A Transnational Feminist Evaluation of the Efficacy of Topless Protest in Tunisia Femen’s International Jihad Versus Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité

Abstract

Femen is a bare-breasted feminist group that originated in Ukraine and specializes in topless protests. This article evaluates Femen’s involvement in Tunisia by shedding light on its universalized and decontextualized feminist politics. This article uses a transnational feminist approach in order to question the efficiency of Femen’s international Topless Jihad campaign in Tunisia. I argue that the civilizational and delocalized topless approach cannot advance women’s rights in this Muslim-majority country. The first part of this article addresses the problems of Femen’s civilizational feminism. The second part of this article compares Femen’s non-situated international feminism that tries to lead Tunisian women from Europe to another cross-border feminist group that has operated in Tunisia during the same post-revolutionary period using a contextualized approach. As such, my analysis juxtaposes the inefficacy of Femen’s global bare-breasted activism with the efficacy of the regional transnational feminist alliance Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité. By contrasting the failure of Femen’s anti-Islam techniques to achieve equality with the gradual success of Collectif 95’s situated approach in progressing the equality cause in post-revolutionary Tunisia, I demonstrate the inefficiency of embracing feminist politics that demonize Islam and the usefulness of a feminist strategy that works with Islam in order to create reform from within, not from above.