Femen in the current Spanish political context: feminist activism and counterhegemonic modes of representation

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to address Femen’s media-based activism in Spain, focusing, on the one hand, on the lack of understanding of Femen’s activist methods by broad swaths of institutionalized feminism, and on the other, on their activism’s repercussions in the broader debates in the current Spanish political context. In order to achieve these objectives, I work from the premise that the use of politics of the body linked to counterhegemonic representational modes impacts the possibilities and reach of Femen’s activist practices. At the same time, paradoxically, these practices are situated in the politics of the street and bodies in alliance that have determined new forms of political practice. I will argue that these new feminist political actions – which are articulated through processes of mediation, culture jamming and recontextualization – are defined not so much by the effectiveness of the new cultural practices one finds in contemporary activism, but by how they become part of what is now called awkward politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Femen
• Spanish feminist activism
• counterhegemonic representational modes
• politics of the street

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sonia Núñez Puente is a tenured professor of Gender and Communication in the Department of Sciences of Communication at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. She is currently director of the Gender Equality Unit in the Gender Equality Observatory. She is also director of the Masters Degree in Communication, Culture and Digital Citizenship. She has led several competitive research projects in the field of Gender and Communication and published articles in national and international journals, particularly on gender-based violence and digital feminist activism. She currently leads a project entitled “La resignificación de la mujer-víctima en redes sociales: implicaciones para la construcción de la vulnerabilidad”, funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad. sonia.puenteurjc.es

Notes

1. The 15-M movement demanded the construction of a political agenda for citizens’ rights that moved beyond traditional political parties’ hierarchical and vertical models of organization. A full bibliographic review of the 15-M is outside the scope and aims of the present article. For a discussion of the movement in terms of consensus and dissent, useful for the present analysis, see Sampedro and Lobera (2014). For a theoretical overview of the 15-M movement and its relation to Podemos, see the 2015 monograph edited by the magazine Teknokultura (Jerez Novara and Maestu Fonseca). It is worth noting that the new contexts and frameworks of recognition of 15-M’s political action were constituted in a complex relationship to the feminist movement, rife with synergies and divergences (Gámez 2015, 362).

2. In an article in Pikara Magazine, Beatriz Gimeno (2013) eloquently explains the problematization of Femen’s actions in the context of Spanish feminisms:

teniendo esto en cuenta que suele hacer referencia al feminismo clásico, en el caso de Femen podríamos pensar entonces que “el otro” feminismo, el feminismo queer, el feminismo proprostitución, el feminismo postporno etc. vería con simpatía esta forma de protesta. Y sin embargo nos encontramos con que tal cosa no sucede. (…) Así que Femen no tiene en la Europa postfeminista quien le defienda y, por el contrario, molesta a todo el mundo.

3. The media exposure of Podemos has been analyzed from the perspective of, on the one hand, its communicative effectiveness in modifying dominant discourses, and on the other, the risk of cumulative banalization, which such exposure might provoke (Sampedro 140).

4. The image of Femen activists bursting into the Congress of Deputies while shouting “aborto es sagrado”, when the approval of the Abortion Law modification was under debate, has become one of the most recurrent visual representations in the Spanish press.

5. The freedom train is a movement in defense of the sexual and reproductive rights of women and against the Abortion Law reform. The movement culminated on 1 February 2014, with a mass protest in Madrid that demanded the withdrawal of the Abortion Law draft bill presented by the Popular Party government. In Spain, Femen supported the freedom train through its Twitter account and joined the protest on 1 February in Madrid.

6. In what was the first trial against Femen in Spain, in July 2016, Criminal Court number 19 of Madrid absolved the five activists who protested and interrupted a November 2013 pro-life demonstration that demanded stricter laws against abortion.

7. Criminal Court number six of Madrid sentenced Rita Maestre, councilor and spokesperson for the City Council of Madrid, to pay a fine of 4320 euros for bursting into the chapel of the Somosaguas campus of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, five years ago. The court ruled that there was proof that Maestre entered the chapel and that, “en unión y de acuerdo con otras mujeres, con intención de ofender los sentimientos religiosos de los allí presentes y del colectivo católico, invadieron el espacio destinado al altar” (El Confidencial, 18 March 2016).