Disrupting Rape Culture

Public Space, Sexuality and Revolt

Fanghanel, Alexandra, Alexandra Fanghanel

• Publisher: Bristol University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781529202540
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Pussy grabbing; hot mommas; topless protest; nasty women. Whether hypersexualised, desexualised, venerated or maligned, women's bodies in public space continue to be framed as a problem. A problem that is discursively 'solved' by the continued proliferation of rape culture in everyday life.

Indeed, despite the rise in research and public awareness about rape culture and sexism in contemporary debates, gendered violence continues to be normalised.

Using case studies from the US and UK – the de/sexualised pregnancy, the troublesome naked protest, the errant BDSM player – Fanghanel interrogates how the female body is figured through, and revolts against, gendered violence.

Rape culture currently thrives. This book demonstrates how it happens, the politics that are mobilised to sustain it, and how we might act to contest it.

THREE

Disruptive protests

It was while readjusting my swiftly numbing legs and arms that, covered in fake blood, and lying on my back looking up at the cold, grey sky, I considered the spectacular quality of the naked female body in protest. All this is spectacle. That day, I was surrounded by other women; we were all wearing skin-coloured underwear and participating in an anti-fur protest in Trafalgar Square. It was late June in 2017, and it was raining hard, which could have been considered exceptional for the season. Although the protest was supposed to last for four hours, we called it a day after two. Fifteen ‘underwear’ participants had diminished to seven, which eventually became three. And yet, despite the rain, despite the disappearing size of the protest, I lost count of the number of photographs that were taken of us that day; the press, members of the non-human animal rights movements, members of the public.… We must have featured in the holiday snaps of many, many tourists. Despite the rain, I counted groups of 40 or 50 people around our protest space for the whole time (except for a lull to about 20 people, when a break-dancing group started their act next to us, although eventually they, too, ceded to the rain, leaving just us under the forbidding sky).

In this chapter, I examine this presentation of the female body in protests where the body is the canvas on which the protest is conveyed. I consider these protests as a disruption in the way in which public space is striated, and what this means for social and spatial justice against a background of contemporary rape culture. I examine how far these protests might be recuperated into a guerrilla war machine and towards a transformative politics. Drawing on debates within the non-human animal rights movement, the phenomenon of sexualised protest, analyses of human/non-human relationships and the spatialisation of these politics, I consider how these disruptions intersect with rape culture.

Corporeal, embodied protest is a striking thing. As we saw in the last chapter, in the context of pregnancy, the body ‘represents humanity in its rawest form’ (Eileraas, 2014: 41). A naked body in public space is disruptive. It disrupts normative codes of how a body should appear in public space and normative ways of using public space. It is a sign of vulnerability. It can be injured, abused, it can become ill; it is a conduit through which we feel pain. As Judith Butler (2011: 2) states, ‘for politics to take place, the body must appear.’ For Butler, as for Camilla Reestorff (2014), the protest emerges in the conjunction of the assemblage of bodies, of the ‘material conditions’ of space in which to protest, and of the visibility of the protest (the audience or witnesses to the protest) that connect with each other to form a political intervention. Once again, there is no escaping the fact of the body. It is in this oscillation between the body which is vulnerable and which, through this vulnerability is made strong, that the potency of naked protest becomes apparent. We see this in other forms of embodied protest – in lip sewing, eye sewing, dirty protests, menstrual blood protests, hunger strikes – when there is no more recourse to justice, when all possibilities have been explored and exhausted, or have failed.

A fundamental return to the body as a protesting tool, outside of formal legal, political, institutional structures – a line of flight perhaps – means that the body, in this abject violented state, becomes a forceful tool for protest (O’Keefe, 2006; Owens, 2009). This is not to confuse the naked protest of last resort with the politics of ‘bare life’, where individuals in a state of bare life are shunned by the State (Agamben, 1998). This is rather to recuperate this shunning as a precarious position from which to mobilise a politics of transformation from this position of exception (Butler, 2004). I return to these ideas in this chapter. In order to follow the complexity of the tensions within the debates across the anti-rape protest and the non-human animal rights protest, we must retain this idea of the protesting body as precarious. Thus will we be able to glean the ways in which these protests function (Stanescu, 2012; Wyckoff, 2014).

