"We are all connected!"
The new motto for the women's movement sounds so good. Picturing a circle of dancing women, the poster at the entrance to the auditorium at San Francisco's Fort Mason served two purposes. It introduced a new art exhibit which showed "women of all nations, celebrating the strengths, diversity and shared experiences of all women." It also set the stage for the June 4th portion of a three-months celebration of the UN Charter's 50th anniversary, "Women and the United Nations: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow."
It didn't take long to see that the "shared experiences of all women" was pain and injustice. Pictures of sad, angry, contorted, and naked women lined the long bayfront hallway leading to the auditorium. Matching the conference theme, an oversized collage featured a nude woman (or goddess) with hands reaching out to a turbulent, hurting world. Dark faces crying out in agony surrounded her long surrealistic yellow body.
Only a few pictures offered hope. A pastel-colored nude seemed to symbolize the UN's solution to pain: a worldwide change in consciousness causing humanity to see itself as one united people, speaking with one voice, and "thinking in common... so that the experience of the mass is behind the simple voice."
If the UN has its way, that simple, collective voice would be conformed to its political persuasion. That persuasion colored all the promotional literature and gifts offered at the entrance to the auditorium: the campaign buttons that called for "Choice" and the "ERA"; and the books and pamphlets promoting Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the American Association of University Women.
I picked up a book titled Choices and scanned the pages. Published by the Angry Isis Press, it was full of caustic cartoons mocking pastors, Christian parents, the Bible, and pro-life activists. Many drawings looked familiar. They were drawn by the creators of syndicated series such as Cathy, Feiffer, Sylvia, and Doonesbury. Apparently, these artists agreed that extra-marital sex with freedom from consequences is a woman's right. Any moral or legal deterrent makes her victim of a patriarchal culture ruled by men "trying to control women's bodies."[1]
"All these cartoonists manage to say in one drawing what many can't accomplish in a hundred pages of rhetoric," wrote Congresswoman Pat Schroeder in the introduction.
Pondering the power of art to change culture and social consciousness, I looked up. There, on clotheslines strung across the room, hung dozens of multi-colored T-shirts sporting the angry slogans of victimized women. "In the name of Sisterhood", said one, promoting feminist solidarity. "I am a worrior[2] Woman", said another.
It was not a happy place. Nor did it welcome men. My husband came as far as the entrance, but sensing the feminist hostility, he chose to leave. "I hoped he would go somewhere else and let you come in alone," said the women who sold me the $10 ticket.
The main coordinating group for the meeting was the Women's Intercultural Network (WIN), a non-profit organization "that links women across cultures globally". A formal welcome from its president, Marilyn Fowler, was written in the souvenir program. "We have come together," she began, "to...
Waiting for the meeting to start, I read the program. "This conference would not have been possible," it explained, "without the commitment... and energy of the following, [U.S.] Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Honorary Chairs." It listed the women selected to be honored. The first was Rigoberta Menchu, the Quiche Indian from Guatemala who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 "for defending the rights of her people." I remembered reading about her in Dinesh D'Souza's excellent expose of politically correct intolerance, Illiberal Education. It explained her usefulness to the global, anti-Western movement:
... impossible to miss, is the development of Rigoberta's
political consciousness.... She becomes first a feminist,
then a socialist, then a Marxist. By the end of the book
Rigoberta is attending Popular Front conferences in
Paris, discoursing on "bourgeois youths" and "Molotov
cocktails..
Rigoberta speaks for all the Indians of the American continent....
Yet Burgos-Debray [who writes for the illiterate Rigoberta] met
Rigoberta in Paris where presumably very few of the third World's
poor travel. Nor does Rigoberta's socialist and Marxist vocabulary
sound typical of a Guatemalan peasant.
If Rigoberta Menchu does not represent the actual peasants of Latin America, whom does she represent? The answer is that she embodies a projection of Marxist and feminist views onto South American Indian culture... Thus she is really a mouthpiece for a sophisticated left-wing critique of Western society.... Her usefulness [to Stanford University's multicultural emphasis] is that Rigoberta provides a model with whom American minority and female students can identify; they too are oppressed after all.
But Rigoberta is no ordinary victim.... [She] is a "person of color", and thus a victim of racism. She is a woman, and thus a victim of sexism. She lives in South America, which is a victim of European and North American colonialism. If this were not bad enough, she is an Indian, victimized by Latino culture within Latin America. Rigoberta's claim to eminence is that, as a consummate victim, she is completely identified with the main currents of history. She is a modern San Sebastian, pierced by the arrows of North American white male cruelty; thus her life story becomes an explicit indictment of the historical role of the West and Western institutions.[3]
This dubious model for global feminism shows the heart of UN activism. So does the Department of Women's Studies at Mills, a liberal all-women college, listed among the co-sponsors of the conference. Not long ago I had called their chapel to learn about spiritual events offered on campus. That particular day, the weekly chapel service was titled, "Ritual Invoking Isis" (the mythical Egyptian goddess).
