FOUR Enduring Rhetorics

In tracing the body themes two years after Sboui’s original post, what becomes clear is the way in which those themes, and the rhetorics attached to Page 100 →them, become strongly bonded to femen. In other words, the endurance of certain body rhetorics becomes directly linked to the endurance of femen as a focal point for the media: femen becomes the moving sign for the amalgamation of the body themes that emerged and circulated throughout the first two layers of this study. By looking at another one of femen’s protests from fall of 2015—a protest in which a few femen members interrupted a conference held in Paris to protest its theme—we can better see how these themes repeat within a context similar to Sboui’s original protest: the conference itself focused on Islamic practices involving women and women’s roles in Muslim communities. By examining the texts that circulated regarding this particular event, I show how the body-as-protest theme and the body-as-object theme continue to propagate the affective rhetorics of universality that we saw emerging in chapter 3.

In one way, the endurance of these rhetorics is manifested through the constant repetition of femen’s association with Sboui and femen’s perceived bolstering of her message. In an article from Shout Out UK, an independent news source in England, the following headline appears: “femen Activists Rock the Casbah But Suffer a Brutal Beating.” Above the headline is a multicolored image of a woman in a hijab, her eyes peering through the veil, looking upward. While the focus of the article is on femen’s conference disturbance, writer Alexander Plumb implores his readers to remember Sboui and the “topless jihad” that was organized by femen on her behalf:

This is not the first time femen have taken on Islamic authorities. On the 4th of April 2013, they proclaimed an ‘International Day of Topless Jihad,’ in response to official threats to a Tunisian woman, Amina Tyler, who had posted naked pictures of herself online, having written on her chest, ‘I own my body, it’s not the source of anyone’s honour.’ A religious commission said she should be stoned to death to prevent her example becoming an epidemic.¹

Implicit in this excerpt are the body-as-protest and body-as-object themes, which are used to purport a distinction between femen and Sboui and, even more so, a distinction between Western feminists and Muslim and Arab women. Here, femen represents the notion of “protest” and thus free-moving, liberated bodies (i.e., Western feminists). Sboui becomes a symbolic “object,” standing in for detained, oppressed, threatened bodies (i.e., Muslim and Arab women), even though Sboui’s embodied protest ignited this entire chain of events. Plumb’s portrayal of Sboui as an object lacking agency recalls a specific memory of, and perhaps an attachment to, Page 101 →a particular feeling and thus affect. The references to death threats against Sboui and her subsequent arrest invoke emotional responses of both righteous anger and righteous pity (emotions that emerged throughout the previous chapter) and thus reinforce an affect premised on the belief that Muslim women are always already oppressed and in need of saving by Western feminists. (Consider this also in light of the image of the veiled woman at the beginning of Plumb’s article.) Once again, Sboui’s story is ultimately decontextualized and thus altogether elided, as there is no explanation of the context from which Sboui’s protest emerged.

In the descriptions of femen’s recent conference disturbance, the body themes of protest and objectification call on the history of femen’s engagement with Sboui, even when Sboui is not mentioned at all. This leads to continued assumptions and associations linking Muslim women to ideologies of oppression and violence. In this way, femen becomes the magnet for the body themes—for the historical and discursive threads that created this rhetorical circuit. For example, in an article from the UK-based news site Independent, writer Olivia Blair claims: “The so-far unnamed women are believed to be aged 25 and 31. The slogans written across their chest translate to ‘I am my own prophet’ and ‘Nobody submits me.’ Footage shows a group of men running on stage to carry the women off stage. The clip then shows one man in a white t-shirt appearing to kick the protester while she is on the ground.”² Several moves are worth noting here. First, regarding the protest described, specific details directly related to Sboui’s protest appear, namely slogans denouncing patriarchal discourses written across the protestors’ chests. To recall the photographs from chapter 1, the slogans written across Sboui’s chest were very similar in meaning to those of the femen protesters: “My body belongs to me and not someone else’s honor” and “Fuck your morals.” In Blair’s description of the femen members’ bare-breasted messages, Sboui, though absent, becomes a figurative presence—but only in relation to femen, or more specifically, only in the implied positioning of Sboui as the “silent” object and femen as the agentive, protesting subject. This rhetorical move, as it continues to be expressed through emotional modes of righteous anger, allows the affective thread linking Muslim women with oppression and affliction to continue and endure. Moreover, the reference to both implicit and explicit past associations (e.g., Sboui) is important, as those kinds of references allow readers to affectively displace or link their reactions to current stories about femen, to earlier situations and histories, making them seem more real and thus more felt.

