Founder of Femen Brazil now makes war on feminism

Carolyn Moynihan
6 January 2016
Reproduced with Permission
MercatorNet

When the shrieking harpies of Femen burst into news bulletins a few years ago wearing only paint on their torsos as they made war on patriarchy and homophobia across Europe, a 20-year-old Brazilian woman was mightily impressed.

Sara Fernanda Giromin had grown up with a father who bullied her mother. By the age of 14 she had cut loose from the Catholic Church. She became involved in prostitution, no doubt leading to confrontations with the police. So when she saw these fearless feminists battling it out with the frontline of the male patriarchy she thought, I want to do that.

That, according to one account she has given of herself, is how she became Sara Winter, the face of radical feminism in Brazil. After a brief period of training in the Ukraine in 2012 she got a Femen group together in Rio de Janiero and they launched the movement's trademark topless protests against the Church and other social institutions.

The following year she left Femen, denouncing it as a "business" (one that did not even reimburse her for expenses incurred in organising her protests), but continued down the activist path with Bastardxs, a feminist group that includes both men and women.

Recently, however, Ms Giromin has done a complete about-turn, repudiating all forms of feminism and talking about the joy of motherhood as she dandles a 3-month-old baby on her lap. She also talks about returning to the Christian faith and working with the pro-life movement. She deeply regrets having her first child aborted and "asks forgiveness" for her abortion.

She is also asking Christians to forgive her for a stunt of January 2014 when she engaged in a same-sex kiss with another topless woman in front of the Church of Our Lady of Candelaria in Rio de Janiero, and similar offensive acts. "We went way too far and ended up offending many religious and non-religious people," she says in a YouTube video.

What happened?

Sara Giromin was a wounded adolescent when she knocked on the door of Femen. It seems that she was looking for some kind of support after the experiences of her childhood and prostitution. But it turned out that nobody in that group or the other she joined really cared about her personal problems. Instead she felt coerced into adopting the movement's sexual culture. As she writes in a book with the colourful title, Bitch, No! Seven Times I Was Betrayed by Feminism,

"Lesbian and bisexual women have much more voice and respect within the movement, so in the search for recognition of my struggle, with each day that passed, I deconstructed my heterosexuality and was substituting it with an artificial bisexuality."

Elsewhere she e laborates :

"For the feminist sect, women are not the inspiration, they are prime matter in the worst sense of the term. They are convenient objects useful for the purpose of inflaming hatred against the Christian religion, hatred against men, hatred against the beauty of women, hatred against the equilibrium of families.

"That's what feminism is, and I can guarantee it is like that because I was on the inside!

"I saw the feminist movement cover up for PAEDOPHILES.

"I saw the feminist movement PERSECUTE WOMEN ... I am a witness to the fact that today in the feminist movement women are not of any importance but serve as fuel for the fires of hatred that the feminist sect cannot allow to die."

Her experience is, of course, with an extreme form of feminism but it is extremists who are driving the human rights agenda today.

Ms Giromin speaks of the fundamental negativity and anarchism of a gender rights movement that doesn't even believe in men and women. It has nothing to do with equality between the sexes, and everything to do with deconstructing and reducing sexuality to mere hedonism. There is no respect for human nature or even society, just the assertion of an absolute right to self expression driven purely by will. This is where the gender agenda is heading.

But the young Brazilian also rejects mainstream feminism, saying that it harms women by encouraging promiscuity, birth control and abortion. She is perceptive about that too, since contraception and abortion prepared the way for the sexual anarchy now undermining marriage and the family.

Becoming a mother has changed a lot. She wrote in October:

"Yesterday marked one month after the birth of my baby and my life has taken on a new meaning. I am writing this while he [sic] sleeps serenely on my lap. It is the greatest sensation in the world."

It has given her both the perspective and courage to speak out.

At 23, she is lucky to have seen through the whole ghastly mess of the sexual revolution and embrace a life-affirming alternative. She has teamed up with a Christian psychologist, Marisa Lobo, to give talks against feminism, gender ideology and cultural Marxism. She says:

"I left that movement of which for four years I was one of the principal symbols in Brazil, and no one can say the contrary!" she writes. "The result? Today I'm much happier and I'm able to help women more."

It is too soon to say how thorough her conversion is, but Sara Fernanda Giromin is certainly a woman to watch.

Top