Since I can see the narrative that my former editors are going to employ to discredit me, along with the defense think-tankers and academics at Registan whom they have strangely accommodated, I'll explain in this post exactly why I think it is not only legitimate, but moral, to call Sarah Kendzior, the academic expert on Central Asia, an "office wife" for Registan_net.
Of course, the shrill and malicious way this is being described already (by Joshua Foust on Twitter in direct communications to EurasiaNet) is that it is "really really really really misogynist" is how some people will capture this saga. They will maliciously seek to portray me as someone betraying my values for women's rights and human rights in general by using this term.
So I'll explain the context and my thinking on why this particular term was warranted, and why indeed we must keep alive the space for ad hominem attacks on the Internet -- and why I go on upholding women's rights along with holding up the free speech that ensures them. I don't believe this statement of mine is "really really really misogynist"; I believe simply that it is true and appropriate to use in robust speech to protest the disturbing intellectual school of Registan.
Here's the short form, on the principles at stake:
When someone is put into a situation of powerlessness -- banned from a well-read area-studies blog for legitimate criticism and defense of persons and principles; silenced at a job; put into horrible editorial queues to try to extract conformity; told to shut up completely on Twitter about the region; and then subjected to unfounded disparagement on public streams aimed at their employer for a news story, I believe strongly they have to fight back. Some people would bow their heads at that point and suffer in silence.
Not me. I do fight back and I do call names -- especially if, up until that point, I had never called a name or done anything that was illegitimate by any stretch of political correctness. And that wasn't good enough, and I was still silenced for my ideas and for criticism of ideas.
The tradition of the ad hominem attack, so vigorously and maliciosly policed on the Internet but practiced nonetheless, is, in my view, an important one to retain as firmly secured by the First Amendment.
If the powerless can't call the powerful names, they cannot exercise a check against their power. If I can't at least call someone a mild little slight -- and that's how I view it -- on my own blog of a few hundred readers, or a few dozen Twitter followers out of 1,000 who might pay attention, when decent human rights people are being slammed for criticizing a tyrannical regime, then where can I? In fact, under the Constitution, I can call them a more severe slight, in a wider audience, and if a court of law can't show "actual malice," and the person is a public figure and hasn't suffered damage to their livelihood, they'll have to accept it. That's America. Or so it was America before the Internet.
With all the TOS restrictions on the social media platforms we need for political debate, with workplace political correctness religiously and zealously enforced, where do you think the First Amendment will live and have its being?
While everybody agrees in the professional context you shouldn't call people names or use even mild slights of this nature, the phrase "office wife" was used to describe a role a woman played in relationship to a website and its filtered intellectual climate, not even to the men there. Furthermore, it was used precisely because of the accomplice role she played in not only silencing me on a public forums, but inciting my employer to silence me. Joshua Foust, Sarah Kendzior and Katy Pearce are indeed gasping in feigned horror about me calling Sarah Kendzior "an office wife. Yet where were all these net nannies when:
o Elena Urlaeva was accused of merely getting involved with human rights cases because she was "getting money" to do this, and other nasty remarks were made about her;
o Elena Kostyuchenko, an investigative journalist, was compared to the "baba" in the Russian saying "Odna Baba Skazala" -- "an old lady tells a rumour" -- and further disparaged for attempting to tell the truth about the massacre of workers in Zhanaozen
o Marta Brill Olcott was ridiculed as out of touch and craven with the Kazakh regime, and her name was reduced to "LOLcott".
o I was called "Catty Catty catfitz" by Foust and falsely characterized as using obscenity (supposedly calling Hamm "a Stalinist asshole" -- completely false -- or demanding he not "censor" -- also completely false).
o I was disparaged as having "poor analytical skills" and "sloppy statistics" for writing a criticism of an idea and a news story.
As I always say to such persons clutching their pearls to their indignant bosoms about something I'm saying after I've been bullied relentlessly by others, and watched them stamp on others, welcome to the Newly-Acquired Conscience Society.
Now here's the longer form with more deliberation on the context:
I don't believe in general that the term "office wife" is "misogynist" to use about someone else, especially not when used by one woman about another woman, because it's about describing a condition of subserviance and often unappreciated self-sacrifice that in fact mitigates against women's rights and women's liberation for us all. If you call someone an "office wife," you are in fact invoking a feminist value that indicates they are not supporting. So Foust is wrong on that count, but there's more.
This term dates back at least to the 1930s, when there was a famous film by that name, but the role or the concept is one I've seen in novels about life in the 1890s and early 20th century (i.e. by Kathleen Townshend Norris). The scene is a familiar one even in today's offices: a secretary or "administrative assistant" who does everything for a man and even becomes his emotional base, unlike his home, but who also sacrifices her own life for his, and who even serves as his accomplice in deceiving his wife or co-workers if they are having an affair, but not even if there is an actual sexual liaison.
