Who in their right mind could oppose the innocuous-sounding Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the International Violence Against Women Act.
Senator Joe Biden kicked off his improbable run for the White House with the pronouncement that Illinois Senator Barack Obama was sufficiently “clean” to serve as a worthy opponent — reassuring news to Mr. Obama, I’m sure.
Now we’re ready for some serious, issues-oriented campaigning.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Biden soon will be proposing a treaty that would place all U.S. domestic policy under the scrutiny of a United Nations oversight committee.
The treaty goes by the innocent-sounding name, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women – CEDAW for short — and presents itself as an international “bill of rights” for women. Who could possibly be against that?
But like all things feminist, what you see is not what you get. Because when the rad-fems espouse equality, they are not referring to equal opportunity.
A report from the International Women’s Rights Action Watch revealed far more than it intended:
. . . the CEDAW Convention [emphasizes that] the measure of a state’s action to secure the human rights of women and men needs to ensure equality of results [these three words in bold] . . . Thus, the state is obligated to show results, not just stop at frameworks of equality that are strong on paper.
In other words, complementary and mutually-respectful roles of men and women would be phased out in favor of the gender-less society. Scary, but that’s what they really want.
But there’s a sticking point to this utopian design. Motherhood has a funny way of discouraging women from putting in 60-hour work weeks, doing long-haul truck runs, and trying to scale the corporate ladder.
Feminists understand that, so their solution is to break up marriages (all the harder for women to get pregnant). And at the sign of the first playful tug, CEDAW advocates would cart the woman off to her neighborhood abortionist.
Promoting abortions may seem easy, but breaking up the family, the foundational unit of society, is not. So feminists have seized on the issue of “domestic violence” – and that’s where I-VAWA comes in.
I-VAWA stands for the International Violence Against Women Act. By now you have probably guessed that Senator Joe Biden is planning to introduce this bill, as well. And who in their right mind could oppose a bill with that name?
Experience shows that domestic violence programs have a lot more to do with breaking up families than curbing partner abuse.
According to the latest report from the Department of Justice, only 2% of domestic violence incidents involve married couples in an intact relationship. But to weaken the bonds of holy matrimony, the Purveyors of Pink Paranoia must convince women that their husbands are actually closet batterers.
Case in point is Claudia Garcia-Moreno, director of the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health, who made this startling claim: “We found that women’s greatest risk of violence is from a partner.”
Not so fast, Ms. Garcia-Moreno — time to bring in the Truth Squad.
According to the landmark World Health Organization’s Report on Violence and Health, half a million women die each year from intentional violence. But when you work through the numbers, only about 13% of those deaths involved homicides committed by husbands or boyfriends.
So right there Garcia-Moreno is way off the mark. But the WHO logic gets even more loony.
Because you have to realize that the WHO defines “violence” far more broadly than you or I could ever imagine. The WHO claims with a straight face that violence includes “those acts that result from a power relationship” that includes all types of “psychological abuse.”
And we know those all-powerful patriarchs constantly lord it over their downtrodden wives and girlfriends. Which basically means all male-female relationships are abusive.
So if your wife got inspired to do a little Janet Jackson number during Sunday’s Super Bowl and, heaven forbid you told her to lay off — fella, you just committed domestic violence!
Once women begin to view everything through the prism of gender, power, and abuse, it’s no surprise that they look to the Nanny State as a substitute husband.
That’s what’s going on in India, courtesy of the 2006 Domestic Violence Act. That’s what is occurring in the United States, thanks to the Violence Against Women Act.
And that’s what’s going to happen to the rest of the world if we let candidate Joe Biden have his way with the International Violence Against Women Act.
careyroberts@comcast.net
Read more articles by Carey Roberts
I am utterly disgusted with the tone of this article, and with its sheer nastiness.
I thought this was the INTELLECTUAL Conservative website, not the anti-women, "pro-life at any cost" website. The term "rad-fems", is nearly as nasty an insult as "Feminazi".
"when the rad-fems espouse equality, they are not referring to equal opportunity" - where did this nonsensical statement come from? I sure did't read that in the statement quoted!
And where did this come from?
"Feminists understand that, so their solution is to break up marriages (all the harder for women to get pregnant). And at the sign of the first playful tug, CEDAW advocates would cart the woman off to her neighborhood abortionist."
Pro-choice does not mean "forcing women to have abortions". It also does not mean "Promoting abortions".
Lastly, I do not disagree that one must be careful to not "view everything through the prism of gender, power, and abuse" - or any other "prism". But - if you have been never have been subjected to psychological abuse, you simply cannot understand how difficult it is to get help, and to get away from the abuser. And women were blocked for something like 5,000 years from participating in development of legal systems; were not allowed to own property, and were themselves treated as property. American women only got the right to vote in 1920!
This whole article set my teeth on edge. If I were the site moderator, I would delete this article.
Comment by gz9gjg | February 9, 2007
Will these UN agenda items take on entrenched Muslim mistreatment of women? My guess is that it will be ignored. Another case of anti-western action that turns a blind eye to an extremely serious problem.
Comment by Steven Laib | February 10, 2007
Dear Ms. (or Mr.?)gz9gig:
Your question: " '…when the rad-fems espouse equality, they are not referring to equal opportunity'– where did this nonsensical statement come from? I sure did't [didn't] read that in the statement quoted!"
