CHAPTER SIX. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BELLA.

PREPCOM FOR BEIJING

While the media focuses on the conference, the PrepCom is where the real work is done. Ideally, the U.N. staff would like to see all the controversial problems solved before the cameras are turned on. Then, the conference would simply be a coronation of their latest plan to save humanity from the disaster currently under discussion.

When the PrepCom for Beijing convened in March of 1995, the draft Platform for Action had already undergone numerous alterations. The delegates were supposed to have received copies of the newest version of the platform on 1 February, but the unofficial text was not made available until 17 February. On 27 February, sixteen days before the PrepCom was scheduled to begin, the participants received the official 70 page, 246 paragraph text. Those who had tried to prepare ahead of time by studying the previous drafts found that their work had been in vain. This text had been radically altered and completely renumbered.

Profamily government representatives and NGOs sifted through pages and pages of repetitive language and pious platitudes looking for anything that might endanger family values. They found many areas of concern. Even after the PrepCom began, they were still uncovering potential landmines in the text. Of even more concern was what was not there. The draft platform ignored the needs of women who work at home and had nothing positive to say about marriage, family life, motherhood, parental rights, or religion. The text's sheer size, however, forced profamily NGOs to focus their lobbying efforts on the most offensive sections. To further complicate the process, the translations into Spanish and French concealed the antifamily agenda. Since English is the official text, profamily delegates from Latin America and French-speaking Africa were at a disadvantage. Also, many of the delegates were unfamiliar with the ideological implications of the English words. NonEnglish speakers relied on dictionaries, which rarely, if ever, carried the new definitions invented by postmodernist deconstructionist feminists. Honduran representative Marta Lorena Casco worried about a "hidden agenda" and accused U.N. insiders of using "manipulated euphemisms to draft a text for which they had the only dictionary."

Many of the delegates and NGOs arrived in New York exhausted. They had spent January in New York at the PrepCom for the Social Summit, February in Copenhagen at the Social Summit, and were now back in New York for the Beijing PrepCom. Some had flown directly from Copenhagen to New York without returning home for a break. They had no time to study the text and little opportunity to strategize with likeminded delegates.

WEDO and its allies came fully prepared and ready to oppose all profamily amendments and push for their agenda. The profamily coalition, which had formed in Cairo, had made a good showing at the PrepCom for the Social Summit in Copenhagen. Through their intervention, the language on family had been strengthened

While only a few profamily groups had the resources to send representatives for the entire meeting, which dragged on for almost four weeks, a number came for shorter periods of time. More people had intended to come, but, at the last minute, a large number of profamily groups who had applied for NGO status were inexplicably denied accreditation. The U.N. issued a statement saying that because of the large number of national applications, only groups whose activities were relevant to the conference were accepted. This made no sense, as three of the largest, most relevant, and national groups-Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, and Catholic Campaign-were denied and Catholics for a Free Choice, a nonmembership organization with fourteen employees, funded by rich foundations was approved for NGO status. The battle over accreditation continued until August.

CATHOLICS FOR A FREE CHOICE

The PrepCom began with a shock. To the surprise of everyone, on the first day, Sheri Ricket, of the Vatican delegation challenged the accreditation of Catholics for a Free Choice and its Latin American affiliates on the grounds that CFFC is not a Catholic organization. CFFC president Frances Kissling was outraged.

At the Cairo conference, Kissling had been omnipresent, using every opportunity to criticize the Catholic church. She spearheaded a petition drive to have the Holy See's permanent observer status at the U.N. revoked. The Vatican dismissed the petition as a propaganda ploy, but they were concerned about CFFC's distortions of Catholic teaching in Latin America. During the PrepCom, Kissling distributed a paper entitled "Equal is as Equal Does," which she coauthored with Mary Hunt, of WATER (Women' Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual) for Women-Church Convergence. The Kissling/Hunt paper called for "a feminist anthropology" based "on the radical equality of women and men," where "community, rather than family is the `programmatic focus.'" Hunt will be remembered for her participation in the radical feminist Re-Imaging Conference, in Minneapolis in 1993, where she proposed substituting friendship as a metaphor for family:

Imagine sex among friends as the norm. Imagine valuing genital interaction in terms of whether and how it fosters friendship and pleasure .... Pleasure is our birthright of which we have been robbed in religious patriarchy .... I picture friends, not families, basking in the pleasure we deserve because our bodies are holy. [Re-Imaging Conference, quoted in HLI Reports (January 1995), p. 6]

Since family relationships-God as Father, Jesus as Sonare at the very center of the Christian faith, replacing family with friendship isn't just a change of metaphor. Hunt's views on sexuality put her outside Christian tradition. Feminists are, of course, free to leave established faiths, but they are not free to demand that revealed doctrines be changed to fit their behavior.

