facilegestures

by Emily S. Channell

A new trend in Eastern European feminism has emerged in Ukraine. Femen, a grassroots movement that challenges sex tourism, trafficking in women, the exploitation of women from Ukraine, and gender inequality in political and civil society, is quickly becoming the face of citizen action in this former Soviet republic. However, they aren’t necessarily recognized for the change they’re bringing; the group is more known for their topless protests in public places. Check out their photos to see that I’m completely serious (be warned, as they say in blogospeak, these are NSFW).

Some scholars have suggested that Western-style feminism has been slow to take hold in post-communism because women in these newly emerging democracies didn’t have the same concerns as bourgeois capitalist women from the U.S. and Europe (see Gal & Kligman 2000 for an excellent discussion of this issue, among others). Femen is a complicated group: while they do, in a certain sense, embody a Western feminist discourse about empowerment and political participation, many of their concerns are holdovers from the Soviet era. In particular, their work for equality in government clearly mirrors the imposed equality of the Soviet period, in which – even if, in practice, true equality is unlikely to have existed – at least representation was equalized. Now, Ukraine’s first major female politician post-independence, Yulia Tymoshenko, is under charges for misuse of funds and government property, and I’ve certainly never heard her speak out on women’s rights. Femen is suggesting that women must represent themselves if they wish to see change, rather than relying on politicians. As founder Anna Hutsol wrote, “Bare breasts [are a] sure sign of democracy.”

“Democratic” Ukraine is in a unique position. It’s gone through three presidents since the 2004 Orange Revolution (one of whom was the aforementioned Tymoshenko), and its leaders vacillate between a push toward Westernization and a retreat back into its union with Russia, which has existed officially since the 17th century. I’m not sure what Anna Hutsol’s definition of democracy is, but my guess is that civic participation is one aspect of it. Long used to living in a controlled economy in which basic needs were met by the central government, the uncertain transition from communism leaves an open space for citizens to demand real representation from their governments. Feminist or not, Femen is one of the most public groups – arguably in all of the post-socialist world – to make such demands. However, their unorthodox methods might mask the integral political role they are playing.

In the spirit of the blog, I’d like to add a little Foucault here. In the History of Sexuality, he describes how the state controls its citizens by imposing a self-discipline upon them by means of their bodies, which they internalize, reproduce, and naturalize. In Ukraine, Femen activists a responding to an expectation that women in Ukraine must discipline themselves to submit to both Ukrainian and Western male power, which naturalizes male domination in post-socialism. Their bodies are meant to be objects of male desire, which those men will then appropriate – through, for example, trafficking or government policies – into submission.

Femen activists can be seen as using their bodies as sites of resistance: the very bodies which are meant to embody state discipline are using those bodies to subvert the state. These women are attempting to contest an individualized notion of discipline in which women are expected to place themselves and their equality below men and to objectify themselves for the pleasure of men. By showing their breasts, they are not giving men what they want; rather, they use what men are thought to want in order to express displeasure and to force those men to respond to their demands – a subversion of perversion, if you will. Sounds pretty cool, right?

Not everyone is so sure. Alternatively, we can read Foucault in a different way, combined with a little Ariel Levy, and posit the rise of a Ukrainian raunch culture. In a letter to the editor of the Kyiv Post, an anonymous writer described Femen in this way:

“…thanks to their frequent getting naked in front of the international press, including jumping around bare-breasted for the entertainment of foreign TV viewers for no sensible reason except a desire to be on TV, Femen has given the world a lasting picture what a Ukrainian girl is: beautiful, slim and ready to undress as soon as a camera is pointed at her.”

No subversion here, just women responding to male domination in a way that continues their subordination. In this view, Femen is continuing to naturalize male desire and contribute to the inequalities for which they express such disdain. Levy’s raunch culture focuses on Girls Gone Wild and the “porno-ization” of U.S. culture, but how long until someone commodifies Femen, usurping all semblance of political power – or is this already in the works?

Some sources:

Foucault, Michel. 1990 The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Press.

Gal, Susan & Gail Kligman. 2000 The Politics of Gender After Socialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Levy, Ariel. 2005 Female Chauvinist Pigs. New York: Free Press.