Ampthill Revisited

Truer words were never said.................

Ampthill residents have been concerned about the public image of the town, given the depth of feeling expressed on various blogs and message boards, regarding the impending opening of 'Shaylers' a strip bar that everyone is terrified of and no one understands.

Here below we have an example of a local resident that fails to understand how Licensing Laws apply.....

No, no, no. You can have a town meeting, you can have a vote, but it won't alter a thing. Local businesses are allowed to open without the approval of local residents. Its the law. If I want to open a hairdressers in Ampthill, I can do that, without having to consult with local residents. If I want to open a car body repair workshop in Ampthill, I can do so as long as there are suitable premises and none of my staff have tattoos of course.

Do you all understand now?

As long as any business stays within the dictates of its license or other relevant laws, it can trade where it likes and that includes Ampthill. Trust me, there is nothing special about Ampthill, laws that apply in England also apply in Ampthill. There are no exceptions for Ampthill.

Nadine Dorries is the local MP and residents have been urging her to become involved in the issue. I have to point out that MPs have no authority over local council decisions, policy and practice. In fact Dorries said as follows...

“From speaking to people beforehand it was pretty clear that there was no way it could possibly be granted and I was assured by that. However it is a decision over which I have no authority and no say whatsoever.

“Yes, constituents and business people have approached me on this issue for and against it, but that it is not my role as an MP to get involved.

“If I started jumping on every application submitted the councillors would get very angry with me and I have to have a relationship with them.

“Clearly I oppose the club on moral grounds but the application is not outside of the law.”

The only people that can be petitioned regarding council decisions are perhaps unsurprisingly, councillors. MPs are Members of Parliament and that is of course a different body. Also, please understand that at one time Nadine Dorries was a neighbour of John Shayler. That is an accident of geography, not a conspiracy. Many MPs websites specify what they can and cannot do to help members of the public and getting involved in Council Licensing decisions is not something that they can do. Its really that simple.....

I hold the opinion that things could be worse. Lets face it the site isn't really going to change in terms of its appearance much from this...

If a different party had taken over it could have looked like this and then you may well have had something to complain about....

People say that John Shayler hates Ampthill, I am starting to understand why....

A Fun New Group For You To Have Fun With

They are called 'Feminist Avengers' and have a Wordpress blog site, so that's enough for you to Google them and visit if you wish. They claim to be 'radical feminists taking guerrilla action against sexism, misogyny and rape culture'. Their spokeperson, Clara Zetkin probably has a made up name, because as far as I can tell Clara Zetkin was the organiser of the first International Womens Day in 1911 and has been dead since 1933.

They launched their campaign recently when they objected to comedians telling jokes about rape at the Edinburgh Festival. It seems that Jim Jeffries, Chris Turner, Chris Dangerfield, Paul Revill and Jimmy Carr all received a courgette and a letter with the advice to 'go and fuck themselves'. I find what they did to be quite amusing actually and lets face it, the people targeted are about as funny as cancer as are their rape jokes..

Now it seems as though they might be based in Scotland, but have already had an enquiry from someone in London about joining in as you can see below.....

Not sure what 'Clara' means by 'similar actions' because there has to be a limit to how any courgettes you can send in the post, so I guess she means similarly radical actions. Now as lap dancing clubs have been in the firing line for about 5 years now and no feminist group has had any real success in closing them down, I guess it means that club owners can look forward to some action in the coming year. Why do I say this?

Some years ago I became aware of Object and guessed that they could be problematic. I told no one about them because I didn't think I would be taken seriously. I will not make the same mistake again. This is why..

Despite what Object and media say, before the SEV Legislation became law, there were about 260 clubs in Britain. Object assumed that by 2012, the striptease and lap dancing industry would decimated. Today, we have about 260 clubs in the UK and I know this because I have a database with their names and addresses. Yes, there have been some closures, but only because those venues breached their licensing conditions and would have been closed under the prior regime. Yes, some boroughs have implemented 'Nil Policies', Enfield, Haringey and Merton are good examples, but they didn't have any clubs to begin with so it was hardly a big deal.