Kissling countered the Vatican charges by arguing that CFFC had never claimed to be representatives of the Catholic church. But, there was substantial evidence that CFFC had tried to give the impression that they were providing "Catholic" advice. A CFFC pamphlet offered "abortion facts from Catholic teaching to Catholic attitudes and practices. Meditations for before and after abortion respond to women's spiritual needs." Another CFFC pamphlet is entitled "Reflections of a Catholic theologian on visiting an abortion clinic." A third, "A Guide to Making Ethical Choices," which answers such questions as "Is abortion murder? How do I make a decision?" was written by Marjorie Reiley Maguire and Dr. Daniel Maguire.

Marjorie Maguire has since repudiated CFFC. In a letter to the editor of the National Catholic Reporter she supported the Vatican's charge that CFFC was not a Catholic organization, pointing out that while its members may have been baptized Catholic, they neither attend Catholic services nor believe in even the most basic Catholic teachings [Marjorie Reiley Maguire, Letter to Editor, National Catholic Reporter (21 April 1995)].

In order to save its accreditation as an NGO, CFFC issued a press release which said, "Our name does not imply that our organizations are `official' Catholic organizations and we have never made such a claim. We are an organization of Catholic people, not the church." A letter was sent to the U.N. stating the same. This statement was precisely what the Vatican wanted.

Their goal was not to prevent CFFC from participating in Beijing, but to force CFFC to admit it was not a Catholic organization.

TIBETAN WOMEN

The Chinese delegation blocked accreditation of NGOs representing Tibetan exiles. Kissling tried to identify her situation with that faced by the Tibetan women by inviting them to join her press conference. There was, however, no comparison. The Vatican's request that apostates not masquerade as true believers can hardly be compared to the cultural and physical genocide Tibetan women have suffered under Chinese domination.

The Chinese have instituted a draconian population program in Tibet, even though Tibet has never had a population problem. Tibetans area deeply religious people, and, before the Communist Chinese invasion, a substantial portion of the population entered celibate monastic life. As part of the program to solidify their control of Tibet, however, the Chinese have forced Tibetan women to undergo abortions and sterilization, imprisoned and raped Buddhist nuns, closed monasteries, and interfered with religious freedom. Tibetan women in exile came to the PrepCom to draw attention to these abuses. The Tibetans presented massive evidence of the denial of religious freedom in Tibet, including this account of the torture of a Buddhist nun:

I was stripped naked and made to lie face down on a cold concrete floor. They beat me with a rope and stick and with an electric prod. They beat me as I lay fully stretched out on the floor. I thought at that time I was about to die. The picture of Guru Rinpoche appeared before my eyes and then I fainted. In order to make me come to, they threw cold water on me. They were very insulting. They squeezed my breasts saying that there was much milk in them; that I was no nun, that I had had at least two children already. They said that I was having sexual relations with the monks and that is why we were demonstrating together. I said that I was a nun. They pushed a stick in my vagina again and again hurting me so much that for three days I could not urinate. One of the guards pushed an electric cattle prod into my anus and left it there. It was like a pain came into my heart that was unbearable. I fell unconscious. [International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, "Denial of Tibetan Women's Rights to Freedom of Religious Belief and Expression" (San Francisco, CA, 10 March 1995), p. 7]

The press release handed out at the press conference also contained personal accounts of how women had been forced to have abortions, or like Lh, who fled Tibet, forcibly sterilized:

When the Chinese officials came to my house after the birth of the third child, they told me I would not get a ration card for the third child and that I had to pay a fine. They informed me that I had been put on a list of women who would soon be sterilized. Again, I did not protest. I knew it would be useless to try to negotiate with them. Many of my friends were in the same position and were either sterilized or aborted. We simply had no choice. [International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet, "Denial of Tibetan Women's Right to Reproductive Freedom" (San Francisco, CA, 1 March 1995), p.10]