The "major sponsor" of the conference was Apple Computer, but the list of sponsors also included NOW, the League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, and twenty-one other local, national, and international organizations. One of the more obscure sponsors, The Conscious Business Group, was represented on the conference planning committee. Its purpose is "creating and implementing new paradigms[4] for transacting business that expand consciousness with a common vision around spiritual, social, economic and environmental issues.
The meeting began about half an hour behind schedule. WIN president Marilyn Fowler introduced the panel of speakers -- all veterans of UN-type activism and/or women's issues. They included....
Rebecca Bender, a representative from Apple [Computer] Pacific Business Development who manages Apple's support for the upcoming UN Conference on Women in Beijing. She gave an update on the fall conference and described the transformation taking place within the UN administration as it shifts from using obsolete index cards to computerized registration.
"Apple has provided the hardware and software needed to register all participants and to equip all Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) offices," she explained. Since the Apple computer allows users to work in 35 different languages, it will help handle the daily correspondence. This technology can empower speakers, delegates, alternatives, NGO participants, and any other women. It helps synthesize the world's information and makes it available to everyone.
"Corporate leaders at Apple are taking responsibility for helping equip peoples with computers in the global as well as national arena," Ms Bender continued. Since the UN's global conferences always involve two meetings, Apple stands ready to serve both:
1. The official conference, which will number about eight to ten thousand leaders and delegates from around the world. The delegates will "formalize the working of the drafts."
2. NGOs - non-governmental, grassroots, non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and CARE) that have a stake in women's issues. Apparently the organizers originally planned for 20,000 to 30,000 participants at the NGO meeting, but by early June, 35,000 had registered. The latest expectation is for 40,000, including about 5000 members of the worldwide press.
Dr. Jane Jaquette, professor of Politics and Chair of the Department of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College, earned her Ph.D. in Government from Cornell. A social science analyst in the Women in Development Office at the US Agency for International Development in Washington, DC, she helped plan the UN Decade of Women. She now serves on the Boards of the U.S. council for the UN Institute for Training and research for the Advancement of Women and the US Committee for the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
Asked to tell the "good news" about the UN, she listed UNIFEM, the CSN (Committee on the Status of Women), and the coming Beijing conference, which has helped focus people around the world on women's issues. The UN had already entered the battle for women's legal rights as part of the Western egalitarian agenda. That was not enough. Now it's time to focus on the broader issues: How to improve literacy and other essential rights for women.
She did not mention any bad news, such as the recent report that UNIFEM's "creative book-keeping led to various 'mis-statements' in budget reports and $9.4 million deficit.[5]
Lelia Hall-Smith, Chief of Staff for the Public Policy Group in New York at Planned Parenthood Affiliates, (PPFA) who initiated and directed PPFA strategies to counter the activities of anti-choice organizations and individuals since 1989. She has edited and published several articles on reproductive rights, women's advocacy and public affairs.
The program ended with a celebratory African dance and drums and the introduction of three women to be honored ("Women Honoring Women"). Among those present were Sharon Tennison, Founder and President of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, who began "working in the former USSR in 1982 as a "Citizen Diplomat" and is considered a pioneer in the field of Soviet-American relations." She has "designed and implemented several programs for women that empower them to take responsibility for societal change and to develop a private business sector, including environmental and agricultural programs...."
Before leaving San Francisco, we stopped at a multimedia UN-50 exhibition. "Visitors will experience our global community and the vital role of the UN," promised a publicity brochure. Again Apple Computers starred in the show. All around the carpeted showroom hung its familiar computer screens -- large and small -- ready to beam out the UN's promotional information and politically correct statistics at the push of a button. Several of the non-stop videos kept repeating the Preamble to the UN Charter in the world's diverse voices. Since the sounds were not synchronized, its segments seemed to blur together:
We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war...
....to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights..
...in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small....
...to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another...
...to maintain international peace...
A video feature called "Earth Clock" listed the world's eco-horrors, then gave a short sermon outlining the new global "truths" or absolutes designed to unite all people and save the planet. Ponder these highlights:
"All men will hate you because of me," said Jesus, speaking of a time when the counterfeit dream of global oneness would near its dreadful end, "but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Mark 13:13) Neither the UN nor the women's movement will deliver what their leaders promise. But God will! So follow Him.
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)
1 Trina Robbins, Choices: A Pro-Choice Benefit Comic (San Francisco: Angry Isis Press, 1990), 20.
2 The misspelling may be intentional.
3 Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal Education (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 71-72.
4 New world views; new mental framework for perceiving and explaining reality; new social patterns; totally new ways of thinking, believing and perceiving spiritual and physical realities.
5 "U.N. Fund for Women flat broke on the eve of Beijing," IPS, May 23, 1995.
Berit Kjos/Women and UN