Page 102 →This kind of affective thread endures in other instances as well, particularly in the descriptions of the conference itself. Plumb, for example, writes: “How ironic, and sad, that two female activists should face a potentially fatal beating at a Muslim conference supposedly discussing the need for non-violence towards women.”³ Plumb’s characterization of this event as “sad” reproduces the emotions of righteous pity that emerged in the earlier examples. In addition, the notions of oppression and violence are not only regarded as prevalent mostly in Muslim contexts, but is also tied to a singular, generalizable (read: Western) kinds of injustice—injustices that, as femen suggests in all of their protests, “affects” all women in the same way.

In many of the headlines describing the conference disturbance, several rhetorical constructions appear, pointing to the endurance of meanings associated with the body rhetorics that came before and specifically, the link between naked protest and feminism, and thus between femen and feminists, as the following captions illustrate:

“Topless Femen protesters ‘kicked during scuffles’ at Muslim conference about women” (Independent)

“Topless Protesters Disrupted a Muslim Conference on Women” (Buzz-Feed News)

Topless Women Pummeled by Muslim Men: ‘Dirty whores! Kill them!’ (WorldNetDaily)

“Topless femen Protesters Expose Radical Islam’s Real Boobs: Bare-breasted activists may have stormed the stage of a Muslim conference near Paris, but the true vulgarity is how too many of Islam’s leaders want women treated” (Daily Beast)

“Shocking moment: two topless feminist protestors storm Muslim conference—before they are dragged off and kicked on the floor” (Daily Mail)

“Feminist Activists Dragged off the Stage at Islam Event: Two topless activists from the self-proclaimed ‘sextremist’ group Femen were violently dragged away after storming the stage at a conference on women and Islam near Paris” (The Local Fr)

The references to “topless femen protesters,” “sextremist group femen,” “topless activists,” “topless feminist protesters,” and “feminist activists” advance the idea that naked protest is analogous to feminism and the fight for women’s rights, which advances the idea that femen represents all of these things. In an ironic move, the protesting body (in this case, a femen body) is used to mock the objectification of women’s bodies, as many of the Page 103 →captions sarcastically allude to naked protesters as “dirty whores,” and cite topless protest as something potentially “vulgar.” In those same moments, the body-as-object theme that would normally be associated with naked, sexualized bodies gets transferred onto Islam (i.e., “Topless femen Protesters Expose Radical Islam’s Real Boobs”) and thus attributed to Muslim women (i.e., “the true vulgarity is how too many of Islam’s leaders want women treated”).

This particular rhetorical move reveals the continuation of the kinds of affective rhetorics that materialized in chapters 2 and 3. In the previous layers of circulation, the themes of protest and object—particularly naked protest and bodily objectification—were affectively circulated to express righteous anger regarding Muslim women’s “lack” of agency and to put forth an emotional call for solidarity in the hopes of liberating Muslim women. Within the slippages between the protest and object themes lies an affect premised on Western liberal beliefs about liberation and oppression and thus the constructed dichotomy of feminism versus Islam via the literal disagreements between femen and MWAF. At this point in time—two years since femen’s “topless jihad day”—the circulation and constant repetition of the rhetorical associations between femen, liberation, and feminism continue to contribute to the problematic associations between Muslim women, oppression, and anti-feminism, as well as the problematic associations between Muslim men, violence, and sexism and misogyny.

The endurance of the affective rhetorics in this study showcases the ways in which certain rhetorical meanings can become so amplified and velocitized that they solidify and become part of prevailing knowledges and beliefs. What was once arguable becomes an accepted premise. Whereas in chapter 3, the velocity of certain body rhetorics polarized and divided the rhetorical landscape into “sides,” this layer of circulation shows us how certain arguments—and the alliances and exclusions that were made possible by those arguments—endure to such a degree that they no longer seem debatable. Certain meanings related to protest, object, and nationhood, for example, become attached only to femen. As a result, the rhetorical playing field is altered to seem less divisive and rather more singular and universal. Difference (an ideology highlighted in chapter 3) becomes negated in favor of universalism. Because of this, femen literally becomes the center of this rhetorical circuit: a metonym for feminism and a metonym for the voice on women’s “universal rights.”⁴ femen as an entity comes to represent an Page 104 →affective assemblage of the original body themes and thus the competing rhetorics embedded in those themes.

