France: Who Are These Femen Who Wanted to Disrupt the Protest against Homosexual “Marriage”?
The Institut Civitas’ public protest on November 18, 2012, in Paris, was disrupted by a handful of half-naked women, wearing nuns’ veils, and brandishing spray cans that they used to spray the protestors, all the while shouting: “In gay we trust,” a parody of the American motto “In God we trust.” Militant feminist Caroline Fourest described the counter-protest, which had not been authorized by the Paris Prefecture of Police, in the following terms: “A handful of militant women of Femen had decided to make a peaceful and funny protest (sic), and to show up dressed as nuns with humoristic slogans (sic), and as they neared the protestors, the guys let loose and attacked them.”
This provocation had been carefully orchestrated by the Femen activists; a video available on You Tube proves it, for a videographer had been specially invited to film the event – before, during and after – in order to be able to publish it in the media. It is clear that the feminists’ provocations went beyond their slogans and their attire; their physical aggression, with the liquid that they sprayed on the protestors – presented as sperm – is clearly visible on the video. Caroline Fourest nonetheless claims that this “symbolic action” was a “spontaneous counter-protest”.
Among the members of Femen is the Ukrainian militant Inna Shevtchenko, a refugee in France ever since last August 17, when she chopped a cross to pieces with a chainsaw in the center of Kiev. On September 18, she opened a “training center” in the “Drop of Gold” region of Paris (18th arrondissement). “We are opening the first international training Center for feminists [...], who will become soldiers,” she declared, explaining that they had to be trained to “escape the police”. “France has many classical feminist organizations, but none of them represent the new feminism,” she added, defining this latter as a “ ‘sextremism’, a peaceful terrorism (sic).”
On July 26, 2012, a member of the movement threw herself upon the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill as he debarked from his plane in the Kiev airport, to protest against his visit to Ukraine. Wearing only a pair of jeans, with the words “Kill Kirill” written in black letters on her naked back, the activist ran shouting, “Get out!” at the patriarch as he advanced along the tarmac.
On October 15, 2012, the French section of Femen protested, half-naked again, in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, against the decision of the Val-de-Marne Appeals Court on the “gang-rapes” affair in Fontenay-sous-Bois. As Le Monde said on October 16, under the title “The permanent media strategy of Femen”: “Behind its pretense of improvisation, the protest was carefully prepared and took advantage of the media arsenal developed by their Ukrainian big sisters.”
Caroline Fourest is the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Prochoix (“pro-choice”), whose goal is “to serve in the defense of the individual freedoms threatened by essentialism, racism, fundamentalism and all totalitarian or anti-choice ideologies,” that is, among others, the anti-abortion campaign. She declared that she was there with the Femen activists on November 18, for a documentary that she is preparing on the feminists. She has announced that she filed a complaint. The next day, six socialist deputies asked the Minister of Internal Affairs to dissolve the Institut Civitas on the grounds of its being “dangerous”. Coincidence?
The Institut Civitas also filed a circumstantial complaint against the Femen militants for “sexual exhibitions especially in front of children, the diffusion of a violent message that gravely attacks human dignity and that was seen by minors, armed violence as a group and against children, concerted restriction of the freedom to protest through threats, violence and deeds, and insults against Civitas and the protestors because of their affiliation to Catholic religion, as the messages written on their chests and the aerosols used clearly show.” The press has hardly mentioned it. Is there no reason?
(sources: AFP/Le Monde/Le Nouvel Observateur/Civitas – DICI#265, 23 Nov. 2012)
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To be or to seem, that is the question!
Demonstration on 18 November 2012 against Homosexual "Mariage"
