Chapter Seven Part II: Destruction of the Family
Table of Contents (continued)
4. How Communism Destroys Families in the West (continued)
b. Promoting Feminism and Rejecting the Traditional Family (continued)
c. Promoting Homosexuality to Undermine the Family
d. Promoting Divorce and Abortion
e. Using the Welfare System to Encourage Single-Parent Families
f. Promoting Degenerate Culture
5. How the Chinese Communist Party Destroys Families
a. Breaking Up Families in the Name of Equality
b. Turning Husbands and Wives Against Each Other
c. Using Forced Abortion for Population Control
6. The Consequences of Communism’s Assault on the Family
References
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5. How Communism Destroys Families in the West (continued)
b. Promoting Feminism and Rejecting the Traditional Family
Communist Ideology Behind the Feminist Movement
The feminist movement is another tool communism has used to destroy the family. When it began in Europe in the eighteenth century, the feminist movement (also known as first-wave feminism) advocated that women should be accorded the same treatment as men in education, employment, and politics. The center of the feminist movement shifted from Europe to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.
When first-wave feminism began, the notion of the traditional family still had a strong foundation in society, and the feminist movement did not advocate directly challenging it. The influential feminists at that time, such as Mary Wollstonecraft of eighteenth-century England, Margaret Fuller of nineteenth-century America, and John Stuart Mill of nineteenth-century England, all advocated that, in general, women should prioritize the family after marriage, that the potential of women should be developed within the domain of the family, and that women should enrich themselves (for example, via education) for the betterment of the family. These early feminists believed that women of particular talent should not be constrained by social norms, and be free to develop their talent in environments where participation was mostly male.
First-wave feminism died down with the promulgation of women’s suffrage in many countries, as the goal of making men and women equal before the law had been achieved. In the following years, with the impact of the Great Depression and World War II, the feminist movement was effectively put on hold.
But communism had begun to sow the seeds of destruction for traditional marriage and sexual ethics far in advance. The early utopian socialists in the nineteenth century laid the foundation for modern radical feminist movements. Fourier, called “the father of feminism,” declared that marriage turned women into private property. Owen cursed marriage as evil. The ideas of these utopian socialists were inherited and developed by later feminists, including, for example, Frances Wright, who took Fourier’s ideas and advocated for women’s sexual freedom in the nineteenth century.
British feminist activist Anna Wheeler inherited Owen’s ideas and fiercely condemned marriage for supposedly turning women into slaves. Socialist feminist activists were also an important part of the feminist movement in the nineteenth century. At that time, among the most influential feminist publications in France were La Voix des Femmes, La Femme Libre (later renamed La Tribune des Femmes), and La Politique des Femmes. The founders of these publications were either followers of Fourier or of Henri de Saint-Simon, an advocate of modern industrial socialism.
When the first wave of women’s rights movements was in full swing, communists made arrangements to introduce a variety of radical thoughts to attack traditional concepts of family and marriage, paving the way for the more radical feminist movement that followed.
The second wave of feminist movements began in the United States in the late 1960s, then spread to Western and Northern Europe, and quickly expanded to the entire Western world. American society in the late 1960s went through a period of turmoil, with the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, and various radical social trends. Amid this unique set of circumstances, a more radical strain of feminism emerged and became popular.
The cornerstone of this wave of feminist movements was the book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, published in 1963, and the National Organization for Women (NOW), which she co-founded. Friedan fiercely criticized the traditional familial roles of women and argued that the classic image of a content and joyful housewife was a myth forged by a patriarchal society. She argued that the middle-class suburban home was “a comfortable concentration camp” for American women, and that modern educated women should reject the sense of accomplishment attained through supporting their husbands and educating their children, and instead realize their worth outside the family. [21]
A few years later, even more radical feminists dominated NOW, inheriting and developing Friedan’s ideas. They said that women had been oppressed by patriarchy since ancient times and attributed the root cause of women’s oppression to the family. In response, they came to advocate the complete transformation of the social system and traditional culture, and struggle in all areas of human affairs — the economy, education, culture, and the home — to achieve female equality. [22]
Classifying the members of a society into “the oppressors” and “the oppressed,” in order to advocate for struggle, liberation, and equality, is exactly what communism does. Traditional Marxism classifies groups according to their economic statuses, while neo-feminist movements divide people based on gender.