Protests: The spectacular and the cursed

A spectacle, from the Old French spectacle, is a specially prepared or arranged display, a public show: something to be seen. A spectacle needs a performer, a space in which to perform and importantly, an audience. The spectacle is an assemblage. Protest as spectacle needs this dialectical relationship with the place from which it emerges (see Butler, 2011; Reestorff, 2014). Yet spectacle is also a double-edged sword. The spectacle is an illusion, and, according to Guy Debord, accounts for the organisation of all social life in contemporary post-industrialist, capitalist societies. A form of hyper-reality, the spectacle describes ‘a social relationship between people that is mediated by images’ (Debord, 1994 [1967], thesis 4). Debord’s notion of the spectacle is intimately tied to his critique of commodity fetishism that separates commodities from their mode of production; that distinguishes between ‘the sign and the thing signified, the copy [and] the original, representation [and] reality’ (Feuerbach, cited in Debord, 1994 [1967]). Commodification through this separation, leads, according to Debord (1994 [1967], thesis 24), to a ‘fetishistic appearance of pure objectivity’ that obscures the true labour, character or cost of a particular representation, event or object. It is this that leads to the ‘proletarianisation of the world’ (thesis 26). The to-be-looked-at-ness of the spectacle occludes how what is being looked-at emerges in the first place. Most insidiously for our purposes, the separation between the image and the object, the commodity and the labour, is that it has become, in Debord’s (1994 [1967]) words, ‘the sun that never sets of the empire of modern passivity’ (thesis 13). This spectacle fosters benign acceptance of the status quo, or blithe apathy, which becomes an anathema to transformation, renewal, or a praxis of alternative politics of justice that might transform social life.

Part of how the spectacular works is that it is so beguiling. Indeed, part of what makes the protests analysed here beguiling is the mobilisation of the naked or nearly naked body. It was the embodied experience of these politics that I wanted to explore during the anti-fur protest that I describe here. What is it like to use the undressed human female body in a protest for non-human animal rights? What does this performance of semi-nakedness in public do to the politics of the space? What is lost, or found, through this performance?

According to Bruce Lunceford (2012: 1-2), naked protest dates back to ancient Greece and the Cynics, for whom the presentation of the body in public (here Diogenes’ male body) was an embodied manifestation of the ‘norms he wished to create’. For Lunceford (2012: 3), it is the vulnerability of the naked body that renders it political. Nudity becomes a position of last resort after all other avenues for attention, or for change, are exhausted. This emerges potently in Imogen Tyler’s (2013) analysis of naked protest conducted by female detainees at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire, UK in 2008. Here, women – mothers – undressed in protest against the treatment of a fellow pregnant detainee who was forcibly restrained and separated from her six-year-old son (Tyler, 2013: 211). Detainees explained that their undressing was a deliberate tactic to create a spectacle; to draw attention to the degrading treatment they were receiving (being treated like animals) in a manner that would attract the attention of the media. And indeed, they were successful. The protest was widely reported, in particular because as Tyler (2013: 212) highlights, the naked presentation of the maternal body, the aged body, the Black body, or the pregnant body challenges taboos about the sorts of naked bodies that we might see.

The other taboo that this form of protest transgresses is said to be rooted in African1 symbolism about the relationship between life and death. Here, what is known as ‘the naked curse’ or ‘genital power’ – the exposure of the genitals to men, particularly of menopausal women – causes social death, which is believed to lead to the actual death of those who look on the naked body (Turner and Brownhill, 2004: 67; Stevens, 2006; Tyler, 2013: 214). The naked curse is never threatened lightly and is invoked only in extreme circumstances, once all other avenues for action have been exhausted (Ekine, 2001; Turner and Brownhill, 2004; Stevens, 2006). In 2002-03 Nigerian women protesting against the oil company Chevron’s abuse of the land and people of the Niger Delta exposed their bodies in order to shame or ‘infect’ the men who would look on their nakedness (Ekine, 2001). The functioning of the taboo is that by showing men the naked genitals of women who may have birthed them, those women are ‘taking back’ the life those bodies have given them (Turner and Brownhill, 2004: 71; Stevens, 2006: 59; Tyler, 2013: 214).