The metonym of femen as the “voice” for universal rights problematically suggests a disavowal of the varying lived experiences and personal contexts of actual women. Specifically in this context, Muslim women are positioned as silent to allow femen to speak on behalf of all women. In this way, those different from this metonym only serve to support its universality rather than question it. This affective slippage materializes in an article from the Daily Beast, in which writer Asra Nomani interviews Eshmael Darman, an Afghan mental health specialist, regarding his opinion on femen’s conference protest. In Nomani’s account of their conversation, she includes a quote from Darman that is ultimately contradictory; in Darman’s effort to align with femen’s goals, he actually aligns himself with the rhetoric he seeks to debunk:

While I’m not supporting Femen and their tactics, I am strongly criticizing womanophobia in the mainstream religious communities. Those who criticize Femen entirely ignore that the mere fact that a conference is held about ‘women’ is misogynistic and simply means it is to explore, what: whether women are human or not? If they are, how much human? 10 percent or 80 percent? Maybe 85 percent? Now maybe we shouldn’t beat them, but if we do, how? By stick? Perhaps by just slapping them?⁵

Darman’s discussion of femen, along with his criticism of “womanophobia” and his criticism of the “misogynistic” conference “about women” is actually undermined by the unspoken association between femen and universal rights for women. In Darman’s effort to align himself with femen’s goals and distance himself from their mode of protest and “tactics,” his direct association between femen and a voice for women’s rights ultimately marks femen as a symbol of those rights and removes any local context or individualized meaning of rights from the conversation. Such a move, then, results in the elision of women supposedly without those rights—women who, through the endurance of the rhetorics circulating in the last section, have been placed in opposition to femen (i.e., Muslim women). This slippage, once again, occurs through the endurance of the affective body rhetorics that are now attached to femen and thus are attached to Western perspectives of the body, rights, and oppression. Through the emotion of righteous anger, Darman’s claims, while seeking to debunk “womanophobia,” ultimately enact a kind of Islamophobia.

Page 105 →As the affective circulation of certain body rhetorics continue to reinforce the metonymic relationship between femen, feminism, and a universal notion of women’s experiences and need for rights, other presumed associations arise and endure. The metonym of femen as a voice for women’s rights, for example, becomes an unspoken premise, and that tacit assumption then leads to unspoken assumptions about women outside that universal logic: bodies in need of rights and in need of being liberated and “saved.” That association, then, allows one to construct an “oppressor,” a “subject” to the “object.” In this assumed scenario, Muslim women become the oppressed and Muslim men the oppressors. Finally, this association produces two other correlations that become even more generalized and thus even “stickier”: first, the correlation between violent Muslim men and the religion of Islam, which then allows one to associate geographically—“over there”—resulting in the second correlation, that of violence, Islam, and the Arab world. Visually, these associations—these sedimentations—can be traced as rhetorical, metonymic chains:

femen/universal rights for women

↓

universal rights for women/“othered,” oppressed Muslim women without rights

↓

“othered,” oppressed Muslim women without rights/violent Muslim men

↓

violent Muslim men/violent religion of Islam

↓

violent religion of Islam/abhorrent Arab world

↓

abhorrent Arab world/terrorism.

In Nomani’s article, the first four presumed linkages are evident in her associations between women’s rights and Muslim women in need of rights, to Muslim men’s treatment of Muslim women, and thus Islam’s treatment of women:

While there are some reports that the imams were arguing in defense of women’s rights in Islam when they were interrupted by the activists, what many of us know is that too many religious leaders in Islam, like in other patriarchal religious communities, do a tap dance to make Page 106 →arguments like “equity” versus “equality,” and men and women being “complementary” to each other, rather than the religion needing to be “complimentary,” in giving women “equal” rights. Further, to justify gender segregation, they argue “separate and equal,” and advocate for the full-face veil to “protect” women. ... For some, the Femen activists are topless “angels.” Despite all their controversy, they raise serious issues that we need to confront in our Muslim communities, in a way that kicking them while they are down will never resolve.⁶

Embedded in this excerpt are particular beliefs about the relationship between Muslim women, Muslim men, and Islam—beliefs that, as exemplified in previous chapters, still remain problematic and misinformed. (One cannot forget the posts and images from MWAF depicting the veil as a symbol of one’s own agency and personal context.) Additionally, Nomani’s move from a discussion on women’s rights (which assumes a kind of agency) to claims about the “lack” of rights for Muslim women (which assumes a lack of agency) allows her to associate that lack of agency with violent Muslim men and thus the religion of Islam. The implicit focus on these associations, then, blurs and ultimately obscures the context from which this text even emerged, perpetuating instead already assumed, generalized beliefs about Muslim communities and the religion of Islam. These associations are also problematic because they collapse Islam and Muslims into a singular narrative, eliding the different ways Islam is practiced and the various cultural manifestations of the relationship between religion and power that make up different Muslim identities.

The headlines referenced earlier perpetuate these affective associations as well. femen, the symbolic mouthpiece for women, for example, is rhetorically constructed in opposition to Islam, and thus by extension, in opposition to Muslims, including Muslim women. The following headlines, for example, illustrate this construction: “Two topless activists from the self-proclaimed ‘sextremist’ group Femen were violently dragged away after storming the stage at a conference on women and Islam near Paris” (Local Fr), “Topless Women Pummeled by Muslim Men” (WorldNetDaily), and “Bare-breasted activists may have stormed the stage of a Muslim conference near Paris, but the true vulgarity is how too many of Islam’s leaders want women treated” (Daily Beast). The reference to the violent attacks on femen protesters at a conference about women, along with the oppositional phrasing between “topless women” and “Muslim men,” as well as the adversarial construction between Islam and “women,” suggest an affective Page 107 →sedimentation in meaning that equates femen with feminism, liberation, and thus women’s rights. What follows are further parallels between Muslim men and Islam, Islam and violent oppression, and violent oppression and Muslim women.