Friedan was not, as her book described, a middle-class suburban housewife bored with housework. Daniel Horowitz, a professor at Smith College, wrote a biography about Friedan in 1998 titled Betty Friedan and the Making of ‘The Feminine Mystique.’ His research revealed that Friedan, under her maiden name Betty Goldstein, had been a radical socialist activist from her college years up to the 1950s. While at the University of California–Berkeley, Friedan was a member of the Young Communist League and even requested, twice, to join the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Friedan’s authorized biographer, Judith Hennessee, also indicates that Friedan was a Marxist. At different times, she was a professional journalist — or, more accurately, a propagandist — for several radical labor unions in the orbit of the CPUSA. [23] [24]
American scholar Kate Weigand points out in her book Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation that feminism did not stay quiet in the United States from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. During that period, a large group of feminist writers with communist backgrounds paved the way for the subsequent second-wave feminist movement, including Susan B. Anthony, Betty Millard, and Eleanor Flexner. As early as 1946, Anthony applied the Marxist analytical method to draw an analogy between whites oppressing blacks and males oppressing females. McCarthyism during that period made such writers hide their communist backgrounds. [25]
In Europe, French writer Simone de Beauvoir’s iconic 1949 work The Second Sex ushered in a craze for the second wave of feminism. De Beauvoir was a socialist, and in 1941, together with communist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and other writers, she founded Socialisme et Liberté, a French underground socialist organization. With the rise of her reputation for promoting feminism in the 1960s, de Beauvoir declared that she no longer believed in socialism and claimed that she was only a feminist.
She said, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” She argued that while sex is determined by physiological characteristics, gender is a self-perceived psychological concept formed under the influence of human sociality. She believed that obedience, submissiveness, affection, and maternity are all derived from the “myth” carefully designed by the patriarchy for its oppression of women, and advocated that women break through traditional notions and realize their unrestrained selves.
Since then, various feminist thoughts have emerged in a constant stream, all looking at the world through the lens of women being oppressed by a patriarchy within the institution of the traditional family — ultimately making the family an obstacle to the realization of female equality. [26]
Many contemporary radical feminists hold that women are restrained by their husbands due to marriage, and even call the institution a form of prostitution. Like the early communist utopians who spoke of “shared wives” or the “community of women,” they advocate “open relationships” and uninhibited sexual activity.
Results of the Feminist Movement
Feminism is now prevalent in all sectors of society. One major assertion of contemporary feminism is that apart from the physiological differences in male and female reproductive organs, all other physical and psychological differences between men and women are social and cultural constructs. By this logic, men and women should be completely equal in all aspects of life and society, and all manifestations of “inequality” between men and women are the result of a culture and society that is oppressive and sexist.
For example, the number of men working as executives in large companies, high-level academics in elite universities, or senior government officials far outstrips the number of women in similar positions. Many feminists believe this is primarily caused by sexism, when in fact a fair comparison between the sexes can be made only when considering factors such as ability, hours, work ethic, life goals, and the like. Success in high-level positions often requires long-term, high-intensity overtime work — the sacrifice of weekends and evenings, attendance at sudden emergency meetings, frequent business travel, and so on.
Having children tends to interrupt a woman’s career, and women are inclined to reserve time to be with their families and children instead of dedicating themselves completely to their work. In addition, people with the aptitude to fill high-level positions tend to possess strong and forceful personalities, whereas women tend to be more agreeable. However, feminists regard women’s tendencies to be gentle and to orient themselves around family and children as traits imposed upon them by a sexist society. According to feminists, publicly funded services such as daycare and other forms of welfare should compensate for these differences.
