If women want to learn how to accept themselves as they are, they should ask a man for tips.
That, at least, appears to be the jaw-dropping message of a would-be female empowerment forum scheduled to take place next month in Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent.
For dismayed critics of the event, the sexism is only the cherry on the cake.
Organizers of Be Woman, as the March 5 event is called, have described it as “an ode to the women of Central Asia.” The forum will include roundtables under the titles of “Female Entrepreneurship: Strength and Inspiration” and “Culture and Creativity.” Fully 35 expert speakers will deliver talks.
What has sparked indignation, however, is a lecture reputedly aimed at enabling women to change their attitudes to themselves. That is being delivered by Alexei Sitnikov, a Russian neuro-linguistic programming guru and political pundit perhaps best known for briefly running the doomed 2017 presidential campaign of television celebrity and soi-disant opposition figure Ksenia Sobchak.
The forum’s agenda explains that Sitnikov, who has been billed as a special guest, will speak for 30 minutes on how one can learn to “accept oneself as a bunch of keys.”
“This skill will not just relieve the daily discomfort of feeling ‘not oneself,’ but it will also enable you to forge your own needs, desires, and path,” reads a blurb on the Be Woman website next to a picture of Sitnikov sagely cradling his chin in his right hand.
Irina Matvienko, the founder of an advocacy group campaigning against domestic violence, reacted with despairing exasperation to this planned talk.
“Nothing extraordinary. Just the Be Woman forum, co-organized by [the Uzbekistan office of the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA] and the Businesswomen’s Association of Uzbekistan, [hosting] a man telling a (mainly female) audience how a woman can accept herself,”she wrote on Facebook.
Matvienko alluded to the UNFPA because advertising for the Be Woman event indeed suggested that it was being supported by the organization. But the UNFPA office in Tashkent has now denied any involvement. After that, Be Woman organizers promptly removed the UNFPA logo from their website.
Sitnikov’s gender might not have been such a major issue were his output not so questionable.
In one video on his YouTube channel — title: Things WOMEN CANNOT DO in front of a man — he suggests that women should avoid being irrational and instead cling to “their femininity so as not push men away.” In another video, he opines that women who do not wear makeup and who “dress sloppily” will struggle to “elicit the delight and admiration” of men.
Sitnikov has eye-catching political views too. He has voiced these on the rowdy Russian state-run Channel One Time Will Tell talk show, where guests compete to outdo one another in parroting virulently anti-Western and pro-government talking points.
In a September 2020 episode, he dismissed claims that the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, insisting that Russia’s authorities had no interest in harming the politician. One X (Twitter) user shared another clip from Time Will Tell in which Sitnikov compared Ukraine to “a promiscuous woman” and Russia to “a woman with a rolling pin.” He has invoked this not-entirely enlightened gendered imagery elsewhere, in 2020 and 2021.
Despite the clamor, Be Woman is standing firm on Sitnikov. Their invitation to speakers is based on their “professional qualities, experience and ability to inspire the audience,” organizers said.
“We already have experience of working with Alexei Sitnikov, and we know that his performances delight female audiences. His videos get millions of views, and 70-80 percent of the audience are women, Alikhan Musatayev, one forum organizer and a founder of the Art of Her media portal, told Eurasianet.
Musatayev said Sitnikov was picked “because of his professionalism and his experience in the field of motivation and inspiration.” Participants of focus groups in Uzbekistan likewise confirmed that they wanted to see Sitnikov involved in the event, Musatayev said.
“We would like to note that our Be Woman forum is focused on uniting and inspiring women in Central Asia, and not on political discussions,” said Musatayev, adding that he has seen no swell of complaints over the Russian motivation guru’s involvement.
Matvienko is not buying it.
“I’m sure there are women who could give a similar lecture”, she wrote on Facebook. “You want to collect money from sponsors to support this women’s forum, but then use part of this money to pay a fee to a man who will engage in mansplaining.”
“This is not about supporting women, but rather about supporting the system of their oppression,” she wrote.
