03.08.10
Gender, East-West gender and politic views and just general stupidity
A friend emailed me an article from the Economist.
He asked me my thoughts on the article, and one thing really stood out to me: the author says that “most obviously, China should scrap the one-child policy”.
I think that’s just rank stupidity talking.
The authors says in the article that other countries without the one-child policy also suffer from a skewed sex ratio. This, to me, says that the one-child policy may be a significant cause in causing the numbers to be as ludicrous as 200 boys to 1 female, but it’s not fixing anything to scrap that policy.
There’s a couple of problems with the entire situation:
For those couples who can afford multiple children, they’ll simply keep having children until they get their desired boy. If there is enough affluence, then this would just cause a population surge at worst and at best there would be more girls brought into this world to live in a world of passive abuse and neglect with names like “bringing brother” and “summoning brother” or “might as well keep feeding”. Yes, that last was actually a common name.
For those who cannot afford to feed, clothe and school multiple children, then abortion is still the answer. As standards of living rise in China, more and more couples are realizing the immense amounts of money, time, and energy required to raise a child to be successful. With this in thought, it is more than likely that under those circumstances those people who would prefer sons would abort girls anyways to keep the best for their sons.
In rural areas, I can all but see rag-tag armies of girls doing the chores, working in the fields, toiling whilst their brothers go to school. For a family who has to scrimp and save for tuition, the only person in the family who will go to school is, of course, the son.
As a Chinese female, I would rather die than live in the above scenarios. It would be kinder to strangle me at birth or even much more humane to kill me in the womb. To live and be denied education, to be seen as lesser simply because of my gender, and to be seen as a breeder on legs? No thanks.
Of course, others may not share my view. Others will probably think that life as a slave is better than death. That’s alright. We’re all entitled to our own opinions.
Speaking as a Chinese woman living in today’s times seeing the gender inequality and the crimes that rise from it: bride-napping, sharing stolen wives between brothers, gang rape by villages of men who just want to breed their next generation of rapist sons — at this point I’m not even particularly keen on living in China. Sounds like a rather dangerous proposition to me, actually.
It speaks rather eloquently to me that when the demand for women rises, violence against them also rises in proportion to said demand instead of more respect. Instead of having more choices, our lives are put in more danger.
Nothing is going to change, not the sex ratio, not women’s rights, not anything unless some fundamental views are changed. Before that, perhaps scientists can comfort themselves that at least the numbers aren’t looking quite so horrible at the expense of having more people on the face of this earth — but nothing is fixed.
It’s stupid, stupid, stupid to even think so.