Contemporary feminism cannot tolerate any explanation of the differences between men and women that is based on natural physiological or psychological qualities. According to this ideology, all blame must be laid at the feet of social conditioning and traditional values.
At a 2005 academic conference, Lawrence Summers, then-president of Harvard University, outlined why women are less likely than men to teach in the scientific and mathematics fields at top universities. In addition to highlighting the eighty-some hours per week and unpredictable work schedules required for these positions (time most women would reserve for family), Summers proposed that men and women may simply differ in their competence in advanced science and math, and that discrimination is no longer a barrier. [27]
Summers supported his arguments with relevant studies but still became the target of protests by major feminist organization NOW. The group accused him of sexism and demanded his removal. Summers was roundly criticized in the media and forced to issue a public apology for his statements. He then announced that Harvard was to dedicate $50 million to increasing the diversity of its faculty. [28]
In 1980, Science magazine published a study showing that male and female middle school students had substantial differences in their mathematical reasoning ability, with boys outperforming girls. [29] A subsequent study that compared SAT math test scores found male examinees four times more likely than females to achieve a score higher than 600. This gap became even more extreme at the 700-point threshold, where thirteen times more male test-takers reached such high scores than did females. [30]
The same research team conducted another study in 2000 and found that both males and females who demonstrated mathematical genius in their SAT scores tended to obtain advanced degrees in science and math-related fields, and were satisfied with their achievements. [31]
Some reports noted that Summers’s treatment following his 2005 speech mirrors the re-education policies used by communist regimes to suppress dissidents. Even as the causes of inequality were yet to be determined, equality of outcome was enforced by encouraging “diversity” — that is, ensuring there was a larger number of female instructors in math and science subjects.
The links between feminism and socialism are readily apparent. Alexis de Tocqueville said in 1848: “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: While democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” [32]
While the reasons for psychological and intellectual disparities between men and women may not be obvious, denying their physical and reproductive differences flies in the face of fact. In both Eastern and Western traditional views, men are protective figures. It’s normal that firefighters are overwhelmingly male. However, feminists, believing in absolute equality between men and women, demand that women take on traditionally male duties, often with unexpected results.
In 2015, the New York Fire Department allowed a woman to become a firefighter without passing the physical test, which includes completing tasks while wearing an oxygen tank and other equipment weighing 50 pounds. The department hired the woman in part to avoid a lawsuit, as feminist groups had long blamed its high physical standards for the low proportion of women entering the firefighting force. Other firefighters, including women who had passed the test, expressed concerns about colleagues who couldn’t meet the physical standards. They said such individuals would inevitably be a burden on, and a danger to, the team and the public. [33]
In Australia, fire departments implemented gender quotas in 2017. For each male hired, a woman must also be hired. To meet this requirement, vastly reduced physical standards have been set for women, despite the dangerous, high-stress job being the same for both sexes. [34]
This illogical campaign for equality of outcome didn’t stop there. The quotas created friction between male and female firefighters, who reported that their male coworkers blamed them for being unqualified and incompetent. Feminist groups latched onto this as “bullying” and “psychological pressure.” The situation created yet another battle for feminists to fight in their ostensible crusade for equality.
But this absurdity is a deliberate step taken by the communist specter: By challenging the supposed patriarchy — that is, traditional society — feminism undermines the traditional family in the same way that class struggle is used to undermine the capitalist system.
In traditional culture, it is taken for granted that men are masculine and women are feminine. Men shoulder responsibility for their families and communities by protecting women and children — the very patriarchal structure that feminism challenges on the grounds that it confers unfair advantages to men while restraining women. Feminism has no place for the traditional spirit of chivalry or gentlemanly behavior. In a feminist world, the men aboard the sinking Titanic would not have sacrificed their places in the lifeboats so that the female passengers could have a better chance at survival.
