(C-Fam) The UN agency tasked with elevating the status of women around the world is promoting the use of gender-neutral language, including the elimination of “binary” terms like “women or men,” as part of its strategy to advance gender equality.
According to educational materials published by UN Women, taboo words include “women” and “female,” which is surprising considering that UN Women has the word “women” in its name. The article claims that “diverse gender identities have always existed in every culture,” and using words like “male or female” excludes non-binary or intersex people who don’t fall neatly into these categories.
UN Women further claims that sex, gender, gender identity, and gender expression exist independently of each other, referencing the “Genderbread Person” – a diagram which asserts that gender identity is associated with the brain, while sex is related only to one’s genitals.
Feminist activists criticized the publication. “An organization cannot claim to advocate for women if it cannot define what a woman is,” said Lauren Adams, Legal Director of Women’s Liberation Front, a feminist activist organization focused on the advancement of biological women which actively fights against desegregation of women’s sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms. “It is a dereliction of duty to pretend that the words women and girls include male people. This type of ‘advocacy’ makes UN Women appear to be a very unserious organization.”
“Gender identity is literally threatening to erase women and girls as a meaningful category … in language and in law,” said Kara Dansky of the Women’s Human Right’s Campaign. “We view that as an emergency.”
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UN Women was founded by the UN General Assembly in 2010 to promote “women’s empowerment” and “gender equality” throughout the work of the United Nations. There was no suggestion at the time that the term “gender equality” would be interpreted as synonymous with LGBT issues. Since 2010, the agency has promoted the notion of “the equality of all genders,” including transgender and homosexual issues in its work. The agency uses language in UN resolutions about “multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination” to justify this expansion of its mandate.
Despite the pitfalls associated with claiming to advocate for women, while denying that women have any inherent qualities distinguishing them from men, UN Women’s executive board is currently negotiating its third strategic plan, which continues to pursue an “intersectional approach.”
UN Women is also seeking a new executive director to navigate this self-inflicted “gender identity” quagmire since Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka stepped down this month. The next UN Women leader will be faced with uniting feminist transgender rights advocates and radical feminists who resist the trend towards eliminating policies that address the needs of “women” and “girls” in favor of gender-neutral policies, to say nothing of the many women around the world who do not identify as feminist.
For example, UN Women and other UN agencies now advocate against “gender-based violence” rather than “violence against women.” Critics claim that these new policies undermine decades of hard work to elevate the status of women and are directing funds away from programs that are proven to help women and girls in crisis.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Under-Secretary-General Pramila Patten as officer-in-charge of UN Women until a permanent Executive Director is appointed. Patten served as the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict since April 2017.
LifeNews.com Note: Alexis I. Fragosa, Esq writes for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article originally appeared in the pro-life group’s Friday Fax publication and is reprinted with permission.
