Chai Ling is a very interesting woman. I just stumbled on this article about her a few days ago. I don’t know what her politics are. I don’t know if she’s fully embraced feminism, although some of what I’ve seen at her website indicates that she has embraced some style, form, or genre of it. Note this passage: “Since 1978, the implementation of China’s One-Child Policy has led to female gendercide, abandonment of daughters, human trafficking and violations of women’s reproductive rights” [emphasis mine].
Despite this, I don’t see any hints of misandry. I think I even spot some elements of libertarianism. I also see a mostly voluntary effort at educating the world about a stupid government solution. Yes, I know, using the word “stupid” is redundant when speaking of government, but without knowing it, Ms. Ling has unintentionally endorsed what ought to be a concern of men for their own sakes, without even considering the numerous ways in which women are harmed.
In an effort to curb “overpopulation,” a term embraced by governments that all of a sudden find they can’t plan and control that many people, China has enforced, through fines, confiscation of property, and involuntary abortions, a “one-child” policy for more than thirty years. According to the website: “The math behind the implementation of the One-Child Policy is questionable. The calculations were performed by a notable Chinese rocket scientist who used a rocket formula (replacing rocket variable[s] with people) to predict future population levels.” (Well, that’s understandable. The creation of a baby involves a “rocket,” does it not?) Ms. Ling’s central complaint is that this policy targets women and girls. She is correct, as there is now an increase in the male-to-female ratio that shows a significant decrease in the number of women.
There are both cultural and practical factors at work. The Chinese character for “good” is the combination of the characters for “woman” and “son.” (See the astoundingly gorgeous Gong Li to the left. Try to pay attention to the character for “good” written in red.) Also, since men have a tendency to ease into the provider role with greater success than women, parents who are forced to have only one child are, for practical reasons, going to choose to have a son. I have little to no problem with the Chinese character for “good”; I see it mainly as an interesting cultural artifact. Societies the world over have traditionally looked to men to provide, fight, protect, warn, build, instruct, and plant seeds of all kinds. That’s just how it is. Government mandates won’t change that.
However, due to my abhorrence for abortion and government mandates alike, just as in the bizarre alliance between feminists and conservatives over what I have termed “misaporno,” I find myself in agreement and alliance with Ms. Ling, but I’m coming at this issue from a different angle, as an anarchist, a men’s activist, and a sibling.
Governments, being the initiators of coercion, are death-oriented; therefore, all government solutions that are not clearly directed back at the governments themselves are bound to cause widespread destruction. As if Mao’s Great Leap Forward (which turned out to be the Great Leap Into the Abyss) wasn’t bad enough, this death-oriented government then decided that it could dictate one of the most private, personal decisions that a heterosexual couple could possibly make: “Wanna have a baby?” The very idea that something so intensely and wonderfully intimate should be dictated by outside forces is repugnant. And now the afterbirth of this misbegotten communist solution is pouring out for all to see:
“The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports that in 2020, there will be 40 million more young men than women; by comparison, there are currently 40 million young men in the entirety of the U.S. Not surprisingly, China’s crime rates and the prevalence of women and child trafficking have risen dramatically” [emphasis mine].
Nice work, commies! As I pointed out in “Prostitution and the Evil, Evil Penis,” where there is less sex available, there is more rape and more homicide. The communist Chinese government is now sitting atop a very dangerous situation. Where young men have to compete for mates, there is sadly going to be bloodshed, unless Tibet is overrun by millions of single Chinese dudes who all of a sudden wish to become Buddhist monks, or my team inexplicably explodes (no pun intended) with a ton of new Chinese converts. I don’t see either of those things happening in the near future.
What I do see are Asian women dating white men, black men, Latino men, and Asian men. Asian women are prized by many different kinds of men because when an Asian woman is beautiful, she is normally considered beautiful. (Again, refer to the picture of Gong Li above. But be sure to finish the article.) I have to confess to being ever-so-slightly interested in the feminine sex, and I can tell you that the most beautiful woman I ever took out on a date had pure Asian ancestry. She was drop-dead-frickin’-gorgeous! The most beautiful woman I have ever seen, beyond compare. (Okay, Gong Li compares. See the picture above.) She had an attitude to match. (And I’m not talking about a “beautiful” attitude. I’m talking about the attitude that beautiful girls can afford to have in a free and open society. We had one date.)
I do not see Asian men dating women of any other ethnicity or color. There are exceptions, to be sure, but not many. Since the norm is for Asian men to date Asian women; since the most populous Asian country is obsessed with who is doing what to whom; since those fewer women are getting online now and marrying themselves off to non-Asian Western men to have a better life; since that country employs a highly trained and intelligent military armed with nuclear warheads, and that military is mostly comprised of men who are becoming sexually and procreatively frustrated; what does this tell you about the state of the world that Mao helped to build?
