my body is my manifesto! SlutWalk, FEMEN and femmenist protest

               

                The author of my body is my manifesto! Slutwalk, FEMEN and femmenist protest is Theresa O’Keefe. The article was published on 2014. Theresa is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. She co-directs the MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism. She specialise in researches gender, social activism and radical social change using intersectional analysis.  In 2013, her book Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Theresa also published work in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, National Identities, Nationalism, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements.

                In her abstract, she emphasize the uses of intersectional analysis to look at contemporary form of women’s popular protest of raising questions about the explicit use of the gendered body in struggles for women’s emancipation. Then, she mentioned about the protests of SlutWalk and FEMEN. The SlutWalk and FEMEN protest are basically about body protests.

                Meanwhile, in her introduction, she introduces about where the SlutWalk movement took place and how the SlutWalk was formed. It all began when one police officer’s advice to women present in safety information session at University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, by saying that if they wanted to stay safe they should avoid ‘dressing like sluts’. About 3,500 protesters marched onto police headquarters in Toronto on 3 April 2011, and since then began the formed of SlutWalk movement.

                She also makes comparison between SlutWalk and FEMEN, Ukranian female topless protesters who also protest related about the body issues. Mainly, this article is about how she analysis her difficulties she have with SlutWalk and FEMEN as feminist political projects. In her sub-heading of spectacles of defiance or compliance?, first paragraph she stated the meaning of bodies. Then she questions about how do we build movements that are inclusive of differing bodies? Such as skinny, fat, ugly and etc. On sub-heading ‘slut’ strutting, she stated that the SlutWalk’s modus operandi is to ‘challenge the word slut and other degrading words around sexuality and sexual assault in their current mainstream use’ and to ‘(re) appropriate the word slut to use in a subversive, self-defining, positive, empowering and respectful way.

                For FEMEN, their agenda is to ‘defend with their breasts sexual and social equality in the world’, or more simply they organise publicity stunts where they bare their breasts to capture the attention of the mainstream media. FEMEN were founded in Kyiv in 2008 by Oksana Shachko Inna Shevchenko, Sasha Shevchenko and 23-year-old economist Anna Hutsol, the supposed creative mastermind behind the group (ibid., 2011). FEMEN’s belief that women’s liberation is tied to what they wear is vacuous.

                Overall, Theresa did a brilliant job in making comparison between SlutWalk and FEMEN by stating facts and evidences to support her research. She believes that SlutWalk are plausibly weaker on this front than FEMEN. Inna Shevchenko says, ‘We know what the media need—sex, scandals and fighting—and that’s what we give them’ (Chollet,2013). This article is really recommended for those people who are open minded of what’s currently going in this world.