Long thread on Iran's #MeToo movement so bare with me:

In her most recent iteration @NassimNo stands w #MaziarKhosravi a journalist accused by many of rape & sexual assault in the workplace &
of using his influence to threaten/end their careers.1/19 https://twitter.com/harasswatch/status/1323635571651203074?s=20

Despite my original inclination, I'm writing this in English in order to expose the double standards in her discourse and the outright colonial stance Noroozi adopts in approaching the question of #Iran, and particularly of Iranian women. 2/19

Noroozi often invokes a distorted notion of postcoloniality as a defense & to silence her criticts. As academics however, our vocation demands speaking truth to power not aligning with & normalizing oppression. 3/19

The story (or its most recent iteration): in a failed attempt to defend #MaziarKhosravi and deny being sexually harassed by him, Atefeh Shams (below) details how he (her superior) hired her,propositioned her & fired her when the relationship went soar.4/19 https://twitter.com/atefeh88/status/1323965077956026371?s=20

We know multitudes of women don’t have the language to articulate various categorizations of sexual assault from rape to harassment to molestation. This is particularly true in theocratic misogynistic regime such as that of the IRI which is built on subordinating women and...5/19

institutionalizing their objectification, turning their bodies into an ideological battleground and severely punishing any attempts at emancipation.The social context this narrator lives in may have a hand in normalizing above relationship, yet the injury afflicted remains.6/19

Noroozi though,reducing rape to a "potential mishap" in addressing Shams,knows full well propositioning a subordinate is considered sexual misconduct & not tolerated even in her workplace @Concordia.Are rules somehow different if raped by a journalist close to Iranian regime?7/19

Noroozi consistently insists on denying the sexual nature of this harassment,alleging fabrication of rape!

Orientalism galore!

Nassim,are you suggesting Iranian women r somehow undeserving of a workplace free from harassment? Or that men have every right to their bodies?8/19

Please explain to us why then are these local bodies worth less than their global counterparts, categorizing them as prey for the sundry of #MaziarKhosravi's out there?

Multiple journalists,male & female,attest to Khosravi's extortion of sexual favours from young employees.9/19

Faced with mounted criticism of her whitewashing sexual assault and backlash for attacking Iran's fragile #MeToo movement, Noroozi has gone on the offensive making a slew of hurried yet libelous and false accusations against myself an others.10/19

Since Noroozi is in habit of making these accusations in Farsi, leaving the burden of translating both the language and the context to her critics, and to expose the depravity of such discourse,I feel the need to respond in English where local-global biases are unmasked.11/19

She claims that I called for her firing at @Concordia.That is absolutely, categorically false and libelous.I,along w hundreds of others, asked for her comments insisting last November's protesters in Iran were “abnormal” to be reported to her workplace as hate speech.12/19

Noroozi is aware that Iranian regime habitually labels dissidents abnormal 2 justify their execution.Therein lies the danger of such language:in legitimizing state repression.Unfortunately,I cannot take credit if she got fired,the credit goes entirely to her own hate speech.13/19

Next, despite her baseless claim, I never alleged she is an intelligence agent of the Islamic regime. That is simply a fabrication for which she needs to apologize to me. Noroozi's discourse however is fraught with distortion and misrepresentation, not mutual understanding.14/19

Third, while hundreds of users here condemned her calling protestors "abnormal" specially in light of her insistence, she accuses myself of overlooking “academic integrity” by providing a “bad translation”, a claim for which she produces no evidence. 15/19

I highly doubt hundreds of users here, may of whom are proficient in both languages, simply misunderstood her particularly while the regime executed 1500 defenseless protesters in cloak of internet & communication darkness. 16/19 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/12/iran-thousands-arbitrarily-detained-and-at-risk-of-torture-in-chilling-post-protest-crackdown/

Finally, and in yet another instance exhibiting utter ignorance with regards to gender relations of power, she compares my condemnation of her hate speech to a dangerous alleged serial rapist firing his subordinates who refuse his sexual advances!

Let that sink in!
17/19

Im not going to hold my breath waiting for Noroozi to apologize to me or others she falsely accused. Yet, one cannot claim decolonial (I prefer anti-colonial) stance yet adopt the same top down approach that suggests somehow Iranian women r subjected to different standards.18/19

A colonial lens isnt simply exoticizing women of the global south;
Not recognizing Iranian woman’s right to her body, denying her right to a safe workplace & conceptualizing Mid East men as unrestrained sexual beasts,r equally colonial even if uttered by an Iranian woman.19/19