Femen – Toplessness as a Form of Protest
August 24, 2018 - 12:30 pm
This coming Sunday is Women’s Equality Day and also, Go Topless Day. On August 26th 1920 women earned the right to vote based on Gender Equality. Today women still face gender equality issues and Go Topless Day seeks to bring awareness to inequities. The group, Femen makes going topless, a form of protest against patriarchy. There are Femen branches throughout the world including Spain, the United States, Sweden and South Korea.
91 3’s Yuko Kodama interviewed Isabelle Bertges of Femen Germany to find out more about the organization.
31 year old Oksana Shachko, one of the founding members of Femen was found dead in her apartment in Paris in July. For more on the organization Femen, you can listen to a segment produced by Making Contact included below.
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0:06
Sunday is Women’s Equality Day and Go Topless Day. On August 26, 1920, women earned the right to vote based on gender equality. Today, women still face gender equality issues and Go Topless Day seeks to bring awareness to the inequities. The group, Femen, makes going topless a form of protest against patriarchy. There are Femen branches throughout the world including Spain, the US, Sweden, and South Korea. 91.3 Yuko Kodama interviewed Isabelle Bertges of Femen Germany to find out more about the group.
0:43
There’s a certain persona around Femen. You know, a lot of people have seen the pictures of Femen protesters protesting with their tops off, and slogans written across their chest. This is kind of a signature of Femen.
1:00
Yeah, we are always topless, that’s what we do. We wear a flower crown and we write short statements or slogans on our bodies that demand certain things. We also shout things and usually we shout one or two different things.
1:20
Tell me then about the choice of why the shirt off?
1:25
The shirt off and showing our bare breasts has many reasons. Of course, one of the reasons is to kind of get attention because obviously, you know, if you see a man walking along the street, and he’s topless, no one cares, but can you imagine having a woman walk around like that? That would actually be illegal in certain states. So of course, it’s attention, but also, we want to just kind of normalize it, you know, they’re just breasts (laughter). I personally was the girl that just had on a bikini underwear thing and was topless at the pool. But then there comes a certain time where all of a sudden a girl hits puberty, and she’s not allowed to be topless anymore and I find that quite shaming, honestly. And that’s, I think, where women are also made to fit because, you know, a 9 or a 10 year old girl will realize, “Oh, that’s not okay, something’s not okay with my body,” and you grow up in being shamed and that’s something that really kind of sticks with you. And we act like, that there are things that just become normal, that actually should not be normal. I personally don’t need to run around topless, but I would wish for just the breastfeeding women to finally be able to breastfeed without having this debate. I’m so sick and tired of hearing even a debate about how you may or may not breast feed in public. That’s why I love Femen so much. Sometimes you need to just beat this absurd thing going on with just extremism or sextremism, as we say, because sometimes words fail. (laughter)
3:14
Some feminists might hear about this method of protest and may criticize the approach, right? And what do you say to that?
3:26
Yeah, there are many ways to protest and it doesn’t need to be the way to protest for everybody. It’s my way of protesting, the right way for me. You know, we all fight for the same cause my cause would definitely be to just end patriarchy and I think many feminists want the same thing. And I need the feminists that do things that I don’t do and I think we do work together in some way. I think everyone should, you know, just kind of consider what is their form protesting? How do they want to act? Obviously, we are capable of speaking and we do have a voice. But sometimes it’s also good to just be very, very straightforward and simple, even though it might seem very complex, to just often bring awareness towards things. That’s, I would say, a really positive thing about us. We often raise awareness, and then, there will be many other people that are interested in it and also want to join the fight against something or for something.
4:34
How do people respond to the protests?
4:38
We are very active in social media and the internet in general, of course. Yeah, we find very, very horrible comments, oftentimes, that are also directed towards our bodies. Oftentimes, I or the other girls will get messages through Facebook, that are very threatening. I’ve been threatened to be gang raped. It just amazes me to what extent or what hate is out there. Just another reason more to fight against it.
5:13
That was Isabel Bertges of Femen Germany speaking with 91.3s Yuko Kodama.