What becomes clear in all these examples is how the endurance of certain body rhetorics affectively circulates, produces, and reinforces sedimentations and relations between bodies that ultimately undermine the original goals of feminist engagement and solidarity. In another article from Independent, reporter Geoffrey Macnab interviews the leader of femen, Inna Shevchenko, and asks her to describe “Femen’s tactics of modern feminism” and the reasons behind their naked protests. She replies: “It’s a dramaturgy of gender reality in the world. It’s not us who are famous. It is the idea that is famous. We are changing the way we talk to the world and act even though you think we are naked feminists. Two years ago, we were just taking off tops. Then, we started to write on our bodies, using them as a poster. Then we made these bodies act.”⁷ Shevchenko’s reference to “gender reality” suggests another moment in which femen uses body rhetorics to produce affective references to solidarity premised on universalized categories that disregard lived experience. These references ironically undermine femen’s goal of attending to “gender reality,” because this goal completely elides difference and thus the aspects of that “reality” that are always already tied to other facets of identity. In addition, Shevchenko’s description of their protest—the “action” of their bodies—points to the metonymic association between femen’s “acts” and activism in supposed service of oppressed Muslim women. Implied in this association is the idea that Muslim women’s bodies cannot act, because they are always already censored and agentless. And here lies the contradiction: in femen’s attempt at circulating messages premised on solidarity, the affective relations involving ideologies of universalism implicit in their texts and actions forestall any kind of solidarity, because it obscures difference and assumes only one kind of experience. As I have shown throughout this section, femen—and their brand of active feminist protest intended to “save” agentless, non-Western women—becomes a rhetoric in and of itself: an affective rhetoric of global feminism and universalism that perpetuates a fear of the “other,” in particular, of bodies outside the margins of that universal paradigm.

In many ways, the enduring rhetorics in this study and the emotional responses and sedimentations related to their circulation contribute to the Page 108 →creation of an affective economy of fear. The implicit links underlying the body rhetorics—the metonym of femen–universal rights that then precipitates the chain of associations between Muslim women and oppression; Muslim men, Islam, and violence; and finally Arab world and terrorism—are predicated upon and productive of fear. I highlight in this section how the rhetorics involving war, terrorism, globalization, and the nation-state (chapter 3) remain cogent and forceful as they continue to elicit emotional responses involving both anger and anxiety.

In several texts, for example, the use of militant language by both femen and the mainstream media in their descriptions of femen persists, invoking emotionally charged allusions to 9/11 and “the war on terror.” Take the following sub-headline from the Daily Beast: “Gangs of attractive, topless women condemning religion, agitating against misogyny, and fighting dictatorship. And now the feminists of Femen are setting up shop in the United States. Their controversial leader tells us why.”⁸ The descriptive references to “gangs,” “fighting,” “condemning,” “agitating,” and “controversial” speak to the kinds of emotional expressions of anger and defense that circulated in chapter 3. Above this headline, an image of a topless Shevchenko is positioned with the word “femen” written across her upper body. Beneath the image is the caption, “Femen’s Topless Sextremists Invade the US” and the following statement further down: “American women expressed their support and impatience when fighting puritanism and conservatism using Femen tactics. We got the call, so we’re giving an answer and helping commit Femen revolution in the United States.”⁹ The word “invade” invokes past associations regarding war and military incursion. The reference to fighting puritanism and conservatism “using femen tactics” also uses a similar kind of war affect, except here, a different kind of “relation” between femen and “American women” emerges, one in which American women are not seen as objects (like Muslim women), but rather as active, free-moving, fighting bodies; bodies that femen directly and rhetorically enlists as recruits in their “global battle.” (Note the use of “support” and “help” in their statement.)

What is important to recognize here is the fact that femen, as a metonym itself, always already invokes previous associations and assumptions about Islam and Muslims, particularly oppressed Muslim women (even when the Muslim context is never mentioned). Thus, the combination of femen as metonym along with the tone of anger and defense within the texts, not to mention the content of the texts—warlike language used to describe protest against oppression—reinforces an affect related to anxieties and fear of the “other,” that is, Muslims and Arab nations. What this implied presence of Page 109 →the “other” reveals is the way in which enduring rhetorics create just these kinds of associations: that is, the fact that one would assume the “other” to be Muslims and the Arab world. Through the endurance of these rhetorics over time, some bodies become aligned and connected, and other bodies become othered and excluded. This rhetorical action is no longer overt; it is now implicit, carried by the affective economy of the metonym that is femen.