Four years on, Objects campaign has largely been a failure. This a problem for clubs, because it is my view that every activist group has on its fringes people who are happy to take things further than their compatriots. We know from reading the 'Feminists or Fascists' posting on Moronwatch that Object have been linked to campaigns of abuse and intimidation against a number of dancers. With 'Feminist Avengers' we see a group for whom standard campaigning methodologies are not enough and they want to become perhaps a little more radical. I find this worrying because they might inspire those who are happy to go much further. Who remembers Club Redd?

It opened in Burgess Hill in 2008. It was a lap dancing club and initially it was very successful. Local residents however were up in arms over it, largely it seems on moral and religious grounds. Three weeks after it opened, someone decided to take action against the club.....

A maniac, almost certainly from the local community, set the club alight and caused a fire that took six hours to bring under control. It could have lead to the deaths of two fireman and could also have devastated a local shopping centre. This happened because of someones 'morality'. Local residents were delighted though. Anne Jones, a Liberal Democrat councillor, said: "I do not think there is a local resident that would go to these lengths." But she admitted: "Since the fire the general feeling has been a sense of relief. I know that is hard to explain. But in a sense it was like the thin end of the wedge to have a lap-dancing club."

I was deeply disappointed that the local fire chief didn't drag Anne Jones through the wreckage of the building and maybe for good measure ask her to explain the 'sense of relief' everyone felt to the two fireman that risked their lives looking for people that may have trapped in the building. The arsonist is pictured below...

The person has never been caught. It was speculated at the time that our pal may well have been suffering from smoke inhalation and may been burned as well. This means that the following day that someone didn't turn up for work or maybe did in some degree of pain, but everyone kept quiet about it. My best guess is that he/she was sheltered by the local community.

Now, please understand where I am coming from. I am absolutely not saying that anyone associated with Object or Feminist Avengers is going to do anything as rash as arson or was in any way involved with what happened at Club Redd. But I do think there are people out there that are prepared to let their beliefs drive them into activities that could be dangerous or at least provocative in order to satisfy their need to express their issues/beliefs/rage.

If I was a club owner I would start to review my security policy very carefully, because we don't want another Club Redd. Lap dancing and strip tease clubs abide by the law, there is no excuse for their opponents not to do likewise.

Carry On Stripping in Ampthill

They never made such a film, but we can still have fun speculating about the script.....

I think it starts in a nice market town, where a local property owner played by Sid James has a vacant shop and so decides to turn it into a strip club. This triggers a wave of protest from the local residents, that include Jim Dale as a prolific campaigner. Maybe it would have had Hattie Jacques as the owner of a local toy shop and Kenneth Williams as councillor. Barbara Windsor would have been a stripper along with Valerie Leon and if it had been shot in the early 1970s, Madeline Smith. Bernard Breslaw would have made an outstanding bouncer and somewhere Kenneth Williams as an aggrieved local resident.

The issue is that 'Carry On Stripping' is now a reality and its happening in the Bedfordshire market town of Ampthill. I discovered this when I checked the traffic sources for this blog and found that someone had linked to me from a blog called 'LoveAmpthill'. I followed the link back and found out about a story regarding a proposed lapdancing club. The article containing the link was some quotes from ex dancers talking about how degrading the job is, so I have to say that the blogger in question was mistaken in linking to this site, but now its been brought to my attention they are going to have to live with their error.

So what we have is an empty shop near the town centre that local business man, John Shayler has gained an SEV license to turn into a lap dancing club. This has triggered a wave of horror and protest from the local residents, who now fear their town will be destroyed. Initially, the 'Ampthillians' (as they call themselves), seemed to be taking things in their stride, but around mid august more radical and ill tempered people started driving the prohibitionist campaign. You can see for yourself how the views evolved by visiting the forum of their local internet TV station, where you will find at least 18 pages of comments, arguments and people insulting each other until the site admin called a halt to things after deleting anything that was contentious....