The press release also included an eyewitness report of the work of Chinese mobile birth control teams in Tibetan villages in 1987:

The villagers were informed that all women had to report to the tent for abortions and sterilizations or there would be grave consequences. For the women who went peacefully to the tents and did not resist, medical care was given. The women who refused to go were taken by force, operated on, and given no medical care. Women nine months pregnant had their babies taken out .... We saw many girls crying, heard their screams as they waited for their turn to go into the tent, and saw the growing pile of fetuses build outside the tent, which smelled horrible. During the two weeks of this mobilization, all pregnant women were given abortions, followed by sterilization, and every woman of childbearing age was sterilized. [p. 9]

The Tibetans who came to New York to plead for international intervention were unaware that they were being used by their feminist supporters to promote "reproductive rights." The press release which denounced the terrible abuses of Tibetan women included the following recommendation:

That Tibetan women be provided with access to health care facilities to ensure availability of safe and effective birth control methods, safe abortions and sterilizations, should Tibetan women choose such options. (p. 14)

A woman from the National Institute of Womanhood (NIW) took one of the Tibetans aside and asked how her group as Buddhists could support abortion. The Tibetan was shocked. She had not been aware that proahortion language had been included in the press release and had no idea that in the West, "reproductive rights" meant the right to abortion. She had thought that it meant the right to have a baby. The Tibetan cause was ignored by the national delegates.

THE COALITION FOR WOMEN AND THE FAMILY

The profamily participants at the PrepCom for Beijing renewed friendships made in Cairo and organized themselves as the Coalition for Women and the Family. First-timers were introduced to the U.N. system. The coalition ran their lobbying effort from the leather benches just outside the room where the negotiations were going on.

The location allowed access to electric outlets into which coalition members plugged in their portable computers and printers. This allowed the coalition to respond quickly as the debate unfolded. They monitored the debate, and, when an issue arose, one person would write a flyer. Someone else would proofread it. Others would check it to be sure that there was nothing in it that could be misinterpreted. Someone would check with friendly delegates, if any could be found, to obtain their reaction. The flyer would be translated into Spanish and French, and another version written, making similar points for Moslem delegates, and then runners would go off to find a copy machine where the versions would be printed on brightly colored paper. The use of colored paper allowed those handing out the flyers to tell at a glance whether or not a person had received a particular flyer. At times, one could look down from the gallery and tell by the colors that almost the entire body was reading the latest flyer.

The coalition had no formal organization or funding. Everything was strictly ad hoc. It worked because of the dedication and expertise of the members. Some, like Jean Head of International Right to Life, had years of experience at the U.N. Jean worked nights as a nurse so she could lobby during the day. For Brenda Alexander, a black minister's wife from Memphis, it was her first experience in international politics.

The technique was so successful that the U.N. staff was continually finding rules in a rulebook, which no one ever saw, to restrict the distribution of flyers and otherwise limit the activities of the coalition. The Coalition for Women and the Family adapted quickly to the changing rules, however, much to the consternation of the WEDO crowd, who complained loudly during their caucuses about the "fundamentalists" who were trying to sabotage the PrepCom. While coalition members were frequently barred from the floor during the formal sessions, Bella Abzug sat in the seat of an absent delegate. She received preferential treatment and still complained that the NGOs didn't have enough power.

WEDO members accused the coalition of wanting to keep women at home and subordinate to men, which was absurd, since coalition women were at the U.N. working with men without any struggle or quotas, domination, or subordination. The women in the coalition considered themselves living proof that the profamily movement supported the participation of women in politics. As single and married women, working women and full-time mothers, they believed they represented the real aspirations of women.

At one point, several members of the lesbian caucus tried to muscle the coalition off the benches where they normally met by sitting on their coats and papers and obviously trying to overhear their conversations. Olivia Gans of American Victims of Abortion tried to make friends with them and engage them in meaningful conversation. Eventually they went away.

The PrepCom was contentious from the beginning. At one point, a single paragraph of text had generated thirty-two pages of amendments. The representatives disagreed about abortion, parental rights, debt, migration, the universality of human rights, unrenumerated labor, prostitution, whether the discrimination against women began at birth or before, and a host of other issues.