Within the texts that specifically reference femen’s conference protest, a kind of unspoken affective “othering” occurs, an exclusionary tactic that relies on premises about both Muslim men as oppressors and Muslim women as the oppressed. This lays the groundwork for explicit references linking violence with Muslims and Arab nations. In the Local Fr news story, “Feminist Activists Dragged off the Stage at Islam Event” (mentioned above), reporter Ben McPartland describes the event thusly:

Two topless activists from the self-proclaimed “sextremist” group Femen were violently dragged away after storming the stage at a conference on women and Islam near Paris.

While the two Imams were clearly taken aback and stood back from the women, a group of around 15 men, including security guards, ran onto the stage to bring an abrupt and violent end to the protest act.

Images show the two women disappearing under a sea of bodies, with some of the men appearing to launch kicks and slaps at the pair. The melee continued behind a screen out of sight of the cameras.

The site Buzzfeed France confirmed that one of the women had been punched several times in the aftermath of the incident.

Police quickly intervened to lead the two women away.¹⁰

In each sentence, the narrative regarding the Muslim speakers’ violence and terror toward the femen protesters is prominent: two women were “violently dragged away;” Muslim men reportedly “[brought] an abrupt and violent end to the protest act;” the two women were “under a sea of bodies, with some of the men appearing to launch kicks and slaps at the pair;” and “the melee continued.” Within these claims, and within the headlines mentioned above, one can trace the affective thread that emerged in the previous chapter involving women as the objects of violence, and Muslim men as the violent actors. The news stories’ categorical use of “women” once again reminds us of both the mainstream media and Western hegemonic feminisms’ sole interest in “gender,” and namely the violence inflicted on “women,” while ignoring the identity markers of race, class, and sexuality Page 110 →that are always already intersecting and affecting issues related to gender and violence.

In yet another example, the association between Muslim women as “the oppressed” and Muslim men as “the oppressor” becomes even more pronounced with regard to geographic location, revealing again how this chain of texts interacts with ideas regarding the geopolitical relations of the West and non-West (read: United States and MENA), producing an affective economy of fear. In the comment section of the Daily Mail article, “Shocking moment: two topless feminist protestors storm Muslim conference—before they are dragged off and kicked on the floor,” most, if not all, of the responses in the comment thread react negatively and critically to Muslim men, and by extension, the Arab world and Muslims as an essentialized group of people. For example, one commenter writes, “Ahh so the feminists have finally realised who the most oppressive people are. It’s about time! Keep it up ladies. Tell the ones in this country. They’re still having a go at men that give them compliments! Not quite as bad as people that would see a woman stoned to death for adultery etc.”¹¹ Here, Muslim men become the “thing” to fear, and thus the reason to justify a fear of the Arab world. Another commenter writes:

You see the mob mentality, the minute a woman steps out of line the natural instinct of these men is to kick & attack her. That guy in the white Tshirt jumped anger filled out of the audience. This could be Europe 50 years from now, not feeling comfortable walking down your own streets if your not wearing the right clothes or behaving in the right way. I know most Muslims are peaceful people. But really our cultures are just so different, how can it work?¹²

Several concerns arise in this quote. First, Islam is cast as the antithesis to progression, using the same kind of rhetoric seen in chapters 2 and 3. Second, the statement, “this could be Europe in 50 years” echoes the fear that Europe would eventually resemble the Arab world, and thus Islamic culture—a region and culture that, according to this commenter, polices its people’s dress and behavior to such a degree that one no longer feels comfortable “walking down the streets.” The same sentiment appears in Plumb’s description of the conference as its own kind of contradiction: “The majority of Muslims in the West are law-abiding but there are some who wield power and who loath their home country. This conference in Paris completely misses the point that the best way to beat extremism is not to find Page 111 →a rationale for it in the first place when seeking to obviate it.”¹³ Here, the extension of the us–them relationship from earlier instances of circulation resurfaces around these same issues. Muslim women’s oppression becomes the reason for reactive moments of anger toward Muslim men, who then become read as representative of the Arab world. The Arab world becomes both depicted and alluded to as a place of perilous coercion, in opposition to Europe, a place of perceived stability. Thus, the Arab world becomes an object that one judges, evaluates, and thus distances oneself from—a thing to fear. These examples reveal how the enduring rhetorics in this study reinforce and solidify the kind of “towardness” and “awayness” that occurred in the previous chapter, making the consequences of those solidifications—the elision of certain bodies—even more pronounced.