I noted the comment about the 'tattoo studio' and became intrigued so followed it up. It seems that a couple of years ago, someone opened the tattoo studio and immediately was subject to a campaign of lies and intimidation from persons unknown in the community. I gather that the 'ampthillians' became convinced that their town would be besieged by Hells Angels who would get some tattoos done and then go onto to destroy everything. This is not what happened and the anonymous mailshot (yes indeed, the prohibitionists favourite weapon) turned out to be a pack of lies and abandoned needles and blood stained tissues weren't left discarded outside the shop. The story started to give me a sense of what Ampthill is maybe like as a town, perhaps an unfair sense, but lets carry on.

It seems the protest against the lap dancing club is running in the same vein as the tattoo parlour and locals are not at all happy...

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Please bear  in mind that the above comment was not one of those removed by the moderator, so you can imagine what those that were, were like. Apart from the barrage of childish insults, I have to advise Miss Rosy that taking anyones photograph while they are in the act of entering or leaving the club will end up in expensive legal action against you, so don't go down that line please. Below we also see the usual ignorance about what happens in a lap dancing club...

Scrabbler seems to think that the S.E means that people will be having sex in the club, which as we know won't happen, apart from in the mind of Scrabbler.

Now one of the things that is interesting here is the behaviour of an unknown party in the town that has opened a parody Twitter account that the prohibitionists were all too happy to believe was written by the owner of the new club, John Shayler.

Opposing the fake Sex Lord, we have the white knight of morality, who blogs under the name of 'LoveAmpthill'. Remember it was this persons blog that brought my attention to this situation. In the six months that I have been writing  'StrippingTheIllusion' I have managed to come up with just 170 articles. LoveAmpthill managed to knock just over 60 in August, which if nothing else demonstrates his commitment to the cause. The problem is though that something bad happened, which lead to LoveAmpthill deleting almost everything....

Our blogger made an ill judged comment on his twitter account (also now cleared out of anything dicey) and someone suggested involving the police and maybe informing his employer. Having seen the comment, I can say that the police wouldn't have cared less and what someone does in their free time, is not of concern to an employer, so our blogger is being a little dramatic here. He was also being dramatic when he made this comment as well....

LoveAmpthill creates the image of a pitched battle in the town square, maybe a Lord of Rings style confrontation between the forces of dark and light as our hero is brought down by stripper wielding a crowbar. Sorry? And don't write about your devotion to your family and how its forced  you to abandon the campaign and then two paragraphs later say that you would have risked a potentially fatal injury.

The fake Sex Lord noted the demise of the blog as follows and we can see the response, that almost seems to be as much of a parody as the fake 'Sex Lord' and I have to wonder on that basis exactly who is really behind the whole Sex Lord Twitter account.

The issue here is that this was not the first time that LoveAmpthill got a little bit excited about things.....

This is a posting that was made on the AmpthillTV site. This was I believe written before the licence was granted, but that really is of no relevance. What is concerning are the ideas of direct action that LoveAmpthill starts to suggest, such as parading about outside the club Solent Feminist Network style. I loved the fact that LoveAmpthill warns readers that they might meet up with 'some pretty unsavoury characters' but a least goes onto to reassure everyone that his 'balls are massive'. The best bit is when the plan of direct action is unfolded for all to see and we find that it includes a 'noisy picket' that will appear 'persistently, regularly and courageously'. So in other words, Ampthillians are going to be the cause of the trouble that their protest, in their view, is designed to prevent.

That said, LoveAmpthill  does stress the need to keep things legal, but I fear it's already too late for that. Activist groups are generally speaking are committed people with an understanding of the need to keep the right side of the law. That said, in every group there is a fringe that believes violent action or intimidation is ok if the end justifies the means and I fear Ampthill has a few of these people. The site of the club has already been vandalised by someone writing the word 'Scum' in lipstick on the new frontage. It may seem like nothing, but it could be a straw in the wind.

Ampthillian attitudes are further revealed by the comments on the petition that was launched in order to force of review of the licence....

George Potter must, I guess keep a Register of Perverts so must know what he is talking about.

Again we see someone objecting without a clue what they are talking about. If children pass the site, they will do so when it is closed, but most disturbingly we see that Jean Reeves is all about people behaving in a 'morally acceptable' manner. Morals play a big part in this campaign, LoveAmpthill admits his objection is on a moral basis and like many local residents was surprised to learn that personal morality plays no part in licensing issues.

