Neda Topaloski at Quebec’s National Assembly. Image via VICE DU JOUR.
This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.
When we walked in to our first shoot with the FEMEN crew, Neda Topaloski was standing in the middle of the living room with her breasts bare. Her co-conspirator, Delphine Bergeron, stood before her with a paintbrush, staring at her human canvas in quiet reflection.
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“What if I write ‘Access to abortion?’” Bergeron suggested.
“Or you could put ‘Bill 20’ with a red cross through it?” proposed Topaloski. The message they chose would be painted on her nude torso and, if everything went according to their plan, broadcast across the province.
This is a glimpse into the life of FEMEN’s self-proclaimed “sextremists,” members of a European-born movement that uses nudity as a shock-and-awe tactic against patriarchy. This past spring, VICE was invited to spend some time with the Quebec branch of the radical feminist group as they set out on a mission to protect Canadian women’s abortion rights.
VICE, QC documentary ‘FEMEN: Sextremism in Canada.’
In North America, the only active FEMEN group is based out of Montreal. FEMEN Quebec (or FEMEN Canada, depending on your sovereignist sensibilities) is considerably smaller than its overseas contemporaries, but its rotating cast of about a half-dozen activists has been making a name for itself nonetheless. “It’s even the only group in an Anglo-Saxon country,” Topaloski points out, adding that even the United Kingdom has yet to produce a real, active membership.
Considering the province’s religious and cultural past—the Quiet Revolution, the language debate, and a general preponderance for protest—it’s perhaps no coincidence that FEMEN’s only successful offshoot on this side of the Atlantic has taken root in Quebec.
But in the Quebec City apartment where they gave us the rendez-vous, the women were concerned that some of the province’s habitually progressive mores are in jeopardy. They say Bill 20, a controversial health care reform proposed by Health Minister Gaétan Barrette, could reduce access to abortion, and they traveled from their Montreal homes to the provincial capital to share their concerns with those in charge.
Whether or not the law would actually limit access to abortion is still up for debate. Barrette vehemently denies that there would be any impact, but FEMEN believe the simple fact that the topic has been brought back to the political arena is disturbing. They wanted to confront him in person at the Quebec Parliament.
After settling on a slogan they deemed sufficiently intelligent and concise (the French abbreviation for voluntary termination of pregnancy and the word “priority”), Neda showed us the rest of her costume, which consisted of white underwear painted red at the crotch.
“The message couldn’t be clearer: this is where my priorities are, you know,” she said. It’s provocative, but that’s the point: “I want to show him, so we’re putting our body in his face and no one will ignore us.”
Neda Topaloski shows off the outfit they’ve designed for her National Assembly stunt.
FEMEN’s critics (and there’s no shortage of those) say the women’s approach is all flash and no substance, or that their use of nudity and theatrics actually distracts from their intended message.
For freelance journalist and women’s rights activist Toula Drimonis, the message itself is also problematic. She says the group’s seemingly immovable (and often criticized) condemnation of both religion and sex work—which FEMEN perceives as patriarchy incarnate—is exclusionary. “Feminism is about the choice to make whatever decision you want as a human being,” Drimonis explains. “Their Eurocentric white feminism is very patronizing.”
Drimonis says she believes the FEMEN formula is doing more harm than good for the feminist cause. “I’ve never seen any demonstration, anything that they’ve done, produce results,” Drimonis told VICE. She says the coverage their actions generate is usually treated as clickbait. “Every time there has been a conversation, most people never get past the breasts. [The message] is always lost in the noise,” she says.
For Topaloski, however, the group’s stance and its guerrilla-esque methods are a necessary part of the feminist landscape. “It desacralizes feminism, carries it out of the realm of ideas, out of academia, where a lot is said but little is achieved.”
The 29-year-old was born in Serbia, leaving for Canada just as the Yugoslav Wars started. She says the country’s socialist system had a big influence on her upbringing. “My mom grew up in a country where no one talked about religious holidays but women’s day was a big deal,” she described. “[The nation] boasted pretty great egalitarian principles, and these principles shaped me.”
