Years and years ago I was exposed to an idea from clergymen: ” In western world, women are used as commodities. Their scantily clad bodies are used in commercials and billboards. Westerners are treating women as objects. This is degrading. Women have much more to offer than their bodies and the prospective of sex.”

By the same virtue, the idea stated that Islam wants women to cover themselves. This way they are saved from being sex objects and no one will get aroused seeing their bodies on bill boards.

The idea sounded absurd. The world of advertisement uses women with pretty faces and great bodies but it is so saturated with these images, that I would doubt anyone getting a heart attack by the mere fact of seeing an ad.

Lowering a human species to the level of an object, well, let’s just say it is low. Objects have no soul and no brain to begin with. At least this stays true for most objects if not all.

When I came across a group like FEMEN; I for one felt that I am again seeing an idea at the verge of extremism.As their site suggests: FEMEN is an international women’s movement of brave topless female activists painted with the slogans and crowned with flowers. FEMEN activists are ready to withstand repressions against them and are propelled by the ideological cause alone. FEMEN is the special force of feminism, its spearhead militant unit, modern incarnation of fearless and free Amazons. Their core beliefs are:

• Sextremism
• Atheism
• Feminism

While protesting for the right cause is a noble idea, may be drawing attention to a cause while exposing bare boobs is extreme. The same way the clergymen were objectifying a woman, the exposing of boobs to get momentum and attention for a cause is another way of objectification. Sex sells and sex draws attention. If we go by that nation, it feels the clergymen and the FEMEN are following the same prinicpal only in opposite directions. One tells women to cover to keep their virtue and one tells them to expose their nipples to draw attention to their protest.

It definitely works and it definitely gets media attention what FEMEN does but at the end, isn’t objectifying a woman a any rate against feminism?

Source: Femen Stages a ‘Topless Jihad’ — In Focus — The Atlantic

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