Women’s Conferences Making A Dent

How nice to have George Bush the Elder back in the public eye, taking millions of dollars from the forces of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon for making speeches in South Korea. He stopped to pick up some extra change in China along the way, just long enough to trash the U.N. women’s conference.

Heh, heh, that Bush - what a card. “I feel somewhat sorry for the Chinese, having Bella Abzug running around in China,” said the old quipster.

I’ll bet the Chinese got a big hoo-ha out of that. But since Chinese security forces have been harassing, bugging, spying on and literally pushing women around at the conference, maybe it wasn’t the best time to “tease” ol’ Bella. (One feels certain that George Bush, that perfect gentleman, meant only to tease Bella Abzug, not to insult her, doesn’t one?)

Have you noticed how the coverage of this women’s conference is going? Hillary Rodham Clinton naturally made a big splash; anyone with media savvy knew that her presence would guarantee double the coverage. More important, she made a magnificent and gutsy speech. It made me proud to be an American: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

That may seem obvious to you, but the fact is that oppressive regimes and even human-rights groups have managed to separate the two in the past. One reason that China agreed to have this conference was because it was “only” about women’s rights. Clinton went down the list of the special abuses of human rights aimed at women without regard to anyone’s “sensitivities” on the issue, including those of the Chinese. (Can you imagine describing the Indians as “sensitive” on the issue of suttee or bride prices, or the Chinese as “sensitive” on female infanticide?)

The reaction in America was as grudging as anything I have ever read. Instead of the praise she deserved, Clinton received the most condescending, half-hearted pile of “well, not bad” notices you can imagine.

The conservatives, who had squawked about her going to China at all, could not bring themselves to admit that she did our country credit. No one could think of a way to criticize what she actually said, so they criticized her for what she didn’t say. Arkansas-based columnist Paul Greenberg even wondered when her concern for human rights was going to change her stand on abortion. If looking at China doesn’t remind you of why it is NOT a good idea to give government the power to make decisions about abortion, then nothing will. One TV host could think of nothing more important to talk about than Clinton’s hairdo.

Time magazine devoted two pages to the conference - in the same issue that carried three pages on the Miss America contest. And we wonder why American girls are confused?

Do you think the United States is so advanced on women’s rights that only backward places that practice clitorodectomy need pay attention to this conference? One of the important resolutions at the conference propounds the startling notion that women should not be raped, no matter what their marital status is. Until the 1993 session, the notion of spousal rape was laughed down in our very own Texas Legislature. Let us say that Texans were “sensitive” on the issue.

I know there is a perhaps justified impulse to dismiss all the high-sounding words that come out of international conferences as irrelevant to the “real world.” But if you look at international law rather than the violations of it, you can see fairly impressive progress on human rights - or at the very least, impressive lip service. And even if governments are only promising and not performing, the promises alone give activists a stick with which to beat them. You may say a stick isn’t much against government tanks, but that’s only because you are not familiar with the courage of human-rights activists.

There were women of great courage at the U.N. conference in China - not only women who risk life and limb and loved ones for insisting that women are fully human, but women who do so and are not even permitted dignity. It’s still so easy to trivialize and ridicule women. Sometimes even expresidents who should know better do it.

xxxx