In this latter example, most prominently, the endurance of certain body rhetorics produces and reinforces the chain associations mentioned earlier—specifically, femen–universal rights; Muslim women–Islam–oppression; and Muslim men–Islam–violence, resulting in Arab world–Islam–terrorism. In the Daily Mail comment thread, one writer even responds to the description of femen’s disturbance at the conference by invoking other “similar” global events: “Hmmm ... lets ask the women in saudi arabia what their opinion is ... of course, you will have to somehow get them away from their ‘male companion’ as anything the women would want to say is likely going to be ‘censored’ for fear of reprisal. ... i dont suppose you remember the mecca school fire, do you ...?”¹⁴ This commenter’s discussion of Muslim women involves essentially silent, imprisoned, and censored bodies, while Muslim men are rendered as violent, oppressive “companions.” But it is his reference to the “Mecca Fire” that invokes the particular emotion, and thus particular affect, I would like to explore here.

The Mecca Fire refers to the tragic event that took place in Saudi Arabia in 2002, in which an all-girls school caught fire, killing fifteen young girls and injuring fifty. The fire took on a certain significance in reports from news media such as BBC, Human Rights Watch, and Newsweek because Saudi Arabian police were (allegedly) at fault for the deaths and injuries for (allegedly) refusing to let some of the girls out of the building. This alleged refusal stemmed from the report that the girls were not dressed in accordance with Islamic rules, and some girls were not escorted by men (a defiance of Islamic code).¹⁵ This historical association, alongside the depiction of Muslim women as imprisoned, censored bodies, affectively works to establish and perpetuate the already firmly held belief that Muslim men, Page 112 →and thus, Islam and the Arab world, represent the epitome of injustice, terror, and oppression. Once again, to reference Ahmed, we can understand this sedimentation in terms of metonymic slides:

The word terrorist sticks to some bodies as it reopens past histories of naming, just as it slides into other words in the accounts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (such as fundamentalism, Islam, Arab, repressive, primitive ... Indeed, the slide of metonymy can function as an implicit argument about the causal relations between terms (such as Islam and terrorism) within the making of truths and worlds, but in such a way that it does not require an explicit statement.¹⁶

In this way, then, we can see how femen as a metonym for universal rights, liberation, and global feminism presupposes Muslim women as a metonym for oppression, which then presupposes Muslim men and Islam as metonyms for violence and the Arab world as a site of abhorrent violence and dissonance.

As I have shown throughout this chapter, what ultimately endures from this collection of body rhetorics is the belief that women’s bodies operate as inscriptions for demarcating social and geopolitical relations. Through femen’s use of protest, and the media’s reaction to and depiction of femen’s protests, an ideal of global feminism emerges, one that favors acts of war and geopolitical interventions based on the kinds of fear and anxieties their protests help generate. These fears and anxieties objectify the very women’s bodies femen (and “the West”) seeks to liberate, resulting finally in an affective rhetoric premised on racial anxieties and fear of Muslims and the Arab world—an Islamophobic rhetoric, to say the least. This forms a kind of rhetorical action involving material consequences that rhetorical studies must grapple with. In terms of social action and rhetorical efficacy, how do we reconcile the results of this layer of circulation, the consequences of the rhetorics that actually endure? The results are arguably detrimental: they circumscribe communities and outsiders, inclusions and exclusions; they shut down various individuals and groups of people (i.e., Sboui, MWAF) and highlight others (i.e., femen).

Even seven years after the completion of this study (and over a decade later, as I discuss at the end of this chapter), these body rhetorics continue to endure. Over the last few years, events in US national and international politics revealed not only a continuation of the affective chains explored Page 113 →throughout this case study, but also the ways in which those rhetorics endure and sediment for other purposes. In considering the case study itself, along with its players (Sboui, MWAF, femen, and the mainstream media), parameters (2013–2015), and rhetorical messages (body rhetorics involving feminist protest), it can be argued that femen remained the nucleus of circulation and that certain body rhetorics traced throughout this case study continue to endure beyond the bounds of this study. This is important because it serves as a reminder that affect is powerful and binding and that certain affects become archived not just as digital arguments, but literally as embodied beliefs.

In September 2021, amid the upheavals in Afghanistan that resulted from the US departure and the Taliban’s arrival, femen, in a similar fashion to their responses to Sboui and Tunisia, responded with urgency, fearing the plight of Afghan women. Figure 6, from femen’s Facebook page, speaks for itself. Both in text and image, femen’s responses convey implicit affective associations underlying the body rhetorics, affective associations that elicit emotional responses tied to anger and anxiety. femen as a continued metonym for universal rights precipitates the chain of associations between Muslim women–oppression, Muslim men–Islam–violence, and finally Arab world–terrorism. What resurfaces in yet another movement involving Muslim women are rhetorics tied to ideas about war, terrorism, globalization, and the nation-state. These affective rhetorics are cogent and forceful because of their affective attachments and the chain of associations that live within these messages. The media ultimately ran with these protests, showing support for Afghan women by recirculating these images and reporting on these protests as human rights movements. Time Magazine, for example, featured a similar image of femen activists in burqas protesting in Berlin with the headline, “The Pandemic Has Made the World Worse for Female Activists, the U.N. Says” that was then recirculated by femen.¹⁷