I found it in the quoted statement: "…measure of a state's action to secure the human rights of women and men needs to ensure equality of results…"
Equality of results is not the same as equality of opportunity.
As far as psychological abuse is concerned, this is more often the tool of women. Often feeling overpowered physically, they resort to psychological weapons. Unfortunately, they usually come out the winner. Two of the often used tools are victimhood or being accusatory.
You are correct about the difficulty in getting out of a psychologically abusive relationship. It cost me thousands of dollars, however, the court agreed and granted me a divorce from my first wife. (My second wife of 23 years and I are doing just fine, thank you. And having custody of my son resulted in him becoming a doctor.)
Better see a dentist about those teeth.
Mike Brown
p.s. Women got the right to vote in the early 20th century, this is the early 21st century, get over it. And Katie Couric is anchoring the news.
Comment by Mike Brown | February 10, 2007
"I am utterly disgusted with the tone of this article, and with its sheer nastiness.
I thought this was the INTELLECTUAL Conservative website, not the anti-women, “pro-life at any cost” website. The term “rad-fems”, is nearly as nasty an insult as “Feminazi”. "
Basically, you disagree so it's nasty. Gotcha. How utterly ridiculous.
The basic default argument of the feminist is that any view that disagrees with theirs (no matter how correct) is anti-women, anti-choice, pro-patriarchy, mysogenist…am I missing anything?
I'm reminded or CAIR and other terrorist backed Muslim societies crying about the label Islamofascists in regards to dictators like Mr. Alphabet soup in Iran and the recently deposed Taliban, when hearing whining about titles like feminazi, or the much more appropriate radical feminist. If the shoe fits…
If anything I found your response Gz9Gig, much more hateful than the original article. It cannot simply be a difference of opinion between you. Heck it couldn't even be that our author was mininformed. He won't toe the feminist line so he MUSt hate women and want to subject them to a patriarchal society where women can't vote or leave the house!
For decades radical feminists have sought to undermine marriage. It's simply not possible to honestly look at the evidence and see anything else. See comments like "Women need men like fish need bicycles." This is what the feminist establishmenthas been based on.
Likewise with abortion. There is pro- and anti- abortion. Being "pro-choice" IS being pro-abortion. The pro-choice position is advocating abortion (or it is apathy to the situation pretending to be tolerance). If it was about choice, the pro-abortion crowd wouldn't seek to kill parental and spousal notification (not consent) laws, efforts to inform women about the risks involved, both physical and psychological, bans to partial birth abortion, and virtually ANY law that would put off an abortion by even five minutes.
Crying bias may be fun, but it sure doesn't put off the mounds of evidence that seem to play right into Mr. Robert's hands. Want to change minds? Try facts not charges of fascism.
Comment by WolvenBear | February 10, 2007
WolvenBear: I called this article nasty because the author clearly implied that "rad-fems" would force women to have abortions.
That statement includes a slur, "rad-fems", which would be offensive to any woman who considers herself even a mild feminist; and goes on to claim that women would be forced by other women to have an abortion. That is an untruthful statement. The combination of the slur and the untruth makes it nasty in my book.
The term "Feminazi" is even more offensive. Please do not use it.
I stand by what I wrote: Pro-choice does not mean “forcing women to have abortions”. It also does not mean “Promoting abortions”, or even "pro-abortion". I would never counsel a woman to have an abortion; but I also wouldn't declare her to be evil if she did. And; I would not shoot the doctor who performed the abortion; no bomb the doctor's home or the clinic. My opinion. Sorry if you find it offensive.
The comment you quoted, “Women need men like fish need bicycles,” was intended to be a joke. Sorry if you didn't get that.
Keeping this discussion on a polite, emotionally neutral level would be far more appropriate than the way the author stated his opinions.
This is supposed to be an intellectual website, not one where we anonymously hurl nasty names at each other in print. Having different views means we disagree, not that one view is correct and the other is wrong. It also doesn't mean the person who expresses a different view than yours is stupid, ugly, fascist, or any other such insult.
I did not accuse anyone of facism. I only expressed that I am tired of comments on this website that I perceive as anti-women. Again, my opinion.
Comment by gz9gjg | February 12, 2007
GZG,
Nowhere in the article does the author say (or even remotely imply) that women will force other women to get abortions. Nor in my response did I say women would "force each other to get abortions. Thus your "untruth" doesn't exist. Get off it, you're wrong.
You put forward the blatantly untrue statement "being pro-choice doesn't mean promoting abortion". Again, it does. Planned Parenthood and the feminist establishment are militantly pro-abortion, opposing laws even when the law benefits no one but pregnant women who have decided to keep their child (Lacy's Law). Wrapping yourself in apathy only proves my earlier thesis, not derails it. "Being “pro-choice” IS being pro-abortion. The pro-choice position is advocating abortion (or it is apathy to the situation pretending to be tolerance)."
The comment "Women need men like fish need a bicycle" was not intended to be a joke. Gloria Steinem was a militant feminist who advised every woman she ever met to neve marry, until she herself got married. Try again.
And finally, don't come in throwing insults and then whine about the "lack of intellectualism." You were neither polite nor emotionally neutral. You were insulting, and you accused the author of hating women and demanded censorship because the article offended you.
Nor do I care if feminazi or radical feminist offended you. You engaged in half truths, smears, distortions, and demanded (in a roundabout way) this article removed.Again, if the shoe fits….
Comment by WolvenBear | February 13, 2007