|
I am often asked to explain what I saw in Cairo and Beijing in a sound bite of thirty seconds. At the risk of oversimplification, I reply that I observed that the U.N. is inhabited by people who believe what the world needs is
1) less people
2) more sexual pleasure
3) the elimination of the differences between men and women
4) no full-time mothers.
These people recognize that increasing sexual pleasure could increase the number of babies and mothers. Therefore, their prescription for world salvation is
1) free contraception and legal abortion;
2) promotion of homosexuality (sex without babies);
3) sex education courses to encourage sexual experimentation among children, and to teach them how to get contraception and abortions, that homosexuality is normal, and that men and women are the same;
4) the elimination of parental rights so that parents cannot prevent children from having sex, sex education, contraception or abortions;
5) fifty/fifty, male/female quotas;
6) all women in the workforce;
7) discrediting all religions that oppose this agenda.
This is the "gender perspective," and they want it "mainstreamed" in every program at every level in every country. For those who look at the world from this gender perspective, the Beijing conference was a tremendous success. They have convinced themselves that in Beijing they won a mandate to impose their Gender Agenda on every family in the world.
They are not foolish enough, however, to believe that they can sell this agenda to ordinary people. Therefore, the Gender Agenda is packaged in rhetoric about equality and rights and talk of families, health, and fairness. They talk about improving the lives of women, but it is women who are being attacked-women who want to be at home with their children, women who want to protect their children from sexual exploitation, women who want to work in "traditional" jobs, women who don't want radical feminists and lesbian activists claiming to speak for them, women who believe that God is their loving Father in heaven.
THE FUTURE
I am sometimes asked if I think the Gender Agenda will succeed. It is certainly possible, given its momentum and the power of the Gender Establishment. Universities, educational establishment, government bureaucracies, the media, and big businesses are already falling in line.
The Gender Establishment, no matter how hard they try, however, will not be able to change human nature. Men and women will continue to be different. Women will find ways to mother, but the Gender Agenda, if implemented, would undermine the family and society and increase unwed pregnancy and divorce. The children raised in the ensuing chaos would become dependent on governments whose resources are already strained, emotional and economic debtors draining the accounts built up by their fathers and mortgaging their futures. If the sexual liberation promoted by the Gender Agenda is not checked, sexually transmitted diseases and sexual addictions will spread throughout the world. And, when these things happen, the Gender Establishment would undoubtedly view the havoc their policies caused and see only justification for more funding, more control, and more "gender sensitivity training." But, no matter how much control they have, no utopian sex/ gender classless society will ever appear.
However, there is another possibility. If the Gender Agenda is pushed too far, what may appear is a nasty, brutish backlash against not the excesses of the Gender Agenda, but women's rights and equality. The farther the pendulum swings in one direction, the farther it will swing back in the other. Men may decide they have had enough and start acting like the oppressors the feminists accuse them of being. If a real war between the sexes breaks out, women will be forced to choose between militant feminists and the men in their lives. My bet is most of them will choose the men. In such a war, the casualties may be the real gains women have made in the last hundred years.
This generation of feminists, although they would be loath to acknowledge it, have benefited from the good will of a generation of men raised to respect their mothers and, by extension, all women. Feminism would never have won so easily if men had not been trained to be polite. The next generation of women may not be so fortunate. They may have to face hordes of unmothered, father-deprived men who will be far less sympathetic to women's concerns. Teachers are already remarking on young men's sullen resentment to "gender sensitivity." The violent rap music coming out of the welfare ghettos, which glorifies rape and uses the most vulgar terms to refer to women, reflects a world where fatherlessness is a way of life.
EXPOSURE
What can be done to stop the Gender Agenda? The first step is obviously exposure. Gender feminists have left a paper trail, and they must be made to eat their words. Gender feminists who hide behind family language need to be exposed. A perfect example of this kind of deception is Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village, which is full of wonderful, apparently profamily wisdom. Underneath, however, one finds the gender feminist ideology. The book should be titled It Takes a Federal Bureaucracy because the village Mrs. Clinton envisions isn't a closeknit community where neighbors share common values and support one another, but a place where families are dependent on government programs.
Mrs. Clinton may pay lip service to stay-at-home moms, but she pushes "government subsidized day care." And, underneath the homey little stories, there is a pure gender feminist, who writes: "It may be that women will achieve economic and social parity with men only when mothers and fathers fully share responsibility for rearing their children and other household tasks" [Hillary Clinton, It Takes a Village (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 212].
Gender feminists cannot be allowed to pretend to be for the family and motherhood, while at the same time they tear down everything that supports the woman in her home.
The more that ordinary people know about the gender perspective, the less they like it. But, it is not enough to condemn their seven-point planto rail against sex education, abortion, and homosexuality-or to promote motherhood and family. If one accepts their diagnosis of the problem, then their solutions can appear plausible.
