Radical feminism takes a great leap forward in Beijing

The goal of radical feminists to create a new “gender sensitive” world order took a great leap forward at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing on 4-l5 September. The new order envisioned by the feminist extremists who controlled the agenda would be built on the bodies of unborn children, the ruins of the family, and the five gendered beings (male/female/homosexual/bisexual/transexual) who would populate this brave new world free of all moral restraints.

Although some of the more blatant attempts to transform global society into a feminist dreamland were nullified, in the end there emerged from the Conference an action plan that will export radical feminist ideology from its Western strongholds into the still relatively sane and innocent corners of the developing world.

The 150-page Platform for Action, the result of a rigged, undemocratic process that involved bullying, blackmail, and deceit, skillfully wove language proclaiming the desire to protect women and girls from abuse and inequality into an agenda that:

• Advances homosexual rights and abortion rights. The document specifically notes that “various forms of the family exist,” a clear opening to legitimize various aberrant lifestyles. The term “reproductive health,” used extensively and expansively through- out the document, “implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life” with lots of choices about if and when they have children. (96)1 The document proclaims that the “prevention of unwanted pregnancies must always be given the highest priority,” while simultaneously adding that “every attempt” should be made to avoid abortion. (107) (And what of those unwanted pregnancies that weren’t able to be “prevented”?)

• Pro-abortion feminists and lesbians were jubilant over the thinly veiled references of the document. Paragraph 108, for instance, calls for reforms that eliminate discrimination against women exercising their “reproductive rights” and that “eliminate coercive laws and practices” (e.g., laws against abortion).

• Promotes various population control measures, including abortion. As in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, “unsafe abortion” was termed a “grave public health problem” which could be alleviated through “improved access to health care, including family planning.” (98) (Especially family planning!) The document’s many references to “unsafe abortion,” which to the feminists and their allies translates to “illegal abortion,” will promote pressure to make abortion a legalized, universal right.

• Undermines parental rights. The rights of children to have access to sexual information, confidentiality, respect and informed consent are underscored, while the role of parents is minimized. Sex education programs are heavily endorsed, rights of privacy for the child are enshrined, and a “gender sensitive educational system” is to be created. (82) Did the Beijing delegates understand that the right to privacy and confidentiality bestowed upon children meant that they would now have the right to contraception and abortion without regard to parental knowledge, consent, or wishes?

The Conference called for “urgent measures” to ensure universal ratification by the end of 1995 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an insidious document already approved and ratified by 179 states (including the Vatican). The United States and three other countries have signed onto the convention, but have not ratified it; eight other nations, most of them Islamic, have done neither.

The Convention transfers much parental authority to the State and to an international committee of child “experts.”

• Ignores motherhood as a worthwhile, let alone vital, role for women. Motherhood is treated as a burden and liability; something like a disease that keeps women from achieving full equality with men. Much space is devoted to outlining programs designed to get women out of the home and into the workplace and away from their children, One portion of the document even equates exposure to the traditional roles of women with exploitation of them through pornography! It says: “… violent and degrading or pornographic media products are also negatively affecting women and their participation in society. Programming that reinforces women’s traditional roles can be equally limiting.” (236)

• Denigrates religious beliefs. The role of religion in fulfilling moral, ethical and spiritual needs is recognized in the text but the reference is quickly followed by a scurrilous caveat emptor: an ominous warning that any form of religious extremism may have a negative impact on women and could lead to violence and discrimination. (25) If the Beijing feminists are to define the term, then anyone who believes in God and practices his faith is in deep trouble,

• Retains numerous references to “gender,” “gender sensitivity” and “gender balance.” The term “gender,” as wielded by radical feminists, means socially, not biologically, determined traits. Thus, a person may describe himself’ or herself (“itself”???) as a man, woman, bisexual, transsexual, homosexual, lesbian or whatever, regardless of the physical characteristics with which he or she was born.