The petition has gathered almost 800 signatures, which is impressive but it only accounts for 11% of the towns population. Yes it can be said that 11% are against the club, but this also means that 89% don't really care either way or are actually in support of its opening. The issue is that now the SEV has been granted it cannot be taken away unless there is a clear breach of its conditions, so lets have a look at some of them...

I would say after seeing what I have read about Ampthill, that the above condition is among the most important. Dancer safety is paramount and I am concerned about the proposed protest getting out of hand.

Four door staff, one of them female will be a good size team and two of them could help police the area in front of the club and help ensure order.

If I was Mr Shayler I would ensure that there are cameras that record the area outside the building on a 24hr basis, largely because we don't want anymore Club Redds, do we?

In the musing of various Ampthillians, I have seen the usual references to the Lilith Report, but as soon as someone goes through the report with a calculator, they will see what rubbish it is and even Licensing Departments don't take it seriously anymore. I also saw that someone recommended Rachel Reeves Leeds campaign as a possible activity template, but only go that way of you want to fail like Rachel did.

There has been only one sensible contribution to this debate and that is from local blogger, Ryan Austin. I strongly recommend that you view his posting on the subject here and then read the comments left by his fellow Ampthillians.

I almost feel the need to offer advice to Ampthill and I will. I think you need to engage with a feminist group with campaigning experience, so why not try Femen. They are the only credible feminist group in operation at the moment and their exploits always gain much needed publicity for their cause.

There are times when I am tempted to believe  that almost all of this is some kind of gigantic joke, certainly someone, somewhere is taking the piss. But nontheless it is my view that the inhabitants of Ampthill and the soon to be open club can live together in peace. If it turns out to be badly run, it will be closed. If its run well and I think that it will be, then no one should have any problems with it. My advice to Ampthill is to accept what has happened, but don't let this spoil your lives. As it stands, this is all very 'Carry on Stripping', don't let it become 'Village of the Damned'.

Feminists on Femen

“Classic feminism no longer works. It is, if you excuse me, impotent.” Inna Shevchenko, Femen.

I spent sometime this afternoon trying to gauge some idea of feminist reaction to Femen. As you know, groups such as Object and UK Feminista seem to be keeping quiet about them. That said I was lucky to find some bits a pieces on the internet and we start with Mumsnet...

The comment is pretty typical of certain Mumsnet users in that its bigoted and contains lies. I undertook a lengthy search to discover the truth about the fake rape complaints that Zaraa claims Femen activists make against the police. I found nothing of the sort. Furthermore,the assertion that one of Femens 'favourite things t protest is sex or porn' is also wilfully misleading. The issue with this kind of posting is that it leads to responses like this....

What is it about people that they are so happy to believe that last thing that they read without any critical analysis. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true. So is this an example of people just being dumb or is it some kind of backlash?

Femen have protested against sex tourism and also have issues with the Ukrainian porn industry. But it seems to me that Femen largely are about female choice and freedom of expression, which of course won't go down well with the feminist establishment in the UK, because the Femen are almost certainly viewed as being the 'wrong' kind of feminist.

Zarra makes the point that she 'won't post any links', that's because she has none that support her story. We have seen that certain feminists are happy to tell throw-away lies about subjects they disagree with and Zaraa is no exception

Next up we have a posting from an article on feminist blog, 'The F-Word' and it is an interesting article. The writer Chrissy D seems to have approached the subject with some care as the idea of feminists that use partial nudity is clearly difficult for some people to deal with.

I want to be fair to Chrissy D and you can read her article here and she makes some thoughtful comments....

FEMEN's protests outside the Saudi Embassy and in a Paris square, both to raise awareness of women's rights in the Muslim world, also suggest a naiveté and ignorance that weakens their message. Chanting "nudity is freedom" and protesting about some Muslim women covering up some or all of their body puts the group at one end of a scale of prejudice - the right not to cover up versus anyone's right to adorn themselves as they wish.