GENDER PERSPECTIVE

For the Coalition for Women and the Family, the immediate threat was the language on sexual and reproductive rights and health and parental rights. A few were concerned about the repeated use of the word gender in the draft and references to "mainstreaming the gender perspective," "gender analysis," "gender aspects," "gender concept," "gender sensitivity," and "gender roles." Most of the profamily delegates and NGOs, however, assumed that gender was just a polite substitute for sex.

The concern about gender was sufficient, however, for the coalition to prepare the following flyer to draw attention to the question, which read in part:

What is Gender Perspective?

Gender perspective may be a strange term for some delegates. It does not mean "commitment to women's rights" or opposition to "discrimination on the basis of sex." It means seeing everything as a power struggle between men and women. Each problem is analyzed in terms of how the differences between men and women are the cause of the problem.

The problems are, of course, real and serious. Individual men are often guilty of great injustice to women, but the gender perspective sees all men as guilty and benefiting from the "power" inequalities. Statistical differences between men and women are seen as proof of a male plot against women. All the suffering of women is somehow the fault of men.

DELETE THE ANTI-MALE LANGUAGE

WHAT IS NEEDED IS THE WOMEN'S PERSPECTIVE

Coalition for Women & the Family

While the gender issue was not a priority among profamily delegates, the supporters of the "gender perspective" were incensed that anyone would challenge the gender perspective.

In response to questions about the definition ofgender, the conference leadership floated the following definition: "Gender refers to the relationships between women and men based on socially defined roles that are assigned to one sex or the other."

Rather than solving the problem, this definition only served to create more confusion. The delegate from Malta expressed reservations about the proposed definition. As a lawyer, he failed to see how laws could be written about relationships based on socially defined roles. Laws, he insisted, must refer to male and female human beings. Several delegates began bracketing gender each time it appeared in the text.

BELLA'S SPEECH

The reaction to the suggestion that gender be bracketed was swift and belligerent. It revealed that those who were concerned about the ideological implications of the word gender had, in fact, underestimated the importance of this term. On 3 April, Bella Abzug was given a special opportunity to address the delegates. In an angry speech, she condemned attempts to bracket the word gender until a definition could be agreed upon: "We will not be forced back into the `biology is destiny concept that seeks to define, confine and reduce women to their physical sexual characteristics."

The delegates to the PrepCom were shocked by the accusation that defining gender as a synonym for sex was an attempt to confine or reduce women to their physical sexual characteristics. Bella insisted the "feminist" definition of gender was universally understood and accepted, which was certainly not the case:

The concept of gender is embedded in contemporary social, political and legal discourse. It has been integrated into the contemporary social, political, and legal discourse .... The meaning of the word gender has evolved as differentiated from the word sex to express the reality that women's and men's roles and status are socially constructed and subject to change.

Bella acted as though the delegates were totally aware of the contemporary discourse about "sex" and "gender." In fact, most of the delegates had been, until this moment, blissfully ignorant of the ideological trajectory of feminist thought. According to Bella, "The infusion of the gender perspectives into all aspects of UN activities is a major commitment approved at past conferences and it must be reaffirmed and strengthened at the Fourth World Conference on Women."

The delegates, many of whom had attended previous U.N. conferences, began to scan U.N. documents for evidence that they had approved a definition of gender as socially constructed roles that can be changed. They found that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights had referred to sex, not gender. The 1985 Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies used the word sex and spoke about "women's perspectives." The 1993 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women used the word gender several times, but there was no hint of a new definition. Nor had the participants at Cairo been aware of any new definition.

In her speech, Ms. Abzug insisted that her definition of gender was nonnegotiable:

The current attempt by several Member States to expunge the word gender from the Platform for Action and to replace it with the word sex is an insulting and demeaning attempt to reverse the gains made by women, to intimidate us, and to block further progress. We urge the small number of male and female delegates seeking to sidetrack and sabotage the empowerment of women to cease this diversionary tactic. They will not succeed. They will only waste precious time. We will not go back to subordinate inferior roles.

The delegates were not interested in pushing women back into "subordinate inferior roles." Everyone was committed to promotion of the equality and rights of women. They only wanted to understand what the word gender meant before they approved a text where the word appeared over two hundred times.