BEB, I'm one of the feminists on Twitter you've taken it upon yourself to scold on this entirely separate platform because you seem to think we're all a bunch of ignorant rubes who need to be shown the errors of our ways by someone far better informed. So I hope you won't mind if I respond at length to this thread and post of yours on the same platform where you posted them.

If you want to assail Masih Alinejad, that's your prerogative. But I think that in criticizing her, or any of us, we all have moral duty to try to be a bit fair. You did not make any attempt to show who Masih Alinejad is, what her views are, or consider why she might have such views. Instead, you suggested that she's not really a feminist coz of her views on the regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran, then further suggested that any feminist who retweets any of her tweets are naifs who are "being used."

As "proof" of the aspersion you cast on Alinejad, you quoted at length an extensive blog post by a man, the American journalist Jim Lobe. His blog post is your one and only source. What's more, you introduce Jim Lobe's comments by saying

So here is some information on Masih Alinejad

But in fact, most of that excerpt from Jim Lobe's blog is not about Masih Alinejad. It's about a whole bunch of other people and entities that Lobe considers suspect, shady and nefarious: Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Ahmad Chalabi, Reza Pahlavi, Setareh Derakhshesh, Donald Trump, Elliot Abrams, George W. Bush’s National Security Council, and "Michael Ledeen, a veteran anti-Iran neoconservative at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a leading anti-JCPOA group closely associated with Israel’s Likud Party," Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Masih Alinejad is only mentioned towards the very end, and out of the whole long excerpt you copied & pasted her name actually appears in only two sentences! Which are as follows:

VOA also hired Masih Alinejad, a controversial reporter who has turned against the Reformists in Iran, to begin her own program on VOA, giving her large sums of money and promoting her heavily.

In fact, on February 4, Pompeo met with the VOA’s Alinejad and “underscored the United States’ commitment to help amplify the voices of the Iranian people and to condemn the Iranian regime for its ongoing human rights abuses.” (Also, neither Jim Lobe nor you give any indication who said the words quoted at the end, Pompeo or Alinejad.)

BTW, what Lobe didn't mention is that Alinejad's VOA job consists of co-hosting and apparently producing a 15-minute video program that shows footage from inside Iran once a week. Yes, she's been paid well - apparently more than $305K from 2015 through 2019, or a little more than $60K a year. But while in most of the US, that's considered "large sums of money," it's really not by the standards of the elites who churn out content for media outlets or think tanks, and who ride the gravy train funded by lucrative government contracts.

At any rate, it seems to me that you've not come close to making a case why Masih Alinejad cannot be considered a real feminist, and why those of us who sometimes retweet her are foolish and wrong for doing so.

The only things I think you've proven here are a) that you find Jim Lobe's word to be beyond question, and b) that you have no issue with the current trend of condemning people for having views that some others call "controversial" and for committing so-called "crimes of adjacency" - meaning considering them beyond the pale for simply having a meeting with someone with the "wrong" views, or agreeing with them on one or more specific issue, being seen in their vicinity, or once in a while liking or retweeting something they've said on social media.

As has been said on Twitter and other platforms many times, retweets and likes of particular tweets are not an endorsement of everything the poster of the original tweet believes in or has done in her or his life.

Now let's look at the nature of the tweets by Mahish Alinejad that you take issue with, and think feminists like me and WoLF are wrong to retweet.

Most of Alinejad's tweets highlight the forced veiling laws and other draconian measures instituted by the Islamic Republic of Iran - such as public executions of dissidents and apostates from Islam, forced marriages of girls as young as 8, and widespread "honor killings" of girls and women - that the people of Iran have suffered, and still suffer, for 41 years since the establishment of the Shia theocracy in 1979. She brings attention to all sorts of human rights abuses, including the arrests, punishments and jail sentences going on today of women in Iran who openly oppose forced veiling and other sexist oppression.

Retweeting or liking Alinejad's tweets about these matters doesn't mean any or all of us are being "used" or that we're in the wrong and require scolding to set us straight.

