The Carleton Womyn’s Centre backed out of a screening of I Am Femen, a documentary by Swiss director Alain Margot, on March 8. The film was set to screen on campus March 9.
The film chronicles the life of a woman named Oxana, a member of the Ukranian activist group Femen. Known for its controversial tactics, Femen calls its method “sextremism,” or in its words, “an all-powerful demoralizing weapon undermining the foundations of the old political ethics and rotten patriarchal culture.”
The screening was supposed to be held in honour of International Women’s Day in conjunction with the Carleton branch of Cinema Politica, an organization aiming to educate viewers by showing progressive documentaries on a wide variety of topics.
Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, the Womyn’s Centre programming co-ordinator, said she initially thought the screening would be an interesting perspective on feminist activism. After researching further, she says the Womyn’s Centre decided not to participate in the screening because of Femen’s Islamophobic policies.
On its website, Femen condemns Islamic states for “creating unbearable living conditions for women.” Owusu-Akyeeah says the group is also known for burning hijabs.
“It’s not coming from the right people to make an impact in my particular opinion,” said Sagal Yusuf, the Womyn’s Centre’s administrative co-ordinator. “They’re essentially painting all Muslim women, all Hijabi women, with the same brush—that they are oppressed.”
She said Femen doesn’t take into consideration the agency Muslim women can have in choosing to wear the hijab.
On her recommendation, Owusu-Akyeeah said Cinema Politica asked a representative of the Muslim Students Association about facilitating a discussion around the film, but they decided against it.
To address the issue on their Facebook page, Cinema Politica wrote that while their organization “seeks out provocative films, we do not intend to be hurtful in our conduct. International Women’s Day is intended to be a day of respect for ALL women. And we would want ALL women to feel welcome to our screening and discussion.”
Amrita Hari, a women’s and gender studies professor at Carleton, said this kind of controversy is a key part of feminist debate because feminism is so difficult to define.
“[Feminism] is broadly social justice, but there are always questions around who gets to define that and who doesn’t. You will always find people who are strongly in support of one thing and not the other,” Hari said.
Hari added that since feminism deals with so many different types of issues, it’s difficult to imagine an organization that can address them all.
However, she said Femen seems like its approaching the issue in the wrong way.
“If by virtue of design of your institution you’re homogenizing and sort of oppressing or discriminating against a group, that’s not a social justice movement,” Hari said.
According to Owusu-Akyeeah it can be easy to look at one form of oppression and ignore everything else.
“You can’t address one thing and ignore another, or use one form of oppression to fight against another. It’s just contradictory,” Owusu-Akyeeah said.