It’s bad enough to force women into abortions, an act abhorrent to this pro-life anarchist even when it is voluntary. How much worse is such a procedure when the “patient” is unwilling? But what Ms. Ling has left out is the glaring fact that the world is now dealing with a potentially devastating problem due to its effects on men, not women.
So Ms. Ling is looking for a change in policy. Perhaps the Federal government, a body that is better at hiding its atrocities, one that has permitted more freedoms than the one she defied in Tiananmen Square, will listen to her pleas. Therefore, her website has a petition: “Abolish China’s One-Child Policy.” Abolishing the policy is fine, but soliciting a man currently slaughtering women and children (oh yeah, and men) on the other side of the earth via predator drones, an act of which he makes fun? Somehow, I doubt that is going to make much difference.
Then again, the repellant Nixon did visit China, and did make some headway with a few free market principles by opening trade with them. Perhaps you can occasionally get a murderer to do things right, twice a day, like a broken clock. I have a feeling, however, that the American government putting pressure on the Chinese government will only lead to more problems. The premise of both governments is something that ought to be checked before asking either one to save an unborn little girl’s life. The problem with the Chinese government’s solution isn’t the “one-child” part, after all.
Take a look at the horrifying situation in Romania, brought about by a different policy on forced family planning. The mass-murdering Nicolae Ceauşescu made it mandatory for people to have multiple children, once again, like Mao, sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong, where it was most unwelcome. The end result is disturbing to say the least: “Not all the children in the orphanages were actual orphans. Many had been abandoned by desperately poor families who had been forced to have more children than necessary as part of Ceauşescu’s insane [population] building policy.”
Wow! Commie solutions just get better and better. Ceauşescu even made it impossible for hospitals to treat women who had given themselves abortions, adding to the Romanian death toll. My convictions against the death penalty aside, I’m relieved that they simply did away with that guy. (And being pro-life, I would not hesitate to assist a woman who had a self-induced abortion, in case you’re wondering.)
Compare this to America: Have 15 kids, adopt an African kid, have two kids, “end” the third one in the womb, give the one you don’t want up for adoption, or have no kids at all. For all the Federal government’s intrusion into our private lives, the one area where this country has never suffered is “overpopulation” or “underpopulation,” because this is one area where the government has largely remained absent. That will undoubtedly change, and has already changed somewhat (try defending your newborn against getting a Social Security number, or keeping your kid out of government schools), but the lesson is there for anyone who cares to learn from it before we’re exposed to greater tyranny:
Leave people alone!
Better yet:
Leave men alone!
There aren’t a whole hell of a lot of men out there who are going to impregnate women without their consent, just as there aren’t a whole hell of a lot of men out there who are going to penetrate women who say, “No.” In a free society, women have a bewildering number of options for birth control, one quite volatile and controversial, but the rest are not controversial at all outside the softly coercive Catholic Church. (Remember, boys: Your sperm is sacred.)
But governments thrive on the idea that ordinary multitudes of men cannot be trusted. To the contrary: If any government has proven its inability to be trusted based on its own glaring, undeniable, historical record, it’s the death-oriented government of China. Even the United States’ government has a record that belies its own untrustworthiness. Just one example for the unconvinced: Name a single thing the Federal government did on the morning of 9/11 to ensure the one thing that most people agree it is there to do, namely, protect its “citizens” from attack.
Nixon’s visit to China was, in a way, an effort at turning away the government’s guns: more trade was opened up with China. If you need an idea of how that’s turned out for the Chinese, look no further than the ever-changing skyline of Shanghai. Overpopulation, my ass:
“Noted economists Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams studied and found no correlation between population density and famine & poverty, which were the two original reasons behind the implementation of the One-Child Policy. In fact, these economists found that corrupt government—rather than population density—is the main indicator for nations impacted by famine & poverty” [emphasis lovingly mine].
When the government’s guns are turned away from heterosexual couples who wish to reproduce, I can assure you that the outcome will be much the same. It’s a pity that it will be too little, too late for a generation of Chinese men looking for sex, and mothers for their children. How do we convince these bachelors to turn to peace? Your guess is as good as mine.
B.R. Merrick writes for “Strike The Root“ and “A Voice for Men,” lives in the Northeast, is proud to be a classical music reviewer at Amazon.com and iTunes, and in spite of the poisonous nature of television, God Himself will have to pry his DVDs of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” out of his cold, dead hands, under threat of eternal damnation.