In any event, if you're not convinced by my recitation of all the other names that the men called women on Registan and called me before it ever occurred to me to call one of their sycophants a name (!), it's important to see the context of Registan to understand why I would use such a term in a professional context:
1. On this thread, Sarah revealed herself to be circumspect and political about not confronting the anonymous "Will," who frankly behaves like the typical regime-sympathizing sock puppet on forums like this. "Will" may come honestly by his sentiments protective of the regime and hostile to the human rights movement and the opposition, but there's no way of knowing, with his hidden identity, and at any rate, his invective against exiles and activists -- that they are in it for the money paid by Westerners; that they exaggerate or falsify; that they are indifferent to the suffering of others who are arrested for their incitements to resistance while they sit comfortably abroad; that no amount of their good-will investigation of a strange case is good enough.
That is, she did come in briefly to say only this regardly Urlaeva: "The sincere desire to help other people should be applauded, not condemned or tarnished with cynicism". But she didn't confront Will, she didn't take on his appalling characterization of the opposition, and she did nothing to dispel the notion that the opposition did this as a gambit to discredit the regime and gain followers -- nor would she accept even entertaining the thesis that this was most likely an Uzbek intelligence operation. I called that out also in comments to her Atlantic piece.
2. Instead of addressing the moral and political dimensions of Will's statement and my *legitimate* defense against them, she preferred merely to come in and try to correct me about alleged mistakes. Her first point about the Facebook picture simply wasn't clear -- we were talking about different photos completely, one of which was from a Turkish actress and in her Facebook profile page; the other of which was on an exile site but not in her Facebook photos, or someone else. In any event, her correction there wasn't of any article I wrote; it's merely of my statement only on that thread, and we were simply talking about different things. Her second statement about where the address for the alleged suicide student's home was is indeed correct and I made that correction to an article -- I had thought the statement was on Facebook, although finding that odd; in fact it came from the opposition site.
3. This context is important, too: for particularly Will, and evidently Sarah, the fact of the exile site publishing this claim was one that tended to point to exile manipulation and self-interest in perpetrating this hoax. While accepting that exile groups are manipulators, I didn't support that thesis here for one very simple reason: the Facebook page said Gulsumoy, the woman alleged to have been tortured and who commit suicide, "worked for the PMU" in her "work" slot on her profile. That was just bizarre. No student even sympathizing with an exile group would be likely to assume the risk of putting a statement like that. An exile groups don't have jobs such as to put in your "work" slot. They are poor and underfunded and are mainly volunteer associations helping each other in exile, not some "operation" that has jobs. Indeed, the PMU had quickly put out a statement that she was not their member. Maybe she was, and that was tactical, but we have to take them at their word, and indeed, common sense and experience with exile movements in many countries dictate to me the obvious, that there was something awfully fake about telling the world you were "working for" a group, one of whose members had just been assassinated in Russia.
4. There's much more in this vein in other threads that illustrate a circumspect, cautious attitude by Kendzior in not confronting obvious bad faith, pro-regime statements, malicious anti-human rights statements, etc. On Twitter, when Joshua Foust and Joshua Kucera argued about his New York Times article, she said jokingly that she "agred with Joshua," i.e. "I agree with both of you and I'm not going to take a stand." Of course it's her right to take any measured or cautious or dithering stance she likes, but it's a pattern.
Although by this time, it should have been clear that the party that most benefited from this hoax was the NSB, this was Kendzior's take:
I am not going to speculate any further on who is behind this until I know more, but one should keep in mind the possibility that someone may want to discredit Abutov, who is a controversial figure in Uzbek opposition circles, and that Urlaeva — a credible source and trusted advocate of human rights — was merely a patsy, not the prime target.
This is how we differ culturally, politically, and morally: I would never call Urlaeva, someone who in good faith agreed to help someone seemingly in distress with a sister in prison, and who went to further lengths than anyone in investigating a story, "a patsy". It's just too pejorative, even though Kendzior alluded to her indirectly in principle as a good person. Furthermore, she stepped in once again to steer everyone away from seeing this as the frank intelligence operation it likely was, invoking once again her special scholar's knowledge of all things Uzbek and Internet and dumping it back on the opposition itself again, ultimately:
Usually deception revolves around accusations and defamation of character (so-and-so is actually a secret agent of the NSS, etc), not outright fabrication. You should also keep in mind that there are many internal conflicts within Uzbek politics that go beyond the “NSS vs. opposition” binary.
