CHAPTER FIVE. CONSPIRACY AT GLEN COVE.

The profamily coalition left Cairo determined to organize and prepare for the Beijing conference on women, but they were already two years behind their opposition. Two PrepComs for Beijing had already been held, and several drafts of the platform produced. An entire bureaucracy had for many months been directing its energies toward Beijing.

Preparations for the NGO forum included the publication of a regular newsletter. The September 1994 issue reported that women NGOs were already actively lobbying for the inclusion of a gender perspective in U.N. documents. Another article reported on a panel discussion at which Maria Suarez of the Latin American Women's Health Network, in what was described as a "moving" speech, attacked "religious fundamentalism" and demanded that "Beijing should expose them to the world for what they are doing to women" ["NGO Forum on Women '95 Bulletin," (September/October 1994) p. 4].

The bulletin also provided information on an international petition campaign designed to "put Sexuality on the Agenda at the World Conference on Women." Launched by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, the campaign "aimed at mobilizing support for inclusion of sexual orientation in the Platform" [p. 8].

REGIONAL CONFERENCES

The preparations for Beijing included regional conferences held in Vienna, Austria; Mar del Plata, Argentina; Amman, Jordan; Dakar, Senegal; and Jakarta, Indonesia. WEDO literature promoting the conferences claimed that "WEDO will work to ensure full access by grassroots women to national and regional governmental and NGO preparatory meetings" ["WEDO FACT Sheet"].

WEDO's definition of grassroots women appears to be limited, however, to women who agree with them. Profamily women's organizations were neither informed nor invited, and those who did discover the conferences found obstacles in the way of their participation. The regional conference for U.S. women was held in Vienna-hardly convenient.

At the Vienna regional meeting, the conference chairman, Johanna Dohnal, condemned the rise of extreme right-wing political parties. According to Dohnal, these parties were part of a "male-bonding culture" whose message to women was "stay in their homes and take care of the children." A.P. Melkert, minister of Social Affairs and Employment of the Netherlands, called for changing the images of masculinity and femininity. The statement issued by the Vienna Regional Preparatory meeting included several references to the Gender Agenda, in particular the following sections:

Sec. 2(c): Partnership between women and men is the basis for a new gender contract based on equality which would entail a redistribution of the domestic and family care, contribute to economic independence for women, reduce women's double workload and break down existing stereotypes of the roles of women and men.

(d) A new gender contract involves an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all relevant political, economic and social policy fields at central, regional and local levels.

MAR DEL PLATA

The regional conference and NGO forum for Latin America met in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Dorotea Vedoya, Cristina Delgado, and Rita Barros de Sverdlik were among a small group of profamily women who, in spite of various forms of harassment, participated in the associated NGO meetings. These women charged that the organizers of the NGO forum purposefully manipulated the arrangements to exclude the participation of profamily women. The forum received little publicity. The meetings, locations, times, and themes of the workshops were not announced ahead of time. A number of large nonfeminist women's organizations were denied credentials. Those who were able to attend found that their contributions were ignored, and, in spite of assurances to the contrary, their statement of dissent was not included in the report to the secretariat. They did, however, have a chance to observe the gender feminists close up and in action.

During the workshops, speakers insisted that women should liberate themselves from the vocations of wife and mother and from the traditional concepts of marriage and the family. In a workshop on "Myth and Sexuality," the presenter insisted that "the right to choose" extended to other areas of sexual liberty, such as prostitution, and that incest was acceptable unless it involved the use of power by an adult over a child.

The International Association of Lesbians and Homosexuals (Asociación Internaciondl de Lesbianas y Homosexuales) were active participants in the workshops. A member of that organization, Rebeca Seville, in a workshop on "Democracy and Citizenship," insisted that she and her lover had the right to establish a family with all the same rights as other families.

In Mar del Plata the profamily participants also encountered the writings of Marta Llama, a well-known Mexican feminist. Of particular concern were Sra. Llama's comments on gender and her claim that there were more than two sexes. According to Sra. Llama,

Biology shows that, outwardly, human beings can be divided into two sexes; nevertheless, there are more combinations that result from the five physiological areas which, in general and very simple terms, determine what is called the biological sex of a person: genes, hormones, gonads, internal reproductive organs and external reproductive organs (genitals). These areas control the five types of biological processes in a continuum .... A quick but somewhat insufficient classification of these combinations obliges one to recognize at least five biological sexes.

men (persons who have two testicles)

women (persons who have two ovaries)

hermaphrodites or herms (in which there are at the same time one testicle and one ovary)

masculine hermaphrodites or merms (persons who have testicles, but present other feminine sexual characteristics)

feminine hermaphrodites or ferms (person with ovaries, but with masculine sexual characteristics)

This classification functions only if we take into account the internal sexual organs and the "secondary" sexual characteristic as a unity; but if we imagine the multiple possibilities that could result from a combination of the five physiological areas that we already mentioned we see that our dichotomy man/woman, more than a biological reality, is a symbolic and cultural reality. [Marta Llamas, "Cuerpo: Diferencia sexual y genero" from Cristina Delgado "Definiciones estraidas de documentatos usados en Foro Mar del Plata," pp. 2-3, author's translation]

According to Sra. Llama, man/woman, masculine/feminine are merely cultural constructions, and thinking that heterosexuality is the "natural" sexuality is only another "example of a `biologized' social construction."

