My Body Belongs To Me
Posted by Michelle Moquin on April 8th, 2013
Good morning!
You probably already know where my opinion lies in answer to yesterday’s posed question. But in case you didn’t, I repeat, as these girls did, “Fuck your morals – My body belongs to me.”
I am posting it again today as a continuation of my support because enough can’t be said or shown when women endure such abuse and oppression on a daily basis. Couldn’t see the video yesterday? This write from Ynaija contains some photos:
In support of ‘Amina’: FEMEN stages International Topless Jihad Day (GRAPHIC PHOTOS)
FEMEN strikes again: Topless protesters staged demonstrations near mosques and Tunisian embassies across Europe on Thursday to express support for embattled FEMEN activist Amina Tyler.
“We’re free, we’re naked, it’s our right, it’s our body, it’s our rules, and nobody can use religion, and some other holy things, to abuse women, to oppress them,” FEMEN member Alexandra Shevchenko said in Berlin, according to AFP.
“And we’ll fight against them. And our boobs will be stronger than their stones,” she added.
Tunisian student Amina Tyler sparked a massive controversy in mid-March by posting topless photos of herself on Facebook, with the slogans “Fuck Your Morals” and “My Body Belongs To Me, And Is Not The Source Of Anyone’s Honor,” painted on her body.
Islamist hackers responded with an attack on FEMEN’s Tunisian Facebook Fan Page, replacing topless photos with quotes from the Quran. An Islamic preacher even stated that Tyler could be stoned for her act of defiance.
In support of Tyler’s plight, FEMEN labeled April 4 “International Topless Jihad Day” and organized protests across Europe.
“This day will mark the beginning of a new, genuine Arab Spring, after which true freedom, freedom without mullahs and caliphs, will come to Tunisia! Long live the topless jihad against infidels! Our tits are deadlier than your stones!” the group wrote in a statement on its Facebook page.
Five activists gathered near an Islamic cultural center in Brussels, Belgium, Euronews writes. And according to the Gazetta Del Sud, Italian womenprotested outside the Tunisian consulate in Milan, carrying signs that read “Free Amina” and “Bare Breasts Against Islam.”
The Interfax News agency adds that the protests spread to the Ukraine, with police detaining FEMEN activists in Kiev. “The FEMEN activists drove up to the entrance to the mosque in a car, where they were arrested by the police,” Interfax cites the police reports.
Activists and journalists have expressed concern about Tyler’s well-being in recent days. While her lawyer said the young woman was doing fine, several reports suggest Tyler is being held by her parents in seclusion.
“No, it’s not fine. Amina is with her family but that’s not ‘good news,’ as some newspapers earlier wrote,” journalist Caroline Fourest wrote in a blog for HuffPost France. “No one close to her, none of her friends or people in her support network have seen her or heard that she was free, free to move and speak,” Fourest added.
♥♥♥Women♥♥♥
Readers: More power to these girls. More power to women around the world supporting women around the world. To see more photos of our fearless girls, click here.
Qalat, Charika, Shir Khan, et al: It is so delightful to see all of you here again. It has been awhile. Thank you for expressing what I/we know to be so true, and what I/we are fighting to end. As I stated, enough can’t be said or shown. I HOPE you are all well. Sending love…
Howard, Ellen: Yep, you got it; those are the kind of people I was talking about.
Robert, RT: Thank you for the kind words. Thanks too for posting the additional write in support of these girls. Yes, we all need to make sacrifices to support our sisters. I just wish I had been out there protesting with them too. I HOPE you are well.
David, et al: Thank you.
Sending Peace & Love: “Live it, Give it”
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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April 8th, 2013 at 5:56 pm
I hope I get in this time. Thanks Michelle for showing the effort behind the movement.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Why You Get the Headaches You Do—and How to Ease Them
Destiny, you may believe, is what leads you to fall in love with a particular person…to have or not have children…or to become an artist or animal-rights activist.
But could destiny determine the type of headaches you get—for instance, tension headaches that feel like you’re squeezed into a child-sized helmet…migraines that feel like a knife in the eye…or sinus headaches that make it too painful to bend over?
