Since China instituted it's One Child Policy in 1979, an estimated 50 million women in China are conspicuously missing from the population. By limiting the size of families in a strongly patriarchal society, the government, perhaps unintentionally, instituted a policy that has led to the one of the worse femicides in history. But can what is happening in China be considered a genocide?
Lemkin limits the types of groups that can be the victim of genocide to national, ethnic, religious, and cultural identities. Gender is notably absent from his definition. Additionally, the people targeting women in China do not belong to any particular group. They are not simply acting out orders or succumbing to the group mentality often seen in perpetrators of genocide, as noted by authors like Staub. The events in China are not institutionalized or systematic, which goes against many authors conceptions of genocide being the tool of a government. Some argue that the disparity in the birth rate is a result of female births merely going unreported, not female offspring being killed, which goes against notions of genocide as strictly the physical extermination of a group. Thus, the events in China do not resemble genocide by many traditional definitions and applications.
Even so, the destruction of a group united by their identity undeniably resembles Lemkin's definitions of genocide. The girls are targeted for their gender, an unchangeable aspect of their identity. Unborn and newborn girls are deliberately killed while authorities look on passively. Others girls are killed by neglect or displaced in orphanages. Mass extermination by murder, neglect, or displacement all adhere to Lemkin's notion of genocide. Furthermore, unreported girls face great difficulty in accessing state benefits like education, thus preventing them from participating in the national culture. In this way the female culture is crippled or eliminated from the culture as a whole. Culture as well as physical extermination are factors of Lemkin's definition. In these ways, the methods used against women in China resemble those described by Lemkin in his definition genocide.
When discussing the case of girls in China, the media is quick to use terms like "gendercide", "femicide", and even "Holocaust", and yet they are extremely reluctant to use the word "genocide". In fact, some articles note that concept of female infanticide as a type of genocide is often disputed. This reluctance to define what is happening in China as a genocide perhaps stems from the complex and often contradictory nature of how we conceive of genocide. Yet I would argue that, other than being excluded from Lemkin's list of group identities, the war on women in China strongly resembles Lemkin's original definition of what constitutes a genocide.
The femocide in China seems parallel in many ways to a current debate in the United States. The Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination act of 2011 aims to, “prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis of sex or race, and for other purposes.” This legislature is in response to fears that abortion is used to control and limit black reproduction specifically. Propaganda has included billboards showing a picture of a young black girl with the words, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” Is abortion “black genocide?”
ReplyDeleteYou somewhat refute the argument that aborting fetuses in China is “genocide” because it does not fit with Lemkin’s definition of the term. You say, “Lemkin limits the types of groups that can be the victim of genocide to national, ethnic, religious, and cultural identities.” While we may be morally uncomfortable with the way females are treated in China, because the femicide does not aim to destroy a specific culture, I think we are both hesitant to define it as genocide.
What about the accusations that fetuses in the U.S. are being aborted for race? Because this case is dealing with race specifically, does that make it genocide? First of all, it is unclear if this is a real problem. While it is possible to tell the gender of a developing fetus, it is not possible to see the color it’s skin. This makes the accusations of race-selected abortion suspicious. It would be up to the doctor to determine the motives of the woman seeking the abortion. Unless the woman says, “I want an abortion because my fetus is black” it is absolutely impossible to prove that is her motive. This bill would most likely target women of color and be used to further restrict access to abortion.
Ignoring that this issue might not actually exist, does it fit with the rest of the definition? Is it systematic and institutionalized? As you discuss, and I think is an important distinction between the alleged “black genocide” in the U.S. and the feticide in China, about where the authority is coming from. The Chinese government is mandating the “One Child Policy.” They are instituting power over the bodies of their citizens. In The United States, however, there is no direct control coming from the government. The decision to have an abortion is coming from the individual women for a variety of reasons. The attempts at restricting a woman’s choice over her own body, however, are definitely a government controlling the bodies of its citizens.