on German-Russian business, no one searched them for weapons. Martens believes she easily could have smuggled in a gun and taken aim at the Russian president. But that, of course, was not the women's intention. Their weapons of choice are their naked breasts. Early last week, the photos made their way around the world. As Chancellor Merkel led Putin and his entourage on a tour through the trade fair, five screaming >>>

FEMEN’s “International Topless Jihad Day” failed to accurately represent the majority of Muslim women. Instead, the flawed campaign generated frustration rather than support from the community the group intended to liberate. FEMEN is a protest group based in Kyiv, Ukraine, known for staging topless demonstrations. FEMEN uses the female body as a symbol of resistance in order to contrast the objectifications made by the media and fight for women’s equality. The group dubbed April 4 “International Topless Jihad Day” to show support for 19-year-old Amina Tyler. >>>

Since as early as 1914, women have been stripping to their bare breasts as a form of protest against social ills. Such protests gain a certain infamy among some groups, though many see it as exercising their right to free speech. While FEMEN's recent displays of topless protesting have gained attention for the radical feminist movement in Ukraine and the Middle East, the practice is still frowned upon by society at large. This must change. Nudity is often assigned a sexual connotation in the United States, and those who practice social nudity are seen as immoral or offensive to >>>