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Friday, December 26, 2014

The brave women of FEMEN

An AP headline today read, "Vatican arrests activist who bared chest in square."

The accompanying photo:


Yana Zhdanova, a member of FEMEN, snatched a statue of the Baby Jesus from a Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square and screamed, "God is a woman!"

Who knows, maybe she's right.

The women of FEMEN do not make headlines the way they used to, but evidently they have been quite active with their protests against the Vatican.

Just last month, three activists simulated anal sex with crucifixes in order to protest the Pope Francis's appearance at the European Parliament on November 25th..


The women chanted, "God is not a magician, pope is not a politician!"

Who knows, maybe they're right about that as well: God, to my knowledge, has never performed card tricks, and the Pope is not a secular leader.

But I can't help but wonder how these women feel about the Islamic practices of clitoridectomy, and forcing women to wear burkhas, and not allowing girls to attend school.

And I can't help but wish that these brave women would demonstrate their disapproval of these practices by traveling to Mecca and wiping their asses with the pages of the Koran.

It would certainly be instructive to see what sort of reception they got.

The real -- if unintentional -- message FEMEN is delivering by protesting in Vatican Square rather than Mecca is that the Catholics are a far, far more liberal and humane group than the Muslims.

2 comments:

Jokah Macpherson said...

Given the purpose for which crosses were originally constructed, does this technically qualify as masochism?

John Craig said...

Jokay --
Ha! I'd say, given the shape of those hard plastic ornaments, with all their protruding edges, if they actually used them the way they're simulating, that would definitely qualify as masochism.