This past week Ellen Sauerbrey, US representative to the UN Commission
on the Status of Women, went to Washington, hoping to shore up support
for the State Department's pro-feminist agenda. But her plan backfired.
Sauerbrey's speech,
"Freeing
Women from Exploitation and Despair,"
presented this last Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation, was flawed in
its framework, biased in its presentation, and dangerous in its social
implications. Let me explain.
Marxism divides society into two groups: haves and have-nots, with the
interests of the groups pitted in primordial conflict. Traditional
Marxism views economic class as the heart of the problem. In contrast,
neo-Marxism -- under the guise of gender feminism -- places sex at the
crux of its analysis. And neo-Marxism is the framework that
representative Ms. Sauerbrey operates from.
I have lived and traveled in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe. I
have visited some of the most remote and poverty-stricken corners of our
planet. And this conclusion is clear: tragedy is not a gendered
phenomenon.
Let's start with Sauerbrey's first claim, that the right to be safe
represents "the most fundamental human right to which every woman is
entitled." If that's true, then I'm sure Sauerbrey would agree that
safety is the most fundamental right of men, as well.
According to the WHO World Report on Violence and Health, violence
accounts for 14%
of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females.
Does that 2:1 sex imbalance warrant consideration and concern?
Sauerbrey also deplores the plight of refugees, singling out "the rape
of displaced women in Darfur" for particular concern. But if Sauerbrey
had read a little further in the UN Human Rights Commission report, she
would
have learned that the attackers also "indiscriminately attacked
those who had not fled...with a particular emphasis on men and boys."
What moral code says we should deplore the rape of women and ignore the
killings of men?
When Sauerbrey turns to the topic of healthcare, her remarks verge on
the hallucinogenic.
Sauerbrey laments the notion that "Women's health receives too little
attention in the developing world." What she fails to mention is that in
almost every country around world, men lead shorter lives than women.
This lifespan disparity is especially pronounced in Eastern Europe. In
Russia, for example, women live more than 13 years longer than men.
Excess male suicide is another troubling indicator. "The rate of suicide
is almost universally higher among men compared to women by an aggregate
ratio of 3.5 to 1,"
according
to the World Health Organization.
Despite these facts, all the gender-specific programs of the WHO
focus
on women and neglect men.
Then representative Sauerbrey turns to the problem of domestic violence.
"In a sample survey of over 300 women in Santiago and in Managua,
reports of domestic violence reached 40% and 52%," she notes.
But the bias of that statement is self-evident - why weren't men
included in the survey? According to published research on international
trends of domestic violence, women are
just
as likely to physically
assault their partners as men.
The concerns with Ellen Sauerbrey's speech go beyond the matter of
balance and intellectual honesty.
Because once we agree that women as a class are victims, that points to
men as the perpetrators. And once again Sauerbrey falls prey to the
feminist analysis, implying that all the woes of women can be blamed on
men.
The scapegoating of large groups of people carries an ugly historical
legacy. The
lynchings
of Afro-American men on trumped up charges of
"violating" white women's physical integrity comes to mind.
Traditionally, men have been viewed as the defenders and protectors of
women. But once you start to suggest that men are a menace to women,
then you are undermining the basis of the traditional family. Before
long the social order begins to come unglued, and all manner of state
invention into citizens' private lives becomes justified.
Indeed, Sauerbrey openly discounts the role of men as fathers with this
comment: "When you educate a man you educate an individual; when you
educate a woman you educate a whole family."
If this tirade had appeared in Ms. Magazine, it would be bad enough. But
Sauerbrey's remarks represent the official US stance at the United
Nations.
If there is an object lesson in Ellen Sauerbrey's well-intentioned but
misguided speech, it is this: We should ponder the seductive appeal of
radical feminism, a divisive ideology that plays on powerful
psychological instincts that lurk within all of us.