The French literature grad said her interest in FEMEN came from a realization that, while women have come a long way in the past few decades, there was still a battle to be fought. “The nature of the oppression has now changed: capitalism, a consumerist society, the pernicious return of religion within democracies,” she listed off. “These are just a reiteration of male domination, these are new ways of establishing male domination over women, of enslaving women to a patriarchal economy.”
“We can’t help but acknowledge that we’re in the same shit as before,” Topaloski said, adding that, for her, FEMEN’s felt like the best way to tackle these modern inequalities. “They’re out there and they say it out loud.”
FEMEN members Neda Topaloski and Delphine Bergeron. Photo by Yannick Fornacciari
During the National Assembly stunt, Topaloski managed to pass herself off as a journalist, using her real (and very Google-able) name. With Barrette MIA, she opted to storm a press conference hosted by Culture Minister Hélène David instead, pouncing in front of the podium with her breasts bare and skirt lifted, wailing “NO TO BILL 20.”
Much like choosing base jumping over a less-extreme sport like cycling, favoring FEMEN’s approach to tamer forms of protest seems to have a lot to do with adrenaline. Their stunts are not for the faint of heart and, even for a bystander, the rush they generate can get overwhelming.
In the chaos, with security guards rushing to grab her and cameramen piling atop one another to film her, the FEMEN perspective comes into sharper focus: if politicians have a literal pedestal to share their message, how does society ensure dissenting voices are heard just as loudly? Could the bare-breasted ambush be a kind of great equalizer, a flash of attention for the disenfranchised?
Perhaps, in theory.
But in practice, Topaloski’s stunt catalyzed a flurry of panic and finger pointing, resulting in what was likely a pretty horrible day for the person in charge of press accreditations. New to the National Assembly, VICE journalists were even suspected of orchestrating or facilitating the coup (we didn’t), and at one point we were chased down by a camera crew trying to get “to the bottom of the story.” A few seconds of pretty innocuous topless yelling seemed to stir up more hostility than productive conversation.
The ensuing media coverage took a different path than the women had hoped. The news stories mostly sidestepped FEMEN’s access to abortion message, focusing instead on the National Assembly’s security measures (understandably) and the parliament’s subsequent decision to review its accreditation protocol.
CTV News story about FEMEN’s National Assembly stunt focused mostly on security issues.
For Topaloski, however, the mission’s shortcomings have more to do with the media’s failures than with problems with the FEMEN formula. “They diverted the matter and used our political action to talk about something else,” she says of reporters. “That type of rhetorical diversion is actually very common with FEMEN. It makes ‘pacifist activism” rhyme with ‘terrorism,’ as if they were equal.”
Yet “pacifist” is not exactly the word that comes to mind when one sees a FEMEN protest. The women are instructed to resist when police or security guards try to put an end to their outbursts, and the images of this grapple can be incredibly violent. This visual, she says, is part of the message they wish to convey: “It’s a resistance to a system that uses our bodies, and the real resistance is represented in the physical struggle,” she says.
Neda Topaloski during a stunt at an F1 Grand Prix event. Photo by Yannick Fornacciari
“FEMEN don’t physically fight, per say, but we don’t stop. What leads to change is the visual, the spectacle that perhaps goes too far.”
Drimonis says this fight, and its manufactured images of women being dominated by men, is another problematic element: “The more she resists, the more she can talk about how she was treated, how badly women are treated.”
“There’s so many undertones of sexism that we live in, that I don’t have too much patience for someone who puts themselves in that situation where violence is very circumstantial,” she explained.
Over the past year and a half, Topaloski has taken part in about ten actions, and now faces a handful of criminal charges including indecent exposure and assault on a peace officer. Still, she says the FEMEN brand is one she’s committed to for the long run. “I wouldn’t be doing this today if I didn’t think I would maintain these convictions for the rest of my life,” she says. That’s a good attitude, since her name is likely to be associated with FEMEN in Google searches for years to come.
“It’s a long-fought battle. It’s an ideological struggle, a long-winded affair, through small gestures and things,” she says. “If we don’t do it, nobody will.”
But that—FEMEN slowing down—says Drimonis, could be a good thing. “Feminism has a hard enough time as it is,” she says. “The last thing we need is a movement that makes kind of a mockery of what we’re doing.”
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