United Nations hypocrisy

The United Nations, which touted, bankrolled and controlled the Fourth World Conference on Women, appears to have its own formidable “glass ceiling” keeping women from advancing to top positions.

At one press conference in Beijing, U.N. spokeswomen admitted that women make up only 11.8 percent of U.N. officials at the rank of undersecretary general or higher. Moreover, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has handed out to women only seven of 50 top-level appointments in the last three and a half years.

During the conference, the European Union blocked attempts by the Vatican to include “female feticide” among the number of harmful practices which this women’s conference should try to stop. “There is no room for ethics in medicine,” an E.U. spokeswoman declared, “No type of religion or culture should have any influence on medicine, which is purely a service.”2

A litany of abuses

Those delegates who weren’t bought and paid for by the U.N. or by the International Planned Parenthood Federation and similar groups, sometimes found the going rough in Beijing:

• When some delegates, particularly those from the poorer countries of Latin America, spoke up to defend their countries’ pro-family laws and constitutions, their presidents received threatening phone calls from the U.N. staff, implying that these delegates should be silenced or called home.

• Translations were not supplied to the small groups in which the actual document wording was being hammered out.

• Meeting times and places were often changed without informing those delegates out of tune with the feminist agenda. Forced to wander from room to room, they would finally arrive only to learn the meeting was over.

• Wording was sometimes reported back that was the opposite of that which had been approved.

• Translations from English into other languages were distorted to disguise the radical ideology being promoted.

• Delegates were repeatedly stonewalled when they called for the definition of controversial terms like “sexual orientation” and “gender.”

• Rooms and facilities which had been arranged for meetings and press conference of pro-family groups, were suddenly made unavailable.

Implementing the Platform

The implementation of the Conference’s Platform for Action, especially the mainstreaming of a new “gender perspective” into all aspects of social life, will require substantial sums of money. Several nations — Germany, Canada, the Nordic countries, Japan and the United Kingdom — have already made financial commitments and have agreed to include gender considerations into all their national budgetary decisions.

Developing nations have been targeted to turn over 7 percent of their gross national product to advance the feminist agenda. (At the Cairo conference these poor nations were called upon to pay two-thirds of the U. S. $17 billion set to be raised annually for world population control measures. Where is the money to come from?)

The defense budgets of various countries are especially being eyed as likely sources of funds. (350) A formidable war chest might thus be created for changing world society along feminist lines.

The Beijing conference is now history. Its blueprint for action has been carried back to the nations of the world for funding and implementation. People who care about life, family and faith, now face the difficult task of thwarting the radical feminists’ agenda for a new world order.

Derailing The Agenda

What can you do to derail the UN’s agenda?

• Representatives of member countries should be made aware that many aspects of the U.N. agenda are offensive to vast numbers of people who care about life, family, faith and national sovereignty.

• Work to get your country’s funding for the United Nations cut off or cut back. The U.N. currently is in deep financial trouble because a number of countries refuse to pay a variety of U.N. assessments, or pay them slowly. (The United States alone owes the U.N. some $1.43 billion in back assessments for programs in dispute or not favored.) Without substantial new funding the U.N.’s pernicious activities can be brought to a grinding halt.

• Become better informed about the Beijing conference. the upcoming Habitat I1 conference in Istanbul in 1996, and other objectionable U.N. programs and agencies. Many — such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund and even UNICEF — are heavily involved in promoting population control, abortion and other evils throughout the world.

• Expose in your community what the U.N. is doing and planning to do. Write letters to the editor, use Internet forums, utilize radio talk shows to spread the message.

• Invite trustworthy U.N. experts into your community and provide forums for them to discuss the issues at churches, community centers, colleges, etc.

• Subscribe to the bimonthly PRI Review. Send for a population information packet and the UNICEF flyer. Learn about the World Health Organization’s plans to vaccinate third world women against pregnancy.

Vernon Kirby is the Director of Publications at Human Life International and attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Teresa Bell (see page 4) also attended the Conference and is Executive Director of the Canadian branch of Human Life International.