This sort of interaction replicates in other threads and forms a portrait: Kendzior is cautiously critical of the regime on the obvious points, but she builds up the "nuanced picture" to drive us away from outright confrontation of the regime's illegitimacy. This is done in the name of academics. I find it troubling.
5. All of this would merely be a lengthy forums wrangle of no particular importance, especially given that eventually the story was revealed by Radio Ozodlik to be a hoax, when they confronted the parties involved. But neither Kendzior or any other Registan writer followed this to the end: the "sister" of the "suicide student" subsequently made a statement for the press that said that Uzbek intelligence had put her up to the entire thing and an agent was still following her. This may or may not be true, but it's interesting nobody wanted to mention it anymore, eh?
6. Fast forward to the day when I made a perfectly legitimate and necessary intervention on behalf of Martha Brill Olcott. She was being nastily taken down through no fault of her own and her name was ridiculed by Foust and others (talk about misogynism!) I'm actually not a big fan of Olcott's establishment views but I respect her as a recognized expert and I've been to a number of interesting meetings at Carnegie. So I came not only to her defense, but the defense of principles involved and calling out the hypocrisy of Foust. For that I was banned and denounced in creepy witch-hunting terms. A number of people found this disturbing, including a US official (in his private capacity), although his comment was deleted, and other regulars and non-regulars objected, but Sarah Kendzior did nothing.
7. When Nathan Hamm said that a "kind soul" with whom he consulted about my banning who was usually lenient about expression said in my case, I should be banned, it seemed highly likely that the unnamed person was Kendzior. There are few women at Registan -- it's not a bastion of feminism. Registan authors took part in a disparaging and ridiculing of a female Russian reporter (who happens to be a lesbian and campaigner for LGBT rights) and some who defended her finally were very late the party, and lame.
8. When I criticized -- legitimately -- a thesis in a paper by Sarah Kendzior and Katy Pearce that I rightly found troubling, she accused wrongfully and falsely as having "poor analytical skills". My doubts about a claim that news of repression drives people off the Internet, and my expression of those doubts, is legitimate and even needed expression. That's absolutely required for a climate of intellectual freedom. To attack it by claiming that I'm illegitimate and don't have skills, rather than arguing on the merits of the topic, is creepy, because it suggests this thesis, which appears to me in the end to be appeasing Central Asian regimes, gets to stake out its validity by disparaging and silencing critics in unconscionable ways. That's wrong.
9. When I posted a simple blog post at EurasiaNet, approved by editors, that made a simple true statement based on a recognized analytical agency, about a surge in Facebook membership in Uzbekistan, I was heckled by both Kendzior and her co-author Pearce on Twitter. First Kendzior insisted this was "sloppy statistics". Then Pearce stepped in with numerous academicoid objections that were bizarre, given the obvious common-sense nature of the increase in Facebook membership.
10. Finally, the two of them then went to my employer to object about my legitimate criticism. At that point NOTHING in my LEGITIMATE posts disagreeing with them on either Registan, Twitter, or this blog disparaged them as people, called into question their credentials, called them names, or used any obscenities about them. I argued with their ideas. They didn't like that, and used unseemly means to silence me. They loudly made false accusations of me on Twitter that I was "sloppy" with statistics and of "poor analytical" skills -- a charge that was absolutely absurd given the piece in question wasn't an academic paper, but a simple and true blog post about lots of new Uzbek members on Facebook. It just didn't fit with their thesis.
11. Words can't begin to describe the level of craven subserviance to...whatever it is they feel allegiance to...and the sheer vicious malice that is involved in having two academics go to a news site and denounce a writer for their normal and legitimate blog posts. I can scarcely believe such a thing would happen. But it did. They complained about me to the editor. BTW, I was told that by him, that they made a complaint, and that they were among four people who complained about me. But since I've already discovered one of those four cited as in fact not doing that and not complaining at all and that person is even worried by such a strange implication nothing of the kind was done, I wouldn't be surprised to find in fact Pearce and Kendzior didn't write a separate communication to my editor. But they sure complained loudly on Twitter with the @ sign, and that's the main point. It's a horrible one.
Because of the complaints of Registan, I was ordered to cease commenting on the Central Asian region entirely on social media. EurasiaNet helped Registan enforce a ban on my speech on this region entirely. That was wrong. This was aided and abetted by Sarah Kendzior, who has been strangely uncritical of Foust through all his outrageous and unseemly attacks on the human rights movement at home and abroad. Oh, she may dig up some little murmur of factitiousness here and there, but she didn't do the moral and conscientious thing: she didn't tell him to knock it off, because it's wrong, factually and morally. And she hardly sees that as her role. That's why I called her the "office wife" of Registan.