Feminism’s crusade against patriarchy has had a strong impact on education. A 1975 court ruling on a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Athletic Association ordered schools to allow female students “to practice and compete with boys” in sports teams and other physical activities, including wrestling and American football. Girls could no longer be excluded from a male team on the basis of gender alone. [35]
In her 2013 book, The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men, American scholar Christina Hoff Sommers argues that masculinity is under attack. She showcases Aviation High School in Queens, New York, which primarily accepts students from low-income families. The school, which specializes in teaching its students about the structure and function of aircraft via hands-on projects, raises its students to high standards of academic achievement, and is ranked highly by US News & World Report. The class body is overwhelmingly male. Girls, while making up a smaller percentage of students, also perform remarkably and earn the respect of their peers and instructors.
Nevertheless, Aviation High School faced increasing criticism and threats of lawsuits from feminist organizations demanding that more female students be admitted. Speaking at a roundtable discussion at the White House in 2009, the founder of the National Women’s Law Center took specific aim at Aviation High School as an “egregious example of continuing segregation in vocational-technical schools.” The chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls concluded the discussion by saying, “We are hardly going to rest on our laurels until we have absolute equality, and we are not there yet.” [36]
For feminists, raising boys to pursue masculine traits of independence and adventure, and encouraging girls to be gentle, considerate, and family-oriented, amounts to nothing more than oppression and sexist inequality. Modern feminism is forcing society into a gender-free future by attacking the psychological characteristics of men and women that characterize their respective sex. This has particularly severe implications for children and young people who are in their formative years.
In some European countries, more and more children report feeling that they were born in the wrong body. In 2009, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), based at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London, received 97 referrals for sex transitioning. By 2017, GIDS was receiving more than 2,500 such referrals annually. [37]
Traditional societies regard childbirth and the education of children as sacred duties of women, ordained by the divine. In the annals of both the East and the West, behind every hero was a great mother. Feminism discards this tradition as patriarchal oppression, and holds that expecting women to be responsible for raising their children is a key example of this oppression. Contemporary feminist literature is replete with denunciations of motherhood and married life as being monotonous, boring, and unfulfilling. The bias of this dim view is apparent when considering the personal lives of leading feminists, the majority of whom suffered from broken relationships or failed marriages, or were childless.
Radical feminist views insist that “the personal is political” and see domestic conflicts as gender wars. Some consider men parasites who enslave women’s bodies and minds. Others describe children as a hindrance to women looking to reach their full potential and claim that the roots of oppression are in the family structure. Modern feminism openly proclaims that its aim is to destroy the traditional family. Typical statements include the following: “Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession. … The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn’t be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that,” [38] and, “We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.” [39]
Feminist movements resolved supposed social problems by promoting moral degeneracy and destroying human relations in the name of “liberation.” According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an American economist and gender specialist, modern feminism is the major contributing factor to the proliferation of single-mother households, while no-fault divorce actually provides a convenient means for men to abandon their responsibilities. Ironically, feminism’s assault on the existing family structure works to destroy the haven that ensures the happiness and security of most women.
Easy divorce did not emancipate women. A 2009 study at the London School of Economics found that 27 percent of separated women were living below the poverty line, whereas a man’s income tended to rise more than 30 percent post-separation. [40] Communism cares not at all about women’s rights; feminism is merely a tool to corrupt humankind.
c. Promoting Homosexuality to Undermine the Family
Man and woman were created in divine likeness, and the divine laid out the conditions for human existence. Everyone deserves kindness and respect, and true compassion means upholding divinely established moral codes.