Page 114 →Such affective associations do not stop there, however. In February 2022, another rendition of the #toplessjihadday emerged (figure 7). Once again, what is evident here is an ideal of global feminism linked to affective charges of fear and anxiety that ultimately objectify the very women’s bodies femen seeks to liberate. What’s also evident is that the meaning and the value of these messages are tied to transsituational flows of affect through information circulation—specifically, the neoliberal rhetorics of universality and solidarity that seek to reduce experience into singular narratives of gender empowerment and gender oppression. Such rhetorics are still very much present—even ten years later. Therefore, we might think of endurance as a kind of archival work: these rhetorics become archived digitally but they also become archived as normative bodily reactions and feelings—embodied rhetorics.

This embodied nature of circulation and its enduring affective rhetorics becomes even more potent in the following example. In November 2024—a little more than a decade after Sboui’s initial posts—a series of events, strikingly similar to that of Sboui’s, transpired. The events involved Ahoo Daryaei, an Iranian doctoral student studying at the Science and Research Branch of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran. According to several news sources, Daryaei was harassed by security for “improper hijab” and in response to the harassment, she stripped down to her underwear and refused to leave the public space. Authorities deemed this act a violation of Islamic principles and public decency laws and quickly arrested Daryaei.¹⁸

Soon after her arrest, news of her detainment circulated all over social media, femen being one of the main voices in circulation. As with Sboui’s case, femen recirculated Daryaei’s story as a representation of the oppressive struggles women face under authoritarian regimes, particularly those enforcing strict religious and cultural laws. They called for an “International Day of Action for Ahoo Daryaei” to “free Daryaei,” a similar call to the one made on behalf of Sboui eleven years earlier.¹⁹ For femen, Daryaei’s story became another opportune rallying cry about the systemic repression of women’s rights that they have argued defines much of the Arab world. femen’s decision to amplify Daryaei’s story drew global attention, transforming her personal ordeal into a symbol of resistance against restrictive gender norms and the broader state control over individual freedoms. Through the affective movement of her story, her case was no longer seen as an isolated incident but as part of a much larger, systemic issue. By placing her at the center of their protests, femen linked her struggle to a universal call for action against gender oppression, using body paint and slogans referencing Daryaei to show solidarity and defiance (see figure 8).

Page 116 →Other news articles recirculated Daryaei’s story but under the pretense of hysteria and mental illness. A headline from Iran Wire, for example, reads, “Ahoo Daryaei Released from Hospital, Says Judiciary.” At three different places in the article, Daryaei is described as having mental health related concerns: “She was then branded mentally ill and transferred to a psychiatric hospital”; “university officials claimed that she was suffering from ‘mental issues’”; and “Amir Mahjoub, the university’s public relations manager, claimed that police medical teams found her ‘under severe mental stress’ and noted she had ‘psychological issues.’”²⁰

Page 117 →In thinking back to chapter 2 and the amplification that occurred regarding Sboui’s protest, similar headlines, quotes, and phrases linking women’s bodies to madness were very much prevalent. In those instances, reactions to and discussions of Sboui’s message zero in on and exaggerate her nudity, interpreting it as a symbol of irrationality and a manifestation of hysteria. Consequently, users on social media platforms echoed those terms, spreading claims about Sboui’s mental health and suggesting she required hospitalization.²¹ This process, in turn, reinforced a narrative that associates women’s bodies with madness and positions the “mad” woman’s body as a source of broader societal and global disruption, perpetuated further through continuous sharing and discussion.

While the body-as-madness theme never rose to a high level of traction in Sboui’s case, I would argue that this association in Daryaei’s case underscores the affective charges undergirding rhetorical arguments that never truly vanish. Instead, they persist and endure both in the collective memory of individuals and within the digital archives of the web. These affective rhetorics resurface when new circumstances arise that make those earlier responses relevant again. In this sense, the response anticipates the material conditions that later call for its revival.

In addition, it is worth noting that the arguments surrounding Daryaei’s story, and more specifically, femen’s circulation of that story, reveal instances of polarization that reflect similar oppositions to what occurred in Sboui’s case. In an article published by Iran International, an independent media site located in the United Kingdom, an anonymous writer reports that, as a response to the events that occurred with Daryaei, Iran is planning to open a clinic for women in defiance of the Islamic dress code.²² Such claims garnered a significant amount of media attention and criticism across the globe, including the following response from femen, which, not surprisingly, was immediate and in direct opposition:

femen decided to open an Islamic Removal Treatment Clinic for the psychologically disturbed theocracy and misogyny in the region.

