Posted on 12/03/2005 7:20:42 PM PST by Coleus
The Wide-Ranging Feminist Agenda at the UN
Social conservatives at the United Nations, always busy fighting the big fight over the creation of an internationally recognized right to abortion on demand, rarely have a chance to counter the rest of the international feminist agenda. But this agenda encompasses so much beyond abortion, and the rest of it has proven so disastrous to men – and women – that it must be examined in detail.
There are now entire UN agencies devoted to women's development and women's health, as well as a whole commission of unelected gender "experts" that castigates countries for their supposed lack of adherence to the commission's ever-more radical interpretation of the UN's women's rights treaty. There is nothing at all comparable for men. If we measure sexism as the unfair advantaging of one sex over another – then either men qua men have no problems at all, or the UN must be considered the most sexist worldwide organization in existence today.
Feminists have so far failed to achieve a universal abortion license, but their other achievements have been profound, the most important of which is called "gender mainstreaming." Gender mainstreaming means that all UN policies and programs must be evaluated according to their potential effects upon women. From land-mine removal to forestry policies to micro-credit programs, all must be "gender mainstreamed." Successfully implemented, gender mainstreaming results in a two-tiered international caste system; a gender-mainstreamed micro credit program, for instance, could mean that poor women get loans before poor men, if men are eligible for them at all. (Because gender mainstreaming is an a priori, universal commitment, the practical efficacy of such discrimination need not be addressed, let alone proven).
UN discrimination against men begins in childhood. Any cursory glance at the UNICEF website, for instance, illustrates that the problems faced by girls are much more important to the UN than the problems faced by boys. If boys are mentioned explicitly, it is often as the potential perpetrators of future gender violence, who therefore require UN-sponsored re-education.
Sex discrimination continues throughout the life-cycle. The ultimate measure of health and well being is mortality: who dies when, from what. In every society on earth women live longer than men, and in some societies they live considerably longer, perhaps 10 years longer, than men. But this has never been raised as an issue at the UN. Why? If men die, everywhere, sooner than women, due to work, war, even things like alcoholism, what does this signify? It signifies that men did not establish governments and religions and cultures and families to dominate women, and therefore the necessary feminist license for radical transformation of these institutions falls away.
But imagine the UN conferences if there were "a mortality gap" in the other direction.
Feminists have even learned how to wrest the "victim" status away from men, by simply claiming the "feminization" of a particular problem: the feminization of AIDS, of hunger, of poverty. If the percentage of women victims rises – even if it is well below 50 percent – then the dreaded feminization is under way, and the UN promptly shifts to programs designed to help women.
None of this is, perhaps, surprising, so let's look at how UN feminism hurts women. Many feminists consider prostitution a source of female empowerment, so the UN is largely paralyzed on this issue, along with prostitution's counterparts, sexual slavery and trafficking in persons. In fact, because of feminism, the UN cannot even call prostitution "prostitution." To avoid any perceived slight to the profession, prostitution has been renamed "sex work." (It is now left to the Bush administration and Christian aid groups to liberate teenage "sex workers" the world over.)
The world's two most populous countries, China and India, have a problem: There are millions of "missing" girls because women are having sex-selective abortions. Feminists must remain mum on this issue, too; nothing can challenge their highest good – a right to abortion on demand – even if women are using this right to eliminate girls, and are doing so by the millions.
And then there is maternal mortality – perhaps the greatest travesty foisted on the women of the developing world by UN feminists. Western nations solved the maternal mortality problem before the rise of feminism. That's because maternal mortality was treated as a public health problem, through relatively simple, relatively cheap interventions, such as trained birth attendants and the availability of emergency obstetric care.
However, 10 years ago, with great fanfare, the UN launched a "rights based approach" to maternal mortality. Apparently, the root cause of maternal mortality was sexism, so sexism had to be addressed, and overcome, before women would stop dying. And thus maternal mortality was transformed into a feminist cause. And after 10 years of righteous speeches and lavish conferences, women in the developing world are still dying at the same absurd levels – about 500,000 a year – as they were at the start.
Although it may sound harsh, it must be concluded that feminists don't really care about saving women from maternal mortality. At an event in Belgium earlier this month that sought "new aid modalities and partnerships" between EU feminists and UN feminists, a member of the European Parliament said, "Indeed, 'technical' and 'instrumental' approaches . . . such as, focusing on the number of girls in primary school, the number of women obtaining maternity care, should be minimized" because such concrete measures threaten to "divert attention away from fundamental causes of inequality between women and men in social, economic, political spheres, which are the causes of women's poverty." In others words, saving too many women in childbirth threatens to remove a potent symbol from the perpetual feminist revolution. Let them eat cake . . .
Ideas have consequences. Feminist ideas have hurt both men and women at the UN. It is time to break the monopoly of thought at the UN, a monopoly that claims that only feminists care about women. As we have seen, this can no longer be maintained. What is needed, in response, is a new ethos towards women, one that includes blindness towards sex when that is appropriate (it should not matter more to the UN, for instance, if a woman contracts AIDS rather than a man) and an appreciation of complimentarity when that is appropriate – protecting women as mothers, for instance.
But first, who will be brave enough there to proclaim that the empress has no clothes?
Douglas Sylva is Senior Fellow at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). His e-mail address is dsylva@thefactis.org.
This is the sickest piece of propaganda I have come across in the last week. Sure, the NOW people are blind to the problems of women and can't even acknoledge the the end of the Taliban, I agree completely. They are hamstrung by Hillary.
But the UN is finally realizing that if you give $25 to a man, he buys liquor and a gun, and when you give $25 to a woman, she feeds her child and buys blankets. The micro loan program is a giant step forward. When civilized nations can say that men account for only 50% of violent crime within their own country, I might listen to this jerk. However, men account for 95% of violent crime here in the US. It's even worse in third world countries and empowering women is key to progress.
"But the UN is finally realizing that if you give $25 to a man, he buys liquor and a gun, and when you give $25 to a woman, she feeds her child and buys blankets."
Really? I am glad you have such a high opinion of us men. I sure hope you are not in a position of authority.
"When civilized nations can say that men account for only 50% of violent crime within their own country, I might listen to this jerk. However, men account for 95% of violent crime here in the US."
So in your world view, it is okay to discriminate against men because men are just violent, evil jerks who have accomplished nothing for society?
"I'm a bigger victim than you are!"
"No you're not!"
"Am too!"
"Nanny nanny boo boo!"
How about we make everyone a little bit happier and better off by getting rid of the U.N.?
the UN is largely paralyzed on this issue, along with prostitution's counterparts, sexual slavery and trafficking in personsThe UN embraces slavery. It embraces the slavery of women by Islamic men. It embraces the slavery of black Africans by African Arabs. The only slavery that the UN opposes is the slavery in the US before 1861, which it views as the greatest evil that ever existed. Current day slavery, why, that's all good stuff. The UN loves current day slavery. But those evil white US southerners of nearly 2 centuries ago... well, now we're talking real evil.
Now THAT'S humanitarian relief!!
Some feminazi sold you a line, and you fell for it!
All the money saved could be given to men to buy beer and guns :-).
LOL!! Everyone could get drunk have a big shoot....
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