....but is it just me, or do we once again see a feminist comment that seems supportive of the repression of women in islamic states or is her point correct, that true freedom is women being able to wear what they want. I think that Chrissy D misses the point, in that if a women in Iran or Saudi Arabia dared to protest like Femen, they would be at least imprisoned or maybe worse. I therefore disagree that Femens protest Paris was indicative of naivete, the issue being addressed is that women in certain countries do not have the choice about how they dress or what they choose to display in public.

However, hearing criticism of FEMEN for just that -their right to go topless- also presents feminists with an uncomfortable dilemma. Are we to suggest there is a 'correct' amount of flesh to show? Are we saying "You must show your hair and your face. Don't cover it up. That's oppressive, isn't it?! But for god's sake keep your top on! That's too much!"?

The point here is that feminists do suggest there is a 'correct amount of flesh to show' and Femen challenge third wave feminist assumptions about womens freedom of expression and as we have seen, groups such as Object take a hard line on this subject. Once again the point that Femen were making was about choice, not a kind of inverted oppression.

As well as some dubious image-politics, I would say FEMEN also have a reputation of being political pawns, rather than autonomous campaigners. In a world in which it seems no one is truly acting for their own making-things-better-for-humanity ethic, FEMEN unfortunately seem to have been used by political parties for their own ends.

Here Chrissy D lets her article down by dismissing Femen as being 'political pawns'. This an interesting statement, but she she fails to support it with any examples and as a result comes across as somewhat shallow. Things then go from bad to worse....

Critics of FEMEN include Sitting on the Edge of the Sandbox, Biting my Tongue, whose evaluation of FEMEN argues: "Ukrainian feminists of more traditional orientation (yes, apparently, there are some) hate Femen. Femen perpetuates sexual exploitation and sucks all the oxygen out of press coverage of Ukrainian feminism." So are we to conclude that their feminism is more attention-grabbing than other feminism and therefore shout it down? Or academically critique it down? 

So in other words, because some other bloggers disagree with their campaign style, they can be written off? How does Femen perpetuate sexual exploitation? Once again the lack of examples undermines the argument that is being made. But what argument?

The final sentence in the above paragraph answers the question. It seems that there will only be two responses from other feminists and constructive engagement is out of the question because Femen choose to ignore the template of belief that seems to unite contemporary feminism.

In terms of other media, the group seem to attract more than their fair share of detractors. The group were interviewed by The Sunday Times in April and the on-line version of the interview attracted some interesting comments, largely from misogynistic twats......

John Barleycorn seems to be saying that groups such as Armpits4August are the future of feminism and Femen belong to an earlier age.

The most amusing comment is from 'Igor Dranchinskyy' who definitely does not comment on behalf of the Ukrainian political class. Igor makes defamatory comments that he can't prove about Femen being escort girls. It's amazing how many times I have read comments where empowered women are labelled prostitutes and once again like Zaraa from Mumsnet, Igor seems unable to offer any evidence for his slander. Later as he rambles on about merchandising and profit margins, he loses it completely, but does manage to make some other comments that try and cast doubt on the activities and motives of Femen.

Igor, if there is a background story that you claim to know, just tell us what it is, rather than act like a 12 year old boy playing 'I've got a secret'.

And you don't seem to understand the difference between 'turnover', 'profit' and by implication 'cost of sale', this of course speaks volumes to me about who you work for.

And you can't spell either.

Armpits4August - A Contrast in Priorities....

Before I go any further, can I assure you that what you are about to read is not one of my humorous frame grabs, but some something very real and wonderful about a group protesting a crucial issue facing women not only in Britain,but all over the world. But before that, lets look at the issues being tackled by Femen and what they did to tackle them...

*A protest against what they argued were moves made by the Ukrainian government to legalize prostitution during the EURO 2012 championships. They also have protested against sex tourism as well.

*A topless protest at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London in opposition to “bloody Islamist regimes,” which they accused the IOC of supporting. You will recall they were arrested for their protest.

*Chainsawing a crucifix in protest to the conviction and sentencing in Moscow of Pussy Riot.

*A topless Femen activist, Yana Zhdanova, attacked the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill I of Moscow, while he was visiting Ukraine. Zhdanova had the words "Kill Kirill" painted on her back and screamed "Get Out!" to the Orthodox Christian leader, who is largely seen as being the prime mover behind the imprisonment of Pussy Riot.