The answer is yes. According to the principles of Ayurvedic medicine, headache tendencies are to some extent preordained by your dosha, or mind-body type. But that doesn’t mean you have to live with the pain. Just as your dosha determines the type and frequency of your headaches, it determines their antidotes, too. Here’s why…
In Ayurveda, an ancient system of healing wisdom, the three basic doshas—vata, pitta and kapha—are said to be derived from the five elements of earth, air, water, fire and space. Each person typically has two governing doshas, with one being the lead dosha.
Your dosha shapes everything about you, from your physique to your personality to the particular maladies you’re most vulnerable to. The Ayurvedic way to optimal health depends on pacifying or balancing that dominant dosha, according to neurologist Trupti Gokani, MD, director of North Shore Headache & Wellness, an integrative clinic in Highland Park, Illinois.
To reduce the frequency of your headaches and minimize discomfort when they do arise, Dr. Gokani suggested the following. First, identify your predominant dosha…then follow the appropriate dosha-balancing strategies.
Note: Products mentioned below are sold in health-food stores and generally are safe, but it is best to work with an Ayurvedic practitioner who can ensure that they are right for you and suggest dosages.
The three doshas…
VATA. Linked to the elements of air and space, people with this dosha tend to be energetic, lean and muscular. “When these elements come together, it creates movement—think of it as wind blowing through your mind and body,” Dr. Gokani said. Vatas also are excitable, anxious and reactive…are prone to joint or muscle aches, constipation and/or gas (which can create stress that contributes to headaches)…and often feel cold.
Headache type: If you are a vata, you are vulnerable to tension headaches. The pain may be a throbbing in the back of your head or neck or it may feel like a constricting band around your head. Typically, headaches arise when you push yourself too hard, disrupt your schedule or repress your emotions.
What helps…
• Sticking to a schedule is important for vatas. Get up and go to bed at the same time each day…have meals on a regular schedule, too.
• Eat plenty of warm, cooked foods that are high in fiber. To aid digestion, season foods with cinnamon, cumin, fennel and/or ginger.
• Drink warm or hot water throughout the day. Avoid cold drinks, which aggravate vata.
• Supplement with magnesium, which is calming. For patients with a vata imbalance, Dr. Gokani also considers the herbs jata mamsi and brahmi to promote relaxation…and triphala to help heal digestive distress.
PITTA.
Associated with fire and water, pitta is the dosha linked to metabolism and inflammation. Pitta people are average in size and build…tend to be intense “type A” perfectionists…and often feel too warm even when others are cold.
Headache type:
If you are a pitta, you are prone to migraines. Typically (but not always) the pain is in the eye area on the right side and is accompanied by nausea, light sensitivity and irritability.
What helps…
• Cool down by eating more fresh fruits and salads…and season foods with cooling herbs, such as cilantro and turmeric. Avoid spicy foods and hot beverages, which worsen a pitta imbalance.
• After meals, drink one-quarter cup of aloe vera juice or chew a slice of turmeric root.
• Relax in the evening. Pitta women often keep going at full steam long past bedtime, then have trouble sleeping, thus increasing migraine risk. Better: Go to bed by 10 pm.
• Lighten up. Noting that she herself falls into the pitta category, Dr. Gokani said, “We’re the folks who need to relax, have some fun and allow life to flow a bit more, which may include allowing mistakes—our own and other people’s—to just happen.”
KAPHA.
Governed by the elements of earth and water, kapha is associated with stability and groundedness. Kaphas often are large-boned…may suffer from congestion, fluid retention, body stiffness and lethargy…and have a tendency to gain weight.
Headache type:
If you are a kapha, you are prone to sinus headaches, which affect the forehead and face and intensify when you bend down. “This damp, congested, heavy state is a sign that the body needs to cleanse itself and detoxify,” Dr. Gokani said.
What helps…
• Avoid antihistamines, which can impair your system’s natural efforts to self-cleanse, Dr. Gokani advised. Instead, to irrigate the sinuses and relieve the congestion that can lead to or exacerbate sinus headaches, use a neti pot daily (or less frequently if nasal passages become too dry).