Page 118 →Now recruiting staff with experience in human rights based on gender equality, bodily autonomy, and non-violent freedom of expression. We are recruiting not only in Iran, but also in other Islamic countries. Planning for patriarchal religious states in general, but due to current news, swift establishment is in #Afghanistan, #Iraq and #Libya. Hence #Shia and #Sunni islamists are equally welcomed for Islamic Removal Treatment, based on scientific, secular and feminist activism.²³

femen’s reversal of the hijab clinic represents an affective move that not only perpetuates more opposition but also elides the localized experiences of women who choose to practice Islam. Alongside this response was the image in figure 9.

This instance of circulation is not merely an act of political mobilization—it is deeply imbued with the affective energy we have seen all throughout this book. femen’s approach to both storytelling and protest, highly emotive and visceral, sought to provoke outrage, empathy, and a sense of urgency in the audience. These enduring emotional currencies—anger at the injustice, solidarity with Daryaei, and a call against Islamic practices—become further affective catalysts for engagement and response. By leveraging these affective attachments, femen is able to recirculate again and again an emotional narrative that compels audiences to care, to act, and to share. Examples of this affective chain appear through the various artistic images that emerged from this circulation (see figures 10–12). While these images focus on Daryaei and her story, the affective energies undergirding them are double-edged. Many comments in response to these images as well as the comments on femen’s Facebook page, for example, erupted in anger toward Islam in general and by extension the “Arab World.” The mainstream media took on this affective chain of events and repurposed it as a geopolitical argument over human rights issues: “UN Resolution Slams Iran Rights Record, Urges Revocation of Hijab Laws” (Iran International); “Iran: UN Experts Call for Strict New Hijab Law to Be Repealed” (UN News). While femen attempted to draw attention to Daryaei’s plight, they risked centering the emotional response on their largely Western audience over the agency and experiences of the women directly impacted. Once again, femen’s provocative style, such as topless protests, relied on shock value that often played into Western sensibilities about freedom and liberation, potentially alienating audiences in regions like Iran, where cultural norms frame these symbols differently. The emotional impact of femen’s campaigns and the enduring affective rhetorics associated with them thus operated within a cultural framework that inadvertently misrepresented or flattened the complexities of Daryaei’s story.

While the affective rhetorics in femen’s protests certainly bring visibility to gender oppression, they also raise questions about representation and appropriation. As with Sboui, such affective arguments often simplify complex issues into emotionally charged symbols, aligning them with Western feminist narratives. In both Sboui’s and Daryaei’s cases, femen’s emphasis on physical nudity as a marker of liberation clashed with cultural and religious identities in both Tunisia and Iran, where body politics carry different meanings. In Daryaei’s case specifically, the emotional power of femen’s imagery—intended to shock and inspire—overshadowed the more localized, nuanced forms of resistance that Iranian women practice daily, erasing the affective attachments and strategies already embedded within the Iranian women’s rights movement. As it did with Sboui, the affective energy of femen’s campaigns regarding Daryaei also perpetuated a “savior complex” narrative, where Western feminists positioned themselves as the rescuers of women in the Global South. The endurance of this framing once again reinforced colonial hierarchies of power and in many ways alienated the very women they aimed to support.

Page 121 →The example of Daryaei as it relates to Sboui’s case underscores the necessity in seeing and understanding endurance as part of the circulation process. And the endurance of these affective rhetorics highlights the importance of recognizing affective energies and attachments as embodied practices—understanding how emotional responses are shaped and enacted by intersecting relations of power, including gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and geopolitics. It has been argued that one of the challenges of studying digital rhetoric and digital circulation is the digital space itself—the instantaneous, ever-changing nature of the web that often feels like an ephemeral environment for interaction and engagement. However, as I have shown throughout this study, what appears to be ephemeral in digital circulation is actually not ephemeral at all. Rather, rhetorics that circulate digitally continue to circulate, revealing the ways in which they become sedimented and ultimately archived; they become archived in the web’s digital universe, and more important, they become archived in the bodies that encounter them. While certain scholars suggest that digital texts disappear from virality, I would argue that they actually never disappear; instead, they remain in the consciousness of literal bodies but also in the disembodied archive of the web such that they reappear when circumstances create new conditions for which those responses prove valuable. The response, in this way, precedes the material conditions that call for it.

Page 123 →The field of rhetorical studies must grapple with this reality. And it is this reality that exposes the need for rhetorical frameworks that both theorize and engage in affective circulation on the web from a transnational feminist rhetorical perspective. If we are to see affective circulation as a theoretical process that involves amplification, velocity, and endurance, we need to then retheorize our way of engaging in that process. In the next chapter, I offer some thoughts on linking theory with practice to get us to a much-needed place of reseeing, retheorizing, and, more important, reembodying circulation in digital spaces.