Girls’ toilet in Africa – discrimination! Part 1

When the Transport Workers Union (TWU) of New York workers finally returned to work and ended three-day mass transit strike in New York city that had largely paralyzed the city, many news media understandably reported the news in the cover page. But other news shared the front page (internet edition) of the New York Times on 23 December. The news? Toilet in Africa. And how it negatively affects women’s status in Africa.

Even though we get more and more accustomed to the blending of hard news and advocacy article in the New York Times, this one comes across a bit overboard. It is becoming increasingly hard to know if we are reading the respectable (once) newspaper or Feminist Africa e-news (I made this one up). With all the important news that impact millions of people in the world, New York Times would choose the issue of girl toilet in African schools.

But if we look more closely at the background, the intent of this feminist advocacy stunt will become clear. Feminists put emphasis and considerable efforts in the development of Africa, because they view Africa as an experimental ground for constructing matriarch modern society, or building true feminist utopia, build and run by women, where all the concerns of women and girls come first. Other parts of the world, including Europe, could become feminist utopia if they could continue affirmative action, gender quota and demonization and ghettorization of men and boys at current pace, but the prospect is not certain, and you cannot say that the modern society was built by women. Feminists could hijack the government and rewrite the history to their liking, but the truth is that the modern society in those regions was not built by women.

But Africa could be a different story. Africa, as you all know, is a continent with very low level of development, which means human and social capitals are very underdeveloped. Basic social and economic structure is there, but underdeveloped and weak, men who mostly occupy important positions and run the countries also may not be as competent and as professional as their western counterparts. It would be relatively easy to construct a matriarch society in such underdeveloped society. For example, while it would require considerable efforts and resources to unseat male legislatures in the developed world and replace with women, it would be far easier to do so in Africa. You can plant a western educated and trained professional woman, who rose to senior positions in international organization through gender quota to a country reeling from long years of civil war and pit against an uneducated man who didn’t benefit from such western feminine favoritism, and with infusion of lots of cash and electoral assistance by constellation of international feminist NGOs, you can have the first elected women president in Africa (Liberia). Or you can exploit the post-conflict turmoil and a total lack of political structure, appoint yourselves to be some of the drafters of new constitution, make gender quota in national legislature essential part of the constitution, and there you have the legislature with the world’s highest female representation (Rwanda). ( I guess it would provide another ammunition for Scandinavian feminists).

Tragedy or discrimination???

Tragedy or discrimination???

Not so many male Marines or male soldiers in other services who had perished tragically in the Iraq war have a chance to have their stories told in such a detail several months after the incident on the front page of a major newspaper, but of course, women are different.

In an article titled “A Mission That Ended in Inferno for 3 Women” on New York Times on 20 November, the author tried to see the evidence of subtle discrimination against women soldiers in combat in Iraq. He asks whether the protection of the cargo trucks that carried women were adequate, why old cargo trucks and not Humvee, why mistake in the tactic in dealing with a strange car, why women had to commute to a checkpost while men didn’t need to, and concludes that protection measures for the women were all inadequate, and blame the Marine for it.

Never mind that Humvees were in short supply and not everyone get the best equipment, never mind that there are confusion among military brass about assigning women to combat roles, those advocate for women’s rights and women’s role in combat will never be happy until women soldiers get the best protection and best equipment available in the field which may or may not be available to male soldiers or even commanders, and be given the priority and best opportunity for conducting mission and gain visibility for their actions, so that women soldiers could succeed in their career, replace males in the commanding positions perhaps.

Thus, advocates routinely pull up advocacy pieces like this and put on a cover page, and put pressure on the Generals and military planners in the Pentagon and on the ground to accommodate and give special consideration to women soldiers. This puts unnecessary burden on the military planners and forces them to take into consideration politically correct, gender sensitive considerations in military planning and thus compromise the overall mission effectiveness.
Iraq war is getting increasingly complicated – complicated not only by the actual security situation on the ground, but also by political situation at home, which includes not only assaults by Democrats on President Bush’s war efforts but media with gender agenda starting to investigate and publish in-depths stories of the incident each and every time when casualties of the incidents happen to be women. Oh, I almost forgot that there were also three men who were killed during this attack (surprisingly, same number of men and women were killed but the former were mentioned so scarcely in the article)

Women suffers disproportionately from natural disasters???