The tragedy of congenital deformities does not prove there are more than two sexes and certainly doesn't prove that heterosexuality is not natural, any more than the fact that some babies are born blind proves that it isn't natural for human beings to see. Biological sex isn't determined by external organs, but by genetic structure. Every cell of the human body is clearly marked male or female. What is absurd is that a number of feminists found this argument convincing.

The profamily delegates found Sra. Llama's reasoning difficult to follow, but her point was clear: male and female is something people have made up; therefore, homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality:

The non-existence of a feminine or masculine essence allows us to exclude the supposed superiority of one sex over the other and also even to question if there is a "natural" form of human sexuality .... In certain circles psychoanalytical reflection is arriving at a slow acceptance of homosexuality as an equal option to the psychological condition of heterosexuality. In other words, one may say that heterosexuality is the result of a psychic process, or even that it is not "natural." [Marta Llamas, quoted by Delgado, p. 3, author's translation]

Sra. Llama's frequent references to gender and her definition of gender as "the symbolization that each culture establishes over sexual difference" led the profamily participants to believe that "mainstreaming the gender perspective" was a covert means to promote radical feminist ideology and homosexuality. The following statement from the Mar del Plata forum report did nothing to allay those concerns:

Heterosexism attempts to make heterosexuality the norm and so not only maintain inequality between us women ourselves and the violence against lesbians, but also helps maintain inequality between women and men, by prescribing that every woman who would be normal ought to be with a man, even a man who attacks her, violates her and denies her pleasure. [Foro de ONG de America Latina y El Caribe, Mar del Plata, 2024 Setiembre, 1994 Paz: El Derecho a una Vida sin Violencia. (Coordinadora de ONGs de America Latina y El Caribe. Foro de ONG's Beijing '95), p. 5]

Unfortunately, most of this material was available only in

Spanish and only to a limited audience. The Argentineans' strong concerns were not taken seriously even by many profamily delegates. Furthermore, the concern about gender was diminished even among the Spanish-speaking delegates because when the Platform for Action draft was issued, the Spanish version did not translate the word gender as genero, the Spanish equivalent, but sexo [sex].

WOMEN'S GLOBAL STRATEGIES MEETING

In preparation for the Beijing conference, WEDO held a three-day Women's Global Strategies meeting, 30 November to 2 December 1994, in Glen Cove, New York. WEDO was so confident of its control of the process that it distributed a complete report of the meeting and posted a list of the participants on the Internet.

Ten percent of the women participating in the Glen Cove meeting were U.N. employees, including Gertrude Mongella, secretary general of the Beijing conference, and Kristen Timothy, who was in charge of accreditation of NGOs.

Gertrude Mongella, of Tanzania, has a long history of ties with WEDO. She is a member of their International Policy Action Committee, and she appointed WEDO to act as an Expert Advisory Group on three issues: (1) women and environment development; (2) increasing women's participation in decision making; (3) and consensus building [WEDO FACT Sheet]. Kristen Timothy's participation raised a number of questions, since a large number of profamily, prolife groups, some of whom had participated in previous U.N. conferences, were initially denied Non-Government Organization status for the Beijing conference by her office.

Since the purpose of the Glen Cove meeting was to plan a strategy for influencing the outcome of U.N. conferences and to attack policies supported by member nations, the presence of so many paid U.N. employees, even if only as observers, constitutes, at the least, a serious conflict of interest for the U.N. staff. It also lends credence to charges that the U.N. bureaucracy is far more sensitive to the concerns of the feminist NGOs than to protecting the rights and interests of the member nations. Actions like these lend credence to the charges that the U.N. is an unregulated and out-of-control bureaucracy. The report issued by WEDO after the meeting targeted the groups considered obstacles to their agenda:

Monitor and oppose internationalization of antiabortion and other fundamentalist movements .... Counter Holy See and fundamentalist movements' efforts to weaken and reverse gains made in Cairo during preparations for the Social Summit and the 4th World conference on Women .... Counter religious extremists/Fundamentalism and re-claim the moral space/family values/family concerns. ["Women's Global Strategies Report," WEDO, December 1994]

For feminists the term fundamentalists is not restricted to Moslem extremists or Protestants who hold to biblical inerrancy. At a panel discussion conducted by NGOs during the Beijing PrepCom entitled "Counter Attack: Women Stand up to Fundamentalism," speakers labeled Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Moslems, prolifers, anyone who believes in the complementarity of men and women, and those who support motherhood as a special vocation for women, as "fundamentalists."

