Topless protests, Pussy Riot, Mayan Calendar

Femen.org; Eleanor Beardsley reporting from Paris, France (All Things Considered, npr.org, Oct. 19, 2012); Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Poor Putin. Angela Merkel is spared, but he has to stare down a bare-chested demonstrator.

Send more weapons. We're naked and we all look like Scarlet Johannson. Marriage visa?

Putin Kills – Sextremist protests against Russian Aggression in Ukraine – FEMEN

Topless protests: "sextremists" march in Paris

"PUTIN GO HOME!" – FEMEN (feminist activists in Russian-occupied Ukraine)

French policemen on Oct. 15, 2012, detain topless FEMEN protesters (Francois Mori/AP).

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We love Putin. FEMEN doesn't.

[It was late in 2012, and the world was about to end, according to the way we in the West misinterpreted the Mayan Calendar. In Ukraine, topless activists were drawing attention with the help of the CIA, Western PR firms, and their own ingenuity.]

Sometimes, less is more. [Less clothing = more attention.] That's certainly the thinking of the Ukrainian feminist movement Femen (FEMEN.org), best known for its bare-breasted protests in its home country.

Now it has brought its self-described topless "sextremism" to Paris, opening its first international training camp and wasting no time attracting new recruits, causes, and attention.

Those Puritanical Americans should relax like us.

On a recent sunny morning, seven young women stride purposefully toward the stone façade of France's Justice Ministry.

Suddenly they throw their coats to the ground. Slogans are painted across their bare bosoms; garlands decorate their hair.

"Justice screws us," they yell in French as they unfurl a black banner that reads "Rape Club. This is Femen."

On this day, the group is protesting the verdict of a recent gang rape trial where a few of the accused got suspended sentences and the rest were acquitted.

"Now Paris is not the capital of love but the capital of rapists," says Inna Shevchenko, the Ukrainian leader of Femen.

This is the later Aztec Calendar, not Mayan

"Today we came here to demand to put in jail rapists, and we say that if [the Justice Ministry] will not change their decision against group rapists of two 16-year-old girls, we're going to catch them and castrate them."

The petite blonde has a steel glint in her eye. Shevchenko calls France the center of feminism, which is why the group is opening its international headquarters in Paris.

But she says whether it's Paris or Kiev, women share a common cause, fighting against patriarchy and all of its manifestations: religion, the sex industry, dictatorship.

Guaranteed to attract attention

Inna Shevchenko yells at cops.

The group is already well-known in Eastern Europe for protesting against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Shevchenko fled her native Ukraine last August after sawing through an Orthodox Christian cross with a chainsaw to support the jailed Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot.

• Topless activists from Femen protest a court ruling that acquitted 10 of 14 men accused of repeatedly gang-raping two teenagers in a Paris suburb (Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images).

Shevchenko has demonstrated for women's causes for years. But she says it was only when they began doing it topless that people paid attention.

Don't we have enough problems without boobs?

"In a protest like that I see a great potential of women's nudity [being used] as a weapon. And I understand every time, more and more, that it works. That it is a peaceful way," Shevchenko says.

"But they are even ready to use violence against our peaceful, naked bodies." The protesters chant in English and French and move constantly; they lie on the sidewalk or circle the guards.

Several scale the iron grids on the Finance Ministry's enormous windows. More