Topless Protester To Le Pen: “Bitch We Ain’t Buyin’ It”

What’s the latest news from France regarding the upcoming presidential election?

Well, I’m glad you asked.

As always, there’s an abundance of what I like to call “headline hockey”, but that’s not where I want to start on Saturday. I’d rather start with topless women.

Somehow I managed to miss this (and that’s weird, because under normal circumstances, topless protests against populist bullsh*t would be something that I would have highlighted immediately), but on Thursday, an angry ponytailed woman from radical women’s rights group Femen leaped to her feet and began shouting “Marine, fake feminist” while Le Pen was speaking at a presser in Paris.

Here’s the clip:

Femen would later post the following to its Facebook page:

Nothing in the programme of Marine Le pen promotes the empowerment of women, no proposal was raised to further equality between the sexes.Le pen is a fictitious Republican, she’s neither feminist, nor secular, nor for the defence of human rights… yet she is a candidate for the presidential election!

You’ll recall that earlier this week, I highlighted Le Pen’s bid to shore up her support among female voters ahead of the elections.

Here’s what Bloomberg wrote on Wednesday:

The anti-euro, anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen has been playing up her gender as she seeks to convert a likely first-round victory into an overall majority in the run-off on May 7 — and it’s paying off. The 48-year-old National Front leader has already rallied some 2 million additional female voters to her cause since her last run for president in 2012 and she’s betting more will follow.

While women make up just over half of the electorate in France they are far less likely to turn out than men, offering a well of untapped support for the candidate who manages to tune into their concerns. Le Pen’s pitch weaves together concerns about immigration, security, and the economic decline of many white French communities into a potent populist brew that borrows freely from U.S. President Donald Trump, blaming “the elite” for the problems of ordinary voters.

“Women are the key,” said Nonna Mayer, a researcher at the Sciences Po institute in Paris who has studied the National Front for 25 years. “These women often abstain and now they are backing Le Pen to protect their jobs and their security.”