On Tue, 4 Nov 1997 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In a message dated 97-11-04 00:21:15 EST,[ several people have self > righteously said more or less the following]: > >I understand that most of the gap in the number of girls as opposed to > >boys in China is due to *under-reporting* of girls rather than female > >infanticide. If the first born is a girl, if she is not reported a second > >child may be the desired boy. China's one child rule is a reactionary > >measure, but one-sided reports are no better. > > 1. The Chinese government now admits that infanticide of girls is a problem > and an unwanted side effect of the one child policy (this was in the last > paragraph of the article and has been admitted officially by the Chinese for > the last year or so). I don't see what is so self-righteous about Bill or my reply. We questioned data used to legitimate the hyperbole that the US and th emainstream human rights movement activists use to justify singling out China as worthy of condemnation. Myself, i wonder how it is that China's policies are worse than, say, Indonesia's, or more deserving of censure than Indonesia. We know that anti-Communism is America's favorite religion (to paraphrase Noam Chomsky) and that this religion allows the US to make just about any claim about its 'enemies' without being questioned, a luxury that opponents of its non-enemies cannot afford. On eexample suffices. In the 1980's allegations of horrible massacres of the Miskito Indians in nicaragua were made by th eReagan administration. which were later used to justify support of the terrorist organization known as "The Contras". At the time, it took quite a bit of courage not to jump on the bandwagon and condemn the Sandinistas as genocidal. Not because there were not violations of this indigenous groups' rights committed by the Sandinistas, but because there was also much more to the story, something I'm sure I don't have to go into detail to explain on *this* list. Forget the utter hyperbole the adminstration and much of the media engaged in, to th epoint where an uninformed observer would have to conclude that, by virtue of all the attention given to the Miskito Indian issue in Nicaragua, Nicaragua's mistaken policies vis a vis indigenous people's stood out compared to its neighbors'. Of course, anyone who knows the history of indigenous genocide in Guatemala knew that this was utterly untrue. Anti-communism skewed the issue that much! And I suspect it does in the case of China at present. Chian is not th eonly developing nation that engages in policies that are harmful to women. One just wonders, why is China the only country that we hear this about in the national media? There is probably something at work other than a councern for women here, just like there was something at play in the US when such profound concern was expressed by the US adminstration and the media about "genocide" of Miskito Indians in Nicaragua in the 80's. > > 2. This information came from census data collected and released by the > Chinese government. > sure, now we have to ask, is the way the anti-china lobby interprets such stats reasonable? Or do we just accept everything they tell us? Prison labor, gov't endorsed infanticide,...pedaphilia, satan abuse...tibet...Jesse Helms, harry Wu, and richard gere say it's true, must be true... > 3. I fail to see why 'not admitting' that you've had a girl is any better > than infanticide in the long run. Think about it for a minute, if you don't > admit you have the child, she can't get medical care, can't go to school, > can't be included in child benefits of any kind. But then perhaps the > proponents of not admitting there are girls feel this is o.k., after all, do > you also think uneducated baby makers in the kitchen are the best women????? > (sarcasm absolutely intended) > Of course, just as sarcasm was used against those of us who questioned the veracity of the US's claims that the Sandinistas were engaged in a systematic campaign of genocide against the Miskito Indians...how could we not care about that awful awful depraved anti-indigenous governments' genocidal acts? We must have just felt that "the only good injun's a dead injun' right? how *could* we question the cold war consensus? indeed. > 4. The 'non-reporting' does not hold water, especially since the ratio of > boys as a majority over girls widens with age AND, there's just all those > pesky little corpses. > And exactly how does this differ from the problem of disappearing women in the rest of the developing world? Why should China be the only country that people notice this phenomenon in? Or do such questions not matter? > 5. If the ratios were the other way around, I'd bet you guys would be out > there screaming your heads off. What a few girls amongst all you self > righteous revolutionaries, eh? Revolutionary schmevolutionary. Side issue. The real issue at hand is whether allegations made about the Chinese government as being most worthy of international censure for human rights violations of women, men, boys, girls, and all God's creatures (male and female). Or are there other governments at least just as worthy or more worthy of such censure and media attention (eg. Indonesia, Guatemala, Turkey,....). I recall a few years ago the reagan administration came out with the very silly Meese Commission Report on Pornography, which contended that Porn was resposible for just about every social ill and problem that women faced. There were not a few women feminists who tore apart the Report and such claims. How do we evaluate such women feminists? Did they lack a concern for women? Following th elogic of your response to Bill and me, i would have to conclude that Bill and I are little different from such women feminists. We likewise doubt both the veracity of the anti-China lobby and its ostensible concern for the problems of Chinese women. If you wish to believe in their integrity, fine, but that has more to do with gullibility than anatomical features. Steve > maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