In recent decades, same-sex marriage and other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) causes have been aggressively promoted throughout Western society. The LGBT movement has been closely associated with communism ever since the first utopians began touting the practice of homosexuality as a human right. Since the communist movement claims to emancipate people from the bondage of traditional morality, its ideology naturally calls for LGBT rights as part of its program of “sexual liberation.” Many proponents of sexual liberation who staunchly support homosexuality are communists or leftists. By tying together LGBT rights and sexual liberation, and thereby normalizing promiscuity in general, communists have undermined the sanctity of marriage.
Communism isn’t genuinely interested in the rights of the LGBT community. It uses the vehicle of advocating for LGBT rights as a means to its own end — to destroy the family structure.
The world’s first major gay-rights organization was established in 1897 by members of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), including Magnus Hirschfeld, the co-founder of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, known in German as the Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee (WhK). Hirschfeld publicly campaigned for the decriminalization of homosexuality.
One of the most radical examples of sexual liberation in that era followed the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution in 1917. Soviet sexual policies, which were discussed earlier in this chapter, abolished legal prohibitions on homosexual relationships, making the Soviet Union the most liberal country on earth by leftist standards.
In 1924, inspired by Hirschfeld’s WhK, Henry Gerber founded the first American gay rights organization, The Society for Human Rights. The organization disbanded the following year after several of its members were arrested. In 1950, American communist and Marxist teacher Harry Hay founded the Mattachine Society in his Los Angeles residence. The organization was the first influential gay rights group in the United States. It released its own publications and expanded to other cities. Hay also advocated for pedophilia.
In the 1960s, accompanying the wave of sexual liberalization and the hippie movement, the homosexual cause went public. In 1971, NOW adopted a resolution recognizing that “lesbian rights are ‘a legitimate concern of feminism.’”
In 1997, the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa passed the world’s first constitution that recognized homosexuality as a human right. The ANC, a member of the Socialist International (formerly a branch of the now-defunct Second International), has consistently supported homosexuality.
Communism’s advocacy for homosexuality has contributed to the growth of a number of unhealthy states in that community. A study by researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the estimated rate of diagnoses of HIV among homosexuals in 2008 was between 59 to 75 times that of other men; the syphilis diagnosis rate was 63 to 79 times higher than the heterosexual population. [41] Before breakthroughs in AIDS treatment were made in the 1990s, the average lifespan of 20-year-old homosexuals was eight to twenty-one years shorter than the average population. [42]
The family structure and human morality have been placed under siege by the communist specter’s manipulation and promotion of feminism, sexual liberation, and the LGBT movement.
d. Promoting Divorce and Abortion
Before 1969, when states started to legalize no-fault divorce, state laws across the United States were based on traditional religious values. In order for a divorce to be considered, it required a legitimate claim of fault from one or both of the spouses. Western religions teach that marriage is established by God. A stable family is beneficial to the husband, wife, children, and society overall. For this reason, the church and US state laws all stressed the importance of preserving marriages, except in extenuating circumstances.
But in the 1960s, the ideology of the Frankfurt School had radiated out to society. Traditional marriage came under attack, and the most damage was done by liberalism and feminism. Liberalism rejects the divine nature of marriage by reducing its definition to a social contract between two people, while feminism views the traditional family as a patriarchal instrument in the suppression of women. Divorce was promoted as a woman’s liberation from the oppression of an unhappy marriage, or her path to a thrilling life of adventure. This mindset led to the legalization of no-fault divorce, allowing either spouse to disband a marriage as irreconcilable for any reason.
The US divorce rate grew rapidly in the 1970s and peaked in 1981. For the first time in American history, more marriages were being ended not by death but by disagreements. Of all couples wed in the 1970s, nearly half would divorce, compared to about 11 percent in the 1950s. Advocates of sexual liberation believe that sex should not be limited to the confines of marriage, but unwanted pregnancy presents a natural obstacle to this sort of lifestyle. Contraceptives may fail, so the promoters of unrestricted sex took up the cause of legalizing abortion. The official report from the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo stipulates that reproductive health “implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so.” [43]
At the same time, feminists introduced the slogan “My body, my rights” to argue that women have the right to choose whether to give birth to or kill their unborn child. The debate expanded from allowing abortion under special circumstances to giving women the power to end human life due to personal inconvenience.