You can follow this with a treatment called nasya. It involves placing a few drops of medicated sesame oil (which contains dosha-balancing herbs such as mustard seed) in each nostril using a dropper or the tip of your pinky finger to help lubricate nasal passages, calm the mind and relieve headaches.
• Reduce your intake of dairy products and foods that contain gluten (a protein in wheat, rye and barley), since these are difficult to digest.
• Season foods with energizing hot spices, such as black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and mustard seed. Be particularly liberal with cinnamon, which also is helpful for cleansing, Dr. Gokani said.
• Incorporate more movement in your day to stimulate your sluggish system.
Especially beneficial:
Get up no later than 6 am and take a walk outdoors. Early-morning air is filled with the energy force prana, which can help keep you energized and headache-free all day.
Source: Trupti Gokani, MD, is a board-certified neurologist and director of North Shore Headache & Wellness, an integrative clinic in Highland Park, Illinois. Her special interests include alternative approaches to headache management and women’s issues. http://www.NorthShoreHeadache.com
April 8th, 2013 at 6:27 pm
Michelle, I love you. Thanks for keeping us alive in the hearts and minds of the world.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:31 pm
How many of these women are actually oppressed Muslims though? Maybe I’m just profiling, but most of them looked western. Nothing will change unless those women whose rights we are fighting for stand up for THEMSELVES.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:32 pm
Muslim women are protesting, we’re fighting for our rights, and we’re being arrested, beat up, tortured and killed. We need all the support we can get.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:33 pm
it’s not on the news because muslim men control the news in our country. They can kill us at will and the rest of the world will never know.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:36 pm
People keep saying “….because they don’t want to abandon the religion.” Those are stupid people. Abandoning islam is punishable by death and any muslim can kill another muslim attempting to abandon the faith.
How stupid are westerners who speak about islam without knowing a thing about it.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:37 pm
I hear shit like this all the time. “If Islamic women keep letting others fight their battles for them, nothing will ever change, at least no real and permanent change for the better.”
The Islamic women aren’t allowed to protest. Their husbands, fathers and brothers forbid it. If they get caught, they risk torture or death.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:38 pm
Good point CD.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:39 pm
Shit, JL and Abie, you hit the nail on the head. GOOD JOB!
April 8th, 2013 at 6:42 pm
Any of you stones for brains that think we wear all this uncomfortable shit because we like it should put some of this shit on for a day.
Most of the dialogue by “women” writing in to claim an affinity for islam in any form are muslim men posing as women. What women would say she loves wearing a hijab because she loves shopping for scarfs.
Only an idiotic man would say something that stupid and only a moron would give it serious credence.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
We protest for islamic women because many of these women in Islamic countries could be killed for this with no repercussion to their murderers. In many places a man who murders a woman who does this is a hero.
Do you think the civil rights movement would have gone the way it did if the people committing these crimes were sanctioned to do so and then praised and glorified after?
April 8th, 2013 at 6:45 pm
Many, if not most of the women in those places already have children. Of course you know that societies that subjugate women also get them pregnant early and often.
Those women could maybe accept martyring themselves, but they can’t accept martyring their children also.
It’s pretty easy for young unattached western women to protest, knowing that they won’t be stoned to death and leave their children orphaned. It’s even easier for young unattached men to say what those women should be doing to free themselves.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Mischa, where’s the protests in the US?! Why aren’t American women supporting this or did I miss something in the article?
I’m all for this, and I’d attend, too. Luv, Zen Lill
April 8th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Many of these “oppresions” are actually encouraged to the daughters by the mothers.
I was shocked to see how common that was when I was over there. Especially with female circumcision.
The mothers are the ones that really push for it. Didn’t change my mind on the subject, I still consider many of their customs to be wrongful, sinful, human rights violations. But it definitely effected my views on how to change it.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:48 pm
The protests are against the abduction/mistreatment of Amina, a Tunisian.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Like the egyptian women subject to the rape squads of Tahrir Square? The Muslim brotherhood’s state-backed gangs’ are still terrorizing female muslim protesters, but since they are not pretty white topless women I guess they aren’t “fighting” enough for themselves being beaten, raped, and some dying for their rights.