According to an article by Agence France-Presse, a report was issued by the leading international feminist organizations, called the Global Fund for Women.
Of course in the eyes of gender feminists, it is women who suffer disproportionately by anything, anytime, on whatever occasions. If there was a war, it’s women who suffer. If there was economic depression, it’s women who suffer. If the Yankees couldn’t win the World Series, it’s women who suffer. And if mother nature strikes, it’s women who suffer. Too bad the mother nature, despite its gender (mother), according to feminists, also discriminates against women.
Implicit in the claims that it is discrimination because more women died than men for instance in the wake of earthquake in India/Pakistan is that more men should die. The goal of any disaster relief or disaster preparation should be to minimize the casualties and damages of all people and properties, including both men and women, boys and girls, not about fretting about reducing the ratio of women and girls ( or increasing the ration of men and boys) who is afflicted by the nature’s wrath. Their implicit assumption is so obnoxious but they have no qualm putting forth this kind of statement. Frankly, I don’t know when these feminists will be happy, when more men die of natural disasters than women or is their ultimate goal a time when only men die of natural disasters?
Also we can spot a tendency by gender feminists to exploit such huge events as Asia Tsunami or Katrina; with all the eyes and ears of the world are turned to the plight of disasters, it is a perfect PR time for these feminists to claim discrimination and further their social engineering schemes through redistribution of power and money. In fact, any natural disasters or conflict or war or social turmoil is an opportune time for these people to exploit the situation and further their causes. Wherever they see trouble in the world, they will send a team of “experts”, conduct their own skewed and biased agenda-driven research and study, and come up with a series of their cookie-cutter recommendations whose aim is to restructure the society in their desired manner.
The pictures and stories of women who were affected by natural disasters are indeed gripping. It fits our common image of women as a weaker and fairer sex and appeals to our chauvinistic to help them out with priority. Gender feminists, whose basic ideological assumption is that there is absolutely no difference between men and women and all the difference are “socially constructed” by patriarchal society, have no qualm about exploiting the image of weaker women when it fits their purpose and flip to stronger women image when grabbing for political and economic power in the post-disaster reconstruction stage.

Thoughts on NY Times article on ad agencies

The New York Times came up with routine, obligatory, advocacy piece that screams about gender gap in advertising agency. I though it about time they would come up with a new piece on gender gap; I guess there has to be at least one per day or so, maybe there even would be a quota on this, which, if not achieved, could also constitute discrimination against women. Never mind that these days a majority of advertisements are targeted to women, be it consumer goods or anything, gender feminists who sit in the office of the Times are not satisfied with the fact that gender ratio at the executive level are not equal between men and women. And of course, the insufficient number of female execs to satisfy the feminist statisticians brings up the same reasons for the so-called discrimination; sexism in industry, and the lack of role model and women-friendly workplace. Of course the future female leaders with high education who would supposedly compete in the tough world of ad business first need a role model so that they would feel, I guess, to use feminist's favorite words, safe to enter the business and feel accepted and encouraged to pursue the career. In addition, as usual, it provides every conceivable methods of bean-counting, including a raw number of female execs, a ratio at senor level, a ratio at this and that level and this and that field to prove how women are discriminated against. Of course the writer does not forget to put some feel-good paragraphs about women's achievement and progress made to satisfy herself as she wrote the piece and the like-minded readers who have extremely heightened sensitivity (doctors call it paranoia) who crave for this kind of article in the Times. It is also chilling to note that a concept of gender quota is permeating to every corner of the society, including, ridiculously, at the judge positions in an advertising festival, to ensure that those affirmative action female judges can check the gender of the ad creator first and judge accordingly. After all the rantings about the low representation of women in high jobs, no one seems to care about other number about 80% of purchasing decision are made by women - or in other words, only about 20% of such decision are made by men why there is no call for more government-funded programme, education, workshops and campaigns to level the number?

So the Angela Merkel officially became a new leader of Germany. Major news media (BBC, New York Times) seizes this opportunity to emphasize the "first female" part of this event and with such strong action words as "takes charge", a poitically correct image for women. Merkel was able to survive the election debacle because she is a darling of western news media..OK, she may not be a gender-feminist type but at least she IS a woman. Expect many advocacy pieces being churned out by major news media in coming days. (in the tune of.. OK, there is a female leader in Germany, why not in the United States of A............or in a more subtle and curcuitous manner, such as perception of Americans towards female top leader is changing... ?)