Under this definition of fundamentalism, the majority of the member states could be classified as "fundamentalist," since their people, laws, constitutions, and customs support "fundamentalist" religion, motherhood, and the right to life. The U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights defends freedom of religion, motherhood, and family. The participation of U.N. staff in a meeting so directly opposed to the interests of so many member states, and to the principles on which the U.N. was founded, brings into question the ability of the U.N. staff to perform ethically and fairly.

Besides U.N. staff and members of various feminist organizations, the participant list included representatives from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Planned Parenthood, CNN, and the Body Shop (a chain of stores selling herbal/natural soaps and personal products).

Diane Faulkner from the U.S. Department of Labor was also listed as a participant. Ms. Faulkner's participation in a meeting whose goals, among other things, included achieving fifty/fifty, male/female quotas for the government and private sector by the year 2005, raises questions, since the Clintonadministration has repeatedly denied accusations that it supports quotas. The Glen Cove report records no opposition to the following targets:

Governments should achieve 50% inclusion of women in elected and appointive office by the year 2005.

Influential economic actors such as private corporations and financial institutions, trade unions, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF should increase the number of women in key positions to 50% by the same time.

This should be achieved by: a) setting numerical and affirmative action goals, including quota systems; and b) establishing mechanisms' to monitor and demonstrate progress toward achieving that goal. [Working Group 6, "Women's Global Strategies Report," p. 2]

The participants in Glen Cove recognized that merely increasing the number of women in elected and appointed offices would not achieve their goals. According to the report, they want assurances that "women leaders elected and appointed to decision-making positions be accountable to the concerns, demands and platform articulated by women around the world through the Beijing process" [Working Group 4, "Women's Global Strategies Meeting," p. 8].

An anecdote from a female graduate student at MIT offers an insight into how feminists work to insure that the right kind of women are placed in key "decision-making" positions. The student, who was considering various career possibilities, attended a talk on women in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she was treated to an insider's view on how feminists use power. The woman from the EPA, obviously believing she was among like-minded women, explained in great detail how she had maneuvered herself into a position of power within the EPA and was now in charge of hiring for her department. She explained that she was careful to review resumes of potential employees and to look for clues of politically correct activities because, as she put it, she wanted to make sure that she didn't just hire "some lucky woman."

Other disturbing programs promoted by Glen Cove included safe abortion "as a basic method of fertility regulation and as an essential part of reproductive health services"; the recognition of "sexual orientation as a fundamental human right within the context of the expanding definition of the family"; and educating men and women toward the transformation of gender roles.

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

If Mongella's attendance at the Women's Global Strategies Meeting constituted a conflict of interest, she showed even worse judgment by appearing in a video created to promote the NGO forum. The video, Breaking Barriers, attacks the world's major religions as antiwomen, strings together half-truths and distortions, rehashes old accusations, and promotes the radical feminist interpretation of history. While defending goddess worship and witches, it reminds the viewer that for women "under Hitler it was children, the kitchen and the Church." Complaints about the mistreatment of women are accompanied by pictures of a cathedral. The following excerpts from the video reveal the antireligious tone:

In ancient Rome and Egypt goddesses were linked to fertility and to the creation of life and thus, worshipped, but nothing has done more to constrict women than religious beliefs and teachings .... Orthodox Jews still thank God in their prayers for not having made them women .... Christianity or, rather, its interpretation has made its own contribution to the subjection of women .... It's the issue of women and witchcraft which St. Augustine labeled "Hell's black river of lust." It's the stubborn position of a Christian parish that prefers to go without priests than allow women into this exclusive male stronghold . . . . John Stuart Mill, who had been actively involved in women's rights in the 19th century, called marriage a school of despotism.

The video did not just malign Christianity. Other religions were also insulted:

In Arab Islamic society, the status of women has been relatively unchanged throughout the centuries. Women have been subordinate to men because the society has always been patriarchal. A man could marry four wives and still keep concubines .... Together with other major religions of the world, Chinese beliefs including Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism have been discriminatory to women.

While the video ends with a commitment to "inclusiveness and full participation of all," nowhere in the video was the proreligion point of view presented. Women who believe that religion has promoted the wellbeing of women were not included among those interviewed.

Although the video was produced by an independent company without U.N. funds, the appearance of Mongella and use of the copyrighted conference logo gave the impression that it was an official U.N. production. The video's creator, Judith Lasch, said that the video had been shown to the U.N. staff and NGOs and that everyone, including Gertrude Mongella, was very pleased with it.

Such attacks on religion are, unfortunately, all too common at the U.N. If the fault line at the U.N. used to be between Communist and democratic regimes, the new fault lines appear to be running between aggressively secularist states and those which support religious values. While the, secularists claim that the religiously orientated states are impeding consensus, in fact, it is the secularists who are determined to enforce their world view in every corner of the world.

An unintended effect of this attack on religion has been the growing cooperation among religious peoples. Finding themselves on the same side in the battle for family, life, and faith, people of different faiths are discovering how much they have in common. Recognition of shared values and increased understanding between religious groups may be one of the most positive results of this series of conferences.