By accepting abortion, people have been led to permit the murder of babies and, at the same time, abandon the traditional understanding that sex is for procreation.
e. Using the Welfare System to Encourage Single-Parent Families
In 1960, just 5 percent of children were born to unmarried mothers. At the time, it was taken for granted that children grew up knowing their biological fathers.
By the 2010s, however, unwed mothers accounted for 40 percent of births. [44] From 1965 to 2012, the number of single-parent families in America shot up from 3.3 million to 13.2 million. [45] Though some fathers stayed involved, through cohabitation or later marriage, the majority of children born to these single mothers grew up without their fathers.
Fathers serve as role models to their sons, teaching them how to be men, and show their daughters what it feels like to be respected in the way women deserve. Children suffer greatly from the absence of a father. Research shows that children who grow up without fathers often suffer from low self-esteem. They are more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs, join gangs, commit crimes, and commit suicide. The majority of jailed youths come from fatherless homes. Early sexual experience, teen pregnancy, and promiscuity are also common. People who grow up without their fathers are 40 times more likely to commit sexual offenses compared with the rest of the population. [46]
The Brookings Institution offers three key pieces of advice for young people looking to escape poverty: Graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age twenty-one to marry and have children. According to statistics, only 2 percent of Americans who meet these conditions live in poverty, and 75 percent are considered middle class. [47] In other words, that is the most reliable path toward becoming a responsible adult living a healthy, productive life.
Most single mothers rely on government aid. A report published by The Heritage Foundation used detailed statistical data to show that the welfare policy so strongly advocated by feminists actually encourages the creation of single-mother households, even to the point of penalizing couples who marry, as they are eligible for fewer benefits. [48] The government has effectively replaced the father with welfare.
Welfare policies have not helped families living in poverty. Instead, they have simply supported the ever-increasing number of single-parent families. With the children of such households themselves prone to poverty, the result is a vicious cycle of expanding reliance on state aid. This is exactly what communism aims to achieve: control over every aspect of the individual’s life.
f. Promoting Degenerate Culture
In 2000, 55 percent of Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four were married, and 34 percent had never been married. By 2015, these figures had almost reversed, with 40 percent married and 53 percent never married. Researchers studying this trend at the University of Texas–Austin found that young people in the United States were avoiding marriage because, in today’s culture, sex and marriage are considered separate. So why should they marry? [49]
In this degenerate environment, the trend is toward casual, no-strings-attached hookups; sex has nothing to do with affection, let alone commitment and responsibility. Even more absurd is the profusion of new sexual orientations, which are now thrown around like fashion statements. Facebook’s user-profile options in the United Kingdom, for example, at one point included more than seventy different genders. If young people can’t even tell whether they are male or female, how will they view marriage? Communism has used the law and society to completely rework these divine-given concepts.
“Adultery” used to be a negative term referring to immoral sexual conduct. Today, it has been watered down to “extramarital sexual relations” or “cohabitation.” In the classic 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the protagonist, Hester Prynne, committed adultery and struggled to remake herself through repentance, but in today’s society, repentance is not necessary: Adulterers can proudly enjoy life, holding their heads high. Chastity used to be a virtue in both Eastern and Western cultures; today, it is treated as an anachronistic joke.
Passing judgment on homosexuality and sexual morality is forbidden under today’s political correctness. The only acceptable stance is to respect others’ “free choice.” This is true not only in everyday life, but throughout academia, in which morality is divorced from practical reality. Deviated and degenerated things have been normalized. Those who indulge in their desires feel no pressure or guilt.
Western people under the age of fifty can barely remember the culture that used to exist in society, in which almost all children grew up with the presence of their biological fathers. “Gay” meant “happy.” White wedding gowns represented chastity. Pornographic content was banned from TV and radio. All that has been undone in just sixty years.