*In April 2012, five Femen activists protested against legistation that would halt abortions in Ukraine by rolling a banner supporting abortion from the belfry of Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. Femen claimed that "that the moving force behind the legislation is the Christian community."

*In November 2011, Femen activist Aleksandra Shevchenko started stripping and waving a banner stating "Freedom for women" after Pope Benedict XVI's Sunday sermon at Saint Peter's Square at the Holy See.

By anyones standards, what Femen do is pretty much hardcore. But it looks like a group in Britain were inspired the Femen example and decided to do something really radical as well.

As you must know, a key issue facing women in Britain, is the intolerable pressure they are put under by the patriachy to shave their armpits. Therefore we have the Armpits4August Collective, who run around glueing woollen arm pubes on statues in London.

I said I wasn't winding you up. I feel sad that I wasn't around when the campaign was in full swing as I have always had the burning desire to discuss hair removal with an activist. 

The Guardian - A conservative fist in a liberal glove?

Like many national newspapers, The Guardian has been covering the Pussy Riot story and has made an editorial contribution under its infamous (at least as far as we are concerned) 'Comment Is Free' page.  The article seems to split in two sections, one applauding the feminist group for its stand against Putin, the second however almost seems to try and justify the legal reaction to the situation. Lets have a look at what they said...

Pussy Riot must have offended many Russian Orthodox believers by screaming lyrics such as "Shit, shit, the Lord's shit" behind the iconotasis of the Church of Christ the Saviour. An opinion poll released by the independent Levada research group found that only 6% of Russians polled sympathised with the women and 51% felt either indifference, irritation or hostility. Similar umbrage would have been taken inside St Paul's or the Vatican. And those who doubt that may well wonder what tension would have been caused by a flash-mob invading a mosque at Friday prayers.

How many museums around the world would have looked the other way as a number of couples – including a heavily pregnant Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the three convicted on Friday – were filmed having sex to illustrate how Muscovites were being screwed by their government? The British Museum? The Louvre? The Metropolitan? The wish to punish anarchists is not Russian alone.

If we look at the video, it is possible to see that Pussy were actually in front of the iconostasis (a wall featuring religious icons and paintings and note that the writer of the piece cannot even get the spelling correct).  If they had been behind the iconostasis, no one would have been able to see them, which would  have rendered their stunt somewhat pointless.

The writer also plays with statistics Lilith style when they state that 51% felt either indifference, irritation or hospitality toward the band. Well that's interesting, what did the other 49% feel? What I find particularly offensive is the implication that had Pussy Riot undertaken their protest at St Pauls in London, that the reaction of the public would have been comparable. Somehow I doubt it, it may have made the news and the performers would have been carted off by the police, but they would have been released some hours later and no way would they have been facing a 2 year jail sentence after a show trial in front of a corrupt judge.

What is more outrageous is the utterly racist assumption that if they delivered their performance in a mosque, that things would have been worse.

Then we move onto the core of the matter, that is Pussy Riot museum sex performance, one that by the way did not earn them a prison sentence. Once again, if that had happened in the British Museum, the police would have been involved and there would have been fines, but nothing earth shattering.

The writer (and I really suspect Polly Toynbee of writing this piece), goes onto to state that 'the desire to punish anarchists is not Russian alone'. Really can't work that out actually, as I and I suspect the great bulk of the public have no desire to see women locked for singing a protest song in a church. But the issue here, as I said at the start of this article is that although The Guardian approves of the attack on Putin, it disapproves of the methods used. This if nothing else signifies the conservatism that lies at the heart of the paper and reflects the silence of Object, the Guardians favourite 'human rights' organisation.

To ensure I was being fair about Object and its cohorts, I popped onto the site of UK Feminista and found that they did mention the Pussy Riot trial in the Twitter update column. They have no editorial that I can find though, but at least they gave a mention to the 'Armpits4August Collective', which is so hilarious that I am going to blog about it today....

A Contrast In Feminist Campaign Styles

Some of you maybe wondering why I have been writing about Pussy Riot and Objects silence about their shabby disgusting and cowardly treatment at the hands of the authorities. Well for me, it illustrates perfectly my argument that Object aren't a feminist organisation or even a human rights one, because they have chosen to ignore the plight of three women that are fighting for freedom of expression and have paid for their belief with their freedom of person.