What about Malala Yousufzai who took a bullet to the head from the Taliban for women’s education at 14? There are thousands of Muslim women fighting and dying for their rights.
This is an ignorant statement. Do a little research, but be prepared for violent, horrible stories of torture, rape, disfigurement, etc. These are countries that castrate men and rape them with broomsticks before final public lynchings.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
why aren’t these women standing up for themselves?!?! WHY?
April 8th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
Maybe they don’t want to be stoned to death?
April 8th, 2013 at 6:51 pm
I’m sitting here trying to figure out where the logic in getting topless is – the only people likely to take notice of that, are horny 15 year olds.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:52 pm
You would think that a group of feminists would be largely against using there bodies for attention.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:53 pm
I’d pay good money to see you Protest Zen Lill. I can only imagine what you would write across those boobs.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:54 pm
Hank, it’s because it’s what Amina Tyler was jailed for.
April 8th, 2013 at 6:56 pm
John, are you in the real world? There are many types of feminists. If you think them as people who want to be able to do everything opposite sex does, with the same reaction, this does a lot of sense.
If these were men with text on their chests, you would not think these pictures as particularly newsworthy, because men are allowed to be without shirts (and if they were men, half of the redditors would still be ogling them).
But these are parisisan women (some of who undoubtedly don’t use tops at beach) protesting about tunisian woman who is arrested and threatened with jail for showing her boobs on the web.
So by doing this they affirm their right to do this, make it seen as more normal to those who don’t think so AND protest very clearly against a government that threw a lady to jail due to showing her chest.
Thank you Michelle for not just doing a cursory article. This follow up is just the thing to keep attention this situation.
April 8th, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Steward, I could force myself to be aroused by Zen Lill’s no doubt beautiful tits, but there’s nothing inherently erotic about a pissed off topless woman.
I’m not convinced that women’s breasts in public are any more sexual than a man’s chiseled chest in the same setting would be. Alas, people have their prejudices.
Mine would be to see Michelle’s gorgeous tits. Now I couldn’t help but be aroused by those. I could hardly tune in to this blog when her previous Maybe-you-see-them-maybe-you-don’t picture was in the absolutely super fine ones place.
Now, I tune in and dream I actually know this super intelligent blog master.
Ahhhhh, yes I would pay good money to drool over Michelle’s splendid breasts.
Thomas
April 8th, 2013 at 7:03 pm
The cause is worth protesting. It’s a start. Who cares where they’re from…they’re women. It matters to me… I’m Canadian. I think I’ll walk around with my boobs out and be angry. I should be. We all should be.
April 8th, 2013 at 7:03 pm
Well how the Fuck do you know what the girls under a Burka look like? They may all be super hot horny girls that are trapped in marriages where all the men are gay and hate women
April 8th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
How dose anyone expect women in arab countries to protest anything women can’t drive in Saudi Arabia amongst other things. All these things are enforced by the religious police.
There’s a video of a woman in a mall being bothered by them for wearing nail polish or makeup. Do you think this is not oppression?
April 8th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
There is no oppression of Muslim women because my sister always goes back to Saudi Arabia, and golly gee, she even likes it here!”.
April 8th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
I came here for titties and was not disappointed
on a serious note though these bitches are just acting stupid. If they showed up at your house acting like this you’d call the cops too…
April 8th, 2013 at 7:09 pm
Alachua, is a LSOS. He’s from Saudi Arabia where every male citizen is a king.
Let him learn the Indo-European language of Persian and come to Iran, where every male and female is being oppressed by the religion his ancestors imposed on us. He will surely change his opinion on this glorious Islam.
April 8th, 2013 at 7:12 pm
Ok, Alachua. The women that aren’t allowed to ride bikes for transportation, drive or show their face aren’t opressed.
How woudl yoru family react if she wanted to stay abroad, not wear the veil, etc? I really doubt there is no pressure on her to “like” Saudi.
How would you feel if we didn’t allow you to do in our country, what you wont allow your women to do in yours?
You’d bitch like the piece of shit you are for forcing women to be subjugated to your fucked up desires.
May 7th, 2013 at 1:37 am
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something that
I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and very broad
for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!