As we saw in the context of pregnancy in public space, this maternal power is extraordinarily liminal; the naked body is itself shamed, vulnerable, desperate and yet, at its most debased, it is the naked body that does the shaming, that attacks those to whom it is shown, that makes people mad or commits them to a ‘lifetime of misfortune’ (Oriola, 2012: 545). In the post-industrial societies where the debates of this book are played out, the meaning of what it is to be liminal has become more and more diluted, and less and less tied to the compulsory, ritualistic or coming-of-age process that Victor Turner intended.2 However, in this context, the Medea-like maternal body which gives life, and which can take it away, retains this quality of life-changing transformation. Powerless and powerful in the self-same moment, the protesting, naked maternal body transforms her position of subalterity – of liminal, precarious life – into a position from which to challenge the power of the sovereign/the State, whether that State power manifests itself through Chevron/Texaco Oil in the Niger Delta, unfair taxation in Nigeria, unlawful interrogation of tribe leaders in Cameroon, or the private security company that manages Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the UK (Stevens, 2006; Oriola, 2012; Tyler, 2013).

Phillips Stevens (2006: 597) suggests that the naked protests of the sort enacted by the women of the Niger Delta ‘inspired protesting women elsewhere in the world to use nakedness as a weapon’. It might certainly be the case that naked protests are becoming more prolific – in this chapter we consider quite a few examples of them – but what is the relationship between these naked protests and the social death or ostracisation that this naked curse deploys? It is presumably impossible to transliterate this African naked curse into non-African protests. To begin to think Stevens’ (2006) suggestion through, this section considers cursing, spectacular, protesting nakedness in the context of the anti-rape politics of the SlutWalk and Femen protests.

SlutWalk is a specific form of feminist protest that contests the proliferation of rape culture and of victim-blaming in safe-keeping discourses. Originating in 2011 in response to a sexist and victim-blaming piece of advice given to female students at the University of Toronto in Canada by a police officer about how to stay safe on campus, protest marches known as ‘SlutWalks’ spread around the globe with energetic alacrity. The officer’s advice to women was to not ‘dress like sluts’ in order not to get raped. A slut, in this context, describes a sexualised slur on women – it is inherently gendered – and connotes sexual promiscuity, slovenliness and low levels of morality. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘slut’ is a derogatory term used to describe a woman ‘who has had many sexual partners’ or ‘with low standards of cleanliness’3 (see O’Keefe, 2011). In response to his statement, female students at the University of Toronto organised a march in which women and men were invited to dress in a stereotypically sexy or ‘slutty’ manner in order to draw attention to the falseness of the claim that women provoke rape in the way that they dress. The appeal of the protest was extraordinarily popular, and satellite groups established themselves in urban centres in countries all over the world.4

Tens of thousands of newspaper articles have been written about SlutWalk in the years since its inception. The protests have received academic attention from a number of different disciplinary directions (see Kapur, 2012; Miriam, 2012; Mendes, 2015). In 2011 and 2012, I, along with a colleague, conducted participant observations of SlutWalks in London, UK, and spoke to people participating in the protest about its politics and their motivations for being there. It is clear that as a form of feminist protest, men and women marching in public spaces in their miniskirts and stockings (sometimes less) has been absolutely compelling. But the politics of SlutWalk are perhaps as contested as they are appealing. I have discussed some of these contestations elsewhere (see Fanghanel and Lim, 2017). SlutWalk is certainly marred by accusations of racism, of pro-capitalism, spectacularisation and of reinforcing rape myths, even as it seeks to dismantle these myths (O’Keefe, 2011, 2014; Lim and Fanghanel, 2013).

Femen, on the other hand, rather than a form of protest per se, is a feminist protest group which, as O’Keefe (2014: 107) scathingly suggests, ‘grab headlines for their protest tactics more than the issues they seek to address’. Founded in 2008 in the Ukraine, the group is notorious for its preference for bare-breasted political intervention. Borne out of a liberal imaginary of democracy post the Orange Revolution, Femen mobilises a call for gender equality that opposes the prevailing patriarchy of the Ukraine, through performances of essential, innocent femininity (Zychowicz, 2011, 2015: 87). The flower garlands, or vinoks, that protesters wear in their hair and the bare breasts that are a symbol of maternal nurture, evoke a specific vision of post-revolutionary Ukrainian femininity that positions itself against patriarchy. According to Femen:

Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are [sic] bare breasts! And so Femen is born and sextremism is set off.5

The women who organise politically as part of Femen participate in noisy protests with political slogans written on their naked torsos. Relatively few in number compared to the thousands who participate in SlutWalk, Femen define themselves much more by their shared ideology and ‘world view’: a feminist organisation rather than an organised feminist protest.6

SlutWalk is ostensibly about challenging rape myths, although in practice a number of allied causes tag along to protests (for instance, protesting against rape jokes in stand-up comedy and budget cuts for women’s services). Femen’s work promotes, according to them, ‘global women’s mob law over patriarchy as the historically first, and last, existing form of slavery’, and manifests itself at political summits, anti-war protests, LGBT Pride events, protests against the Euro Football tournament, protest against the Pope, or against the wearing of the hijab, and so on. Both Femen and SlutWalk target rape culture in their work. Both mobilise the naked or undressed female body in public space to do this.

