Critiques of FEMEN are widely circulated and easily accessible. They include the ways FEMEN reinforces and perpetuates three very dangerous claims at once: a deep rooted Islamophobia and racism embodied in current American and European politics; the equally problematic assumption that there is a singular, universal feminist position; and the arrogance to presume to speak on behalf of women all over the world, some of whom are deemed by FEMEN as too oppressed to speak for themselves. FEMEN has been repeatedly critiqued for the Islamophobia and xenophobia that inform their specific choices and actions. Their performative tactics such as “topless jihad” frequently target Muslim women who they claim to be liberating from both ‘Islam’ and Muslim men. When confronted with Muslim women’s rejections of such Western ‘FEMENism’, FEMEN leader Inna Shevchenko patronized the women involved, declaring, “They write on their posters that they don’t need liberation but in their eyes it’s written ‘help me.’”
FEMEN has also drawn sharp critiques from feminist political spaces, ranging from its Eurocentrism, to its abolitionist position on sex work. These critiques represent complex internal debates within feminist circles that are often subsumed by the imperialism of mainstream liberal feminism. Savior feminism’s focus on Muslim women’s bodies as objects of liberation is the same justification that is used by neo-imperialist war machines (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.), as well as the tidal wave of xenophobia in Europe and the United States, and global election gains by the far-right. Feminism’s reaction to the hijab has been instrumentalized by war and xenophobia and is well-documented in feminist scholarship… More here.