The opponents of the Gender Agenda must attack their diagnosis:
1) The population explosion is about to become a birth dearth. Honest demographers know that failing birth rates, particularly in developed countries, and increased longevity are about to create an economic disaster of monumental proportions, as an aging and infirm population is forced to rely on a shrinking group of workers. History shows rather conclusively that in underdeveloped countries, economic development is triggered and supported by dramatic population increases. Falling population triggers economic collapse.
2) The people promoting sexual pleasure do not understand what sex is all about. They are promoting an infantile, immature, self-centered pleasure-seeking that can never fulfill the longings of the human heart. In the same issue of Gloria Steinem's Ms. magazine that carried a glowing report on the Beijing conference, there was an article entitled "Sexual Pleasure Unscripted," which quoted, among others, Debra Haffner of SIECUS. Without going into the graphic details, the point of the article was that feminism has freed women sexually so that intercourse is no longer as important, and masturbation is viewed as "a natural, completely rewarding route to sexual pleasure."
In Gender Agenda's view of sexuality, there is nothing wrong with bisexual transsexual Kate Bornestein promoting a world of polymorphous perversity. This is not liberation, but sickness. Kate Bornestein isn't a hero of the revolution but a tragic figure-a man who had his genitals amputated and dresses up like a woman and then says he's a lesbian. These people need therapy, not followers.
The supposedly sexually liberated become addicted to sterile sensations, always seeking ways to increase the thrill because what they do can never satisfy the human person who has been made for the private pleasures of a faithful marriage and the joys of children.
What is most reprehensible about the sexual liberationists is that they are targeting children, hoping to addict the innocent to solitary sexual activities and exposing them to sexual predators and dangerous behaviors. We have turned our children over to sex molesters and exhibitionists masquerading as sex educators. What is needed is a sexual counter-revolution, not to diminish the pleasures of human love, but to free people from self-destructive, addictive behaviors.
3) Men and women are different. Trying to teach children they are not will not work, as the following article, written by an eighth-grade student demonstrates. Ricky Beyer's class was sent to a "Gender Conference," where, according to Ricky, "the conference leaders were trying to indoctrinate the students," telling them that "each and every human was equally male and female."
|
Our neuterist indoctrinator further opened our minds to the fact that "males" and "females," as society names them, are the same. We were told that individuals have no morals, ideas, instincts, or minds of their own be yond what is implanted there by society. When we argued that "men" and "women" had different instincts beyond what society implanted in them, we were treated with incredulity, and the neuterist indoctrinator did not even deign to answer our argument. Ignoring us, he instead called on a "girl" who said, "This is the 90's. Human's don't have instincts!" [Ricky Beyer, "Indoctrination: Gender Rules" The Blue and the Gray (Baltimore MD: Gilman School) February 1995, p. 1]
|
|
Adults should not lie to children. Statistical equality is not a noble goal, but a totalitarian scheme to shift power, not to ordinary women, but the feminist elite who would become the tyrants of the new world order.
4) Women have a right to mother-women have in a special way been entrusted with the human person. No woman should be forced, pressured, coerced or in any way deprived of her right to have children and to care for her own children.
Celebrating women's motherhood in no way diminishes the many other activities and pursuits of women, nor does it slight the accomplishments of women who are not biological mothers, but denying women's right to mother diminishes every woman.
I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to be at home with my children while they were growing up. I have seen the pain in the faces of young women who are forced to work and leave their babies with others, and I have seen the economic sacrifices that other women have made to be at home with their children. If wisdom is knowing the difference between what must be accepted and what can be changed, then the wisdom for today must be that the present situation does not have to be accepted. Every woman should have the right to decide for herself if she wants to make motherhood her primary vocation and to have the opportunity to care for her children for as long as she thinks is necessary-not as long as an employer or the government gives her leave.
It will take more than exposure and brilliant arguments. If this is a culture war, then it must be fought with culture as well as arguments. The warriors should be writing stories, singing songs, and creating images that communicate the truth about the human person.
And, it will take calculated rudeness. The feminists have relied on the politeness of men. They have demanded that dangerous nonsense and utter stupidity be treated with respect. The Gender Agenda cannot be defeated until people are willing to stand up and say, "No more inclusive language, no more politically correct speech." We must refuse to say "gender" when we mean "sex." Those who are offended by reality and human nature will just have to live with it.
Women around the world have been standing up and saying loud and clear, "These feminists don't speak for us." Local, national, and international groups of grassroots women have organized to fight various aspects of the Gender Agenda. I met many of these women in Beijing and know that each one of them represented thousands more at home.
The Gender Agenda reminds me of a giant balloon in a small room. So long as everyone treats the balloon with respect, it continues to expand, and, eventually, it will suffocate the people in the room. But, all that is needed to stop the balloon is one sharp pin. This book is intended to be that pin.
|
|