5. How the Chinese Communist Party Destroys Families
a. Breaking Up Families in the Name of Equality
Mao Zedong’s slogan “Women hold up half the sky” has now made its way to the West as a trendy feminist catchphrase. The ideology that men and women are the same, as promoted by the Chinese Communist Party, is essentially no different from Western feminism. In the West, “gender discrimination” is used as a weapon to maintain a state of “political correctness.” In China, the label “male chauvinism” is used to similar destructive effect, though it differs in practice.
The gender equality advocated by Western feminism demands equality of outcome between men and women through measures such as gender quotas, financial compensation, and lowered standards. Under the CCP’s slogan that women hold up half the sky, women are expected to show the same ability in the same work that is done by their male counterparts. Those who attempted to perform tasks for which they were hardly qualified were lauded as heroines and awarded titles such as March 8th Red Banner Holder, given to contemporary women who “vigorously promote socialist core values.”
CCP propaganda posters in the 1960s and ’70s typically portrayed women as physically robust and powerful, while Mao enthusiastically called on women to turn their love for makeup toward military uniforms. Mining, lumbering, steelmaking, fighting in the battlefield — every type of job or role was opened up to women.
On October 1, 1966, the People’s Daily ran a story titled “Girls Can Slaughter Pigs, Too.” It described an eighteen-year-old woman who became a local celebrity by working as a slaughterhouse apprentice. Studying Mao Zedong Thought helped her to work up the courage to slaughter pigs. She said, “If you can’t even kill a pig, how can you expect to kill the enemy?” [50]
Although Chinese women “hold up half the sky,” feminists in the West still find China’s gender equality lacking in many areas. The CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, which currently has seven members, has never included a woman. The CCP fears that the inclusion of a woman would encourage a social movement demanding more political rights, such as democracy, posing a fatal threat to the Party’s totalitarian rule.
Out of similar concerns, the Party also refrains from publicly supporting homosexuality and takes a relatively neutral stance on the issue. However, the Party has at times quietly encouraged homosexuality in China by using the influence of media and popular culture. The media discreetly substituted the colloquialism “gay” with “comrade,” a term with more positive connotations. In 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 2009, the CCP approved the first Shanghai Pride Week.
The approaches may vary, but the communist specter pursues the same goal everywhere: to abolish the traditional ideal of a good wife and loving mother, to force women to abandon their gentle character, and to destroy the harmony between men and women that is needed to create a balanced family and bring up well-adjusted children.
b. Turning Husbands and Wives Against Each Other
Traditional Chinese values are based on family morality. The devil knows that the most effective way to undermine traditional values is to start by sabotaging human relations. In the continuous political struggles launched by the CCP, family members reported each other to the authorities in a mad competition for a better political status. By betraying those closest to them, they could demonstrate a firmer, more loyal stance in favor of Party orthodoxy.
In December 1966, Mao’s secretary Hu Qiaomu was dragged to the Beijing Iron and Steel Institute, where his own daughter took to the stage and shouted, “Smash Hu Qiaomu’s dog head!” Although she did not take part, others did injure him. Around the same time, the Red Guards found a “capitalist” family in the Dongsi subdistrict of Beijing. The guards beat the parents to near-death, then forced the middle-school-age son to smash in his father’s skull with dumbbells. The boy went insane afterward. [51]
Often, those condemned by the Party as “class enemies” disowned their families so as to spare them from implication. Even “class enemies” who committed suicide would first have to break off family ties, lest the CCP hound their relatives afterward. For example, when the literary theorist Ye Yiqun was persecuted and driven to suicide in the Cultural Revolution, his parting letter read, “Going forward, the only thing that is required of you is to resolutely listen to the Party’s words, stand firm on the Party’s position, gradually recognize my sins, stir up hatred against me, and unwaveringly break off our familial ties.” [52]
In the modern era, the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong is the largest political campaign launched by the CCP. A common strategy the authorities use against Falun Gong practitioners is to coerce their family members into aiding the persecution. The CCP imposes administrative harassment, financial penalties, and other forms of intimidation and leverage upon family members to get them to pressure practitioners into giving up their faith. The CCP blames the victims of persecution for their families being harassed, saying the harassment only continues because the practitioner refuses to compromise his or her beliefs. Many Falun Gong practitioners have been divorced or disowned by their loved ones due to this form of persecution. Countless families have been torn apart by the Party’s campaign.