Have a look at the frame grab below, taken from Objects  Facebook site today...

This is the latest posting and it deals with Hilary Clinton being asked about what clothing designers she favours. Object clearly think this is of great importance, certainly more more important that three feminists being imprisoned for their beliefs. Things like this make me doubt their priorities.

Femen, the Ukraine based feminist group have already declared their support for Pussy Riot, when one of their activists chainsawed a crucifix belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church in Kiev. For those of you unfamiliar with Femen, they have a unique protest style as they tend to appear topless in public. In fact they said.

"This is the only way to be heard in this country. If we staged simple protests with banners, then our claims would not have been noticed"

Femen plans to become the biggest and the most influential feminist movement in Europe and they probably will succeed. Now let's look at what happened in Kiev....

This alone may explain Objects lack of response. They need to leverage local support to add weight to their localised anti-lap dancing campaign and church groups can be highly vocal opponents of clubs. Therefore if Object throw their weight behind Pussy Riot and as a result are seen to share conceptual space with groups such as Femen, who to put it bluntly had a topless activist demolish a crucifix, Object run the risk of alienating their religious friends.

There was another Femen protest, this time it was in London and took place on August 3rd in London. Now, I didn't notice it taking place and it may have been drowned out by the Olympics, but a number of Femen activists conducted a protest about the presence of Olympic Teams that represent countries associated with extreme Islamic views. Have a look at some of the photos....

Well it started out well enough and note that no one around seems to aware of what's going on. But then the police got involved. If you undertake a net search for 'Femen' you will see photographs of them being arrested by police forces throughout east Europe. I am sad to say that the pattern or repression that  they experience in places such the Ukraine was matched in London.

We can see WPC Bloggs explaining that she didn't join the force for this kind of stuff.

The Femen activists were clearly not going to go without a fight, although I would also like to point out that from this photograph, we can see who ate all the pies.

It looks like things got a little rough here and I must express concern about the policeman that was seemingly digging his fingertips into the activists thigh and you can see what appears to be a deep scratch mark. It concerns me that the police were able to react so quickly and with such numbers, it makes me wonder if they knew in advance what was going to happen.

So Femens protest against Islamic extremism ended up with them being roughly handled and carted off in a police van. Lets look at the solidarity shown to Femen by their sisters in struggle, Object. Surely they Tweeted on the subject...

No they didn't. As you can see, Object are more concerned about strippers in Canada, Hilary Clinton and objectification at the Olympics. Now if I was Anna Van Heeswijk, the moment that I found out what happened I would have done a press release, tweeted it and gone down to the police station myself, but Anna it seems did none of these things.

But why the silence?

I think there are two reasons. One is that despite the assurance that they are not anti nudity, I cannot see that Object would approve of attractive, topless female protesters on the grounds that they are being 'objectified'. The second reason is I believe specifically related to this particular Femen protest. We know that Object need to see a borough cleared of its clubs to establish a precedent and they must view Tower Hamlets as being their last, best hope of achieving this. We know that Object have shared a platform with islamic conservatives, (who by the way are campaigning against sex education in Tower Hamlets schools) whose support in their Tower Hamlets campaign is essential. So I imagine they would be very reluctant to support a group whose London protest was aimed at extreme islamic states and conducted by partially clothed activists.

So in this case, Object have failed to support freedom of expression and speech, just like they did with Pussy Riot. Let's face it, Object aren't exactly in favour of freedom of expression themselves and maybe there is one final thing that concerns them.

Object and its companion groups are sometimes termed third wave feminista. Do groups such as Pussy Riot and Femen belong to the third wave, or with their pragmatic approach are they representative of a fourth wave?

Femen have already stated their intent to be the most influential group in Europe and already they have left Object gasping in their wake. With their funds running low and campaigns floundering, Object and maybe the entire third wave of feminism may be looking at their replacements and that is never a pleasant experience.

To read an interview with Inna Shevchenko, a Femen activist and remover of crucifixes, go here.