I know people from Iran who are all over the map politically. I also know, read, follow on social media and buy the books of people who've worked for the US federal government for decades, some at departments like the State, VOA and CIA. Doesn't mean I'm a lackey or stooge or I've gone over to the dark side, or that I am a naif "being used."

Is Alinejad controversial as Jim Lobe says? Depends who you ask. But one thing is clear: she has paid dearly for her outspoken feminism and her criticism of the Iranian regime through a feminist and humanitarian lens.

Alinejad lives in exile, the Iranian regime has declared her an "enemy of the state" and puts constant pressure on her to recant her heresies. In 2019, the Iranian government arrested a number of her family members still in Iran for her views, and were only freed after making statements publicly condemning her. In July 2019, Iranian officials also warned that any Iranian who sends videos to Alinejad faces 10 years in prison.

In 2015, the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, which is run by UN Watch, gave her its women's rights award for "giving a voice to the voiceless and stirring the conscience of humanity to support the struggle of Iranian women for basic human rights, freedom, and equality."

Of course, not everyone, including women, in or from Iran agrees with her. Some feminists from Iran have criticized her views, saying she supports right wingers who advocate foreign intervention that will result in "regime change," and that her speaking up fosters "Islamophobia." She's been further condemned for speaking out against the Iranian regime on FOX News.

Other women from the Islamic world have criticized her too. Alinejad has openly butted heads with Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, who promotes both veiling of women and Sharia. On CNN, Alinejad told Sarsour she disagreed with Sarsour's support for the hijab and other Islamic veiling garb for girls and women, saying: "It's important if you care about human rights, women's rights, you cannot use the same tool which is the most visible symbol of oppression in the Middle East and say that this is a sign of resistance [in the United States]."

A lot of men in the US foreign policy establishment have criticized Alinejad and think the world would be better off if women didn't make such a big fuss over forced veiling in countries such as Iran. Since you already gave quite a lot of space to quoting the views of one such man, Jim Lobe, here's more condemnation of Alinejad, by another man. Funny, none of these men have ever had to don a chador or hijab, and never will:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2020/01/06/u-s-media-outlets-fail-to-disclose-u-s-government-ties-of-iranian-journalist-echoing-trump-talking-

On the other hand, some men, including fellow exiles from Iran, think Alinejad has the right to speak up and her views are worth airing and discussing:

https://kayhanlife.com/people/after-meeting-pompeo-iranian-activist-masih-alinejad-speaks-to-kayhan-life/

If Farrokhroo Parsa, who at the time of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 was the country's first and only female cabinet member, were still alive today I imagine she might be more hardline against the current Iranian regime than you are. She might even be willing to meet with Mike Pompeo. But we'll never know coz in May 1981 Parsa was executed by firing squad for refusing to wear the head-to-toe chador that Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 decreed all female people in Iran age 7 and up had to wear outside the home.

In her last letter from prison before being put to death, Parsa wrote this to her children:

I am prepared to receive death with open arms rather than live in shame by being forced to be veiled. I am not going to bow to those who expect me to express regret for fifty years of my efforts for equality between men and women. I am not prepared to wear the chador and step back in history.

My own personal view is that Alinejad is incredibly brave for standing up to the regime in Iran, and that feminists in the West calling her not a real feminist is a bit rich. Look how cowed into silence and secrecy women all across the West are by trans activists and woke cancel culture. So many of us are too afraid to speak openly about our belief that biological sex is real and matters on social media, at work, even with close friends.

I can't imagine what it must be like to live in, or be from, a place where "wrong think" doesn't just mean getting death threats on social media - it can mean imprisonment for decades or being publicly executed. I frankly don't think I could ever be as brave as Alinejad or Parsa.

BTW, not only have I retweeted Alinejad, I bought a book by her. Guess that means I'm not only a dupe and a baddie, but I'm one of the nefarious fat cats funding her. Coz she probably made all of 75 cents USD in royalties from the book I purchased.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

https://iranian.com/2005/05/09/a-woman-for-all-seasons/