c. Using Forced Abortion for Population Control
Shortly after Western feminists succeeded in the battle to legalize abortion, women in the People’s Republic of China had mandatory abortions imposed upon them by the CCP’s family-planning policies. The mass killing of the unborn has resulted in a humanitarian and social disaster on an unprecedented scale.
The CCP follows Marxist materialism and believes that childbirth is a form of productive action no different from steelmaking or agriculture. It thus follows that the philosophy of economic planning should be extended to the family. Mao said: “Mankind must control itself and implement planned growth. It may sometimes increase a bit, and it may come to a halt at times.” [53]
In the 1980s, the Chinese regime began to enforce the one-child policy with extreme and brutal measures, as exhibited by slogans unfurled across the country: “If one person violates the law, the whole village will be sterilized”; “Birth the first, tie your tubes after the second, scrape out the third and fourth!” (A variation of this slogan was simply “Kill, kill, kill the third and fourth.”); “We would rather see a stream of blood than a birth too many”; and “Ten more graves is better than one extra life.” Such bloodthirsty lines were ubiquitous throughout China.
The National Health and Family Planning Commission used heavy fines, plunder, demolition of residences, assault, detention, and other such punishments to deal with violations of the one-child policy. In some places, family-planning officials drowned babies by throwing them into paddy fields. Even expecting mothers just days away from giving birth were forced to have abortions.
In 2013, the regime’s health ministry published figures revealing that at least 336 million abortions had been performed in China since 1971. The one-child policy began in 1979, meaning that for the more than thirty years of its existence, several million unborn children were murdered by the CCP every year.
One of the most serious consequences of the one-child policy is the disproportionate number of female infants aborted or abandoned, leading to a serious imbalance in the male-to-female ratio of Chinese under the age of forty. Due to the shortage of females, it is estimated that by 2020, some thirty million young men would be unable to marry a woman of childbearing age.
China’s man-made sex imbalance has triggered serious social problems, such as an increase in sexual abuse and prostitution, commercialized marriage, and the trafficking of women.
6. The Consequences of Communism’s Assault on the Family
Marx and other communists played up phenomena like adultery, prostitution, and illegitimate children in order to lend credence to their anti-marriage and anti-family theories — as though the existence of such vices meant that the prevailing social norms were hypocritical and corrupt.
The gradual degeneration of morality that began in the Victorian era eroded the sacred institution of marriage and led people further away from divine teachings. Communists urged women to violate their marital oaths for the sake of their supposed personal happiness, but the result was just the opposite.
Communism’s “solution” for oppression and inequality amounts to nothing more than dragging down the standards of human morality to hellish depths. It turns behavior once universally condemned as ugly and unforgivable into the new norm. In the “equality” of communism, all are marching toward the same fate — destruction.
The specter of communism created the mistaken belief that sin is not caused by the degeneration of morality, but by social oppression. It led people to look for a way out through turning their backs on tradition and moving away from the divine. It used the beautiful rhetoric of freedom and liberation to advocate feminism, homosexuality, and sexual perversion. Women have been stripped of their dignity, men have been robbed of their responsibility, and the sanctity of the family has been trampled upon, turning the children of today into the devil’s playthings.
| Chapter Seven (Part I) | Chapter Eight (Part I) |
References
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