slogan, “Make Love not War”, iterates the logic of the oppositions of peace and war, love and hate, violence and non-violence—messages with global salience. Other traditional ideas about gender were criticized as aspects of the military regime’s assumptions about power. One protester, dressed in a bright swimsuit declared, “The military coup is under my bikini”, evoking the 2007 International Panty Power Movement. Diasporic Burmese led that movement, in which they performed an action to diminish military power by using the culturally resonant idea that the principle of the feminine was polluting to the hpon or spiritual potency that underpinned a man’s power.33 They directed that at then dictator General Than Shwe, who was known to employ a broad repertoire of supernatural yadaya ritual practices to sustain patriarchal military rule. Gynaecophobic beliefs that the emasculation of men’s physical power could be accomplished through proximal contact with women’s undergarments led to women protesters flinging their panties over the gates of Burmese embassies around the world. Participants in the movement had learned that the generals were using dark yadaya rituals to erode the power of UN and international dignitaries during their visits to Myanmar by placing women’s undergarments in the rafters above the beds where they slept.34 The carnivalesque exuberance of the opening days of protests against the 1 February coup soon gave way to a more sombre, visceral expression of hatred towards Min Aung Hlaing. Imagery and street theatre that ဘုန္း in Burmese. The mission of the diasporic group is “Use your Panty Power to take away the power from the junta and support the people in Burma”; Lanna Action for Burma, https://lannaactionforburma.blogspot.com/ (accessed 18 March 2021). 33 “Whenever a UN envoy visits Burma, hotel staff are told to install a strip of a pregnant woman’s sarong or underwear within the ceiling of the VIP’s suite. Traditional Burmese men are often superstitious that coming into contact with women’s undergarments will diminish their hpon, or manly power”; Aung Zaw, “Than Shwe, Voodoo and the Number 11”, The Irrawaddy, 25 December 2021, https://www2.irrawaddy.com/opinion_story.php?art_id=14844&page=2 (accessed 19 March 2021). 34 15 21-J07648 01 Trends_2021-7.indd 15 28/4/21 9:34 AM