What happens at the intersect of this unclothed body and the space that it occupies? How far is this action indebted to the notion of the naked curse, as Stevens (2006: 697) suggests? What does this tell us about the spectacular contestation of contemporary rape culture?

Erotic violence I

One of the issues to highlight is the representation of the politics of these groups. Both rely on the sensational and titillating mediated images of their protest to draw attention to their work. One of the ways in which they appear to achieve this is through the public mobilisation of a heterosexually desirable female body (Reestorff, 2014).

SlutWalk invites participants to make a stand against rape culture by ‘re-appropriating’ the word ‘slut’ and to wear ostensibly sexy clothing in order to highlight that ‘being assaulted isn’t about what you wear; it’s not even about sex; but using a pejorative term to rationalise inexcusable behaviour creates an environment in which it’s okay to blame the victim’.7

Women (and some men) who participate in the SlutWalk march topless, wearing just their underwear, fishnet tights, basques, often with the word ‘slut’ scrawled on their exposed skin. In short, they embody an aesthetic of the young, desirable hetero-sexy, and submissive body.8 As a political tool, the body is exceptionally powerful (Butler, 2011). Presenting it as a site of protest in itself can be very affecting. In the current case, the spectacular quality of the SlutWalk protest certainly attracts media attention, in part because this presentation of the body is easy to consume. It echoes sexualised advertising, representations of female celebrities in the media, and so on. It does little to challenge stereotypical constructions of women’s bodies as commodities to be consumed.

Similar charges can be levelled at the way that Femen organises its protests. As Theresa O’Keefe (2014) highlights, the group appears to deliberately select young, conventionally attractive, white, feminine, thin, able-bodied women for its interventions. These bodies are also not challenging to look at (Reestorff, 2014). Indeed, an image taken of an ‘anti-dictatorial attack on [Russian president] Putin’ in 2013 by two Femen protesters shows him giving them a thumbs up sign in apparent approval at their actions, which he later explained he enjoyed (Vasagar and Parfitt, 2013). Reflecting on the protest subsequently, Putin reported that he ‘didn’t make out whether they were blondes, chestnut-haired, or brunettes’ – presumably because he was looking parts of their bodies that were not their faces – which, in the context of a protest against his leadership, reduces the protesters to no more than their appearance, instead of their political message (Vasagar and Parfitt, 2013).9

In 2013, Kitty Green directed a documentary film about the Femen group. Called Ukraine is not a brothel, this film revealed several interesting devices and techniques used by the group to convey their politics. In the film, Femen talk about building a ‘brand’ of people who conform to a certain aesthetic. The film features ‘sex bomb’: one of their campaigns that protested against the Euro 2012 football tournament taking place in Ukraine. The influx of football fans who would solicit Ukrainian sex workers and brothels were the target of this protest. In this protest, a Femen supporter who was somewhat older, and somewhat larger, and who conformed less to the conventional aesthetic of Femen women, positioned herself in the entrance of the metro station in Kiev. Smoking a cigarette from a long cigarette holder, wearing a bright yellow wig, knee-high socks, a bright pink thong, red PVC elbow-length gloves, a black garter over her knee, red sunglasses in the shape of hearts, and zebra-print high heels, the performer had the words ‘sex bomb’ written on her naked torso. Other members of Femen surrounded her, but these were fully clothed in bright pink boiler suits (playing the bomb disposal squad, perhaps) and ran around her with loudspeakers shouting, ‘Danger! Danger! Sex bomb!’, ‘Please keep back!’, ‘Run, people, run!’ The ‘sex bomb’, meanwhile, smiled and blew kisses at the surrounding onlookers, and adopted sexually provocative poses. She appeared amused and delighted in the ‘panic’ she was causing. The message of the protest seemed to be that if men came to Ukraine during the Euro 2012 tournament to visit its brothels, this monstrous feminine is what will be waiting for them. It is worth pausing to consider what this protest conveys about the Femen brand and about this naked protest as a disruption.

The ‘sex bomb’ performer was dressed i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• ONE: Causing trouble
• TWO: Disruptive pregnancy
• THREE: Disruptive protests
• FOUR: Disruptive play
• FIVE: Disruptive bodies
• Endnotes
• References