The Red Sea

“Death of Innocents” by Callum Russell Summary I...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:35:00 -0400

“Death of Innocents” by Callum Russell

Summary

I have long been an admirer of Chinese art, particularly the tradition of paper-cutting as it is my primary method of working. A couple of years ago I started researching and reading into the one child policy, into what had been going on, and what continues to happen in China. With these two interests combined I felt compelled to create a piece of work which would not only explore the theme but would also expose the injustice to an unintentionally ignorant Western audience. Using the language of traditional Chinese symbolism and technique I created a large scale red paper cutout depicting the struggle and injustices for chinese girls. The piece is called Death of the Innocents, a reference to the Rubens paintings that depict the biblical Massacre of the Innocents of Bethlehem, as related in the Gospel of Matthew. Using the dragon as the symbol for the male, and the phoenix for female, as well as the ideas of an unbalanced yin and yang, and the oppression of these girls I have created a piece which on first glance looks like a piece from the Chinese tradition of red papercuts, but under closer examination is revealed to be a critique of the outdated and unjust policy. What appear to be cherubs or angels in the background clouds are actually girls falling, the dragon and the phoenix are evolving from the umbilical cords of the central child figures - the dragons teeth latched onto the tail of the phoenix, and the simple but violent action of creating a piece of art by using a surgical scalpel to physically cut out pieces poignantly echoes the ‘cutting out’ of a generation of defenseless innocents.

Bio

I am a recently graduated illustrator from London England. I work primarily in papercut, drawing inspiration from the rich history of the craft and combining it with modern digital technologies. Visit my website to see more of my work.

Regan Lookadoo is an Associate Professor of Psychology at...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:05:53 -0500

Regan Lookadoo is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky. While teaching the course, Psychology of Slavery, she began to see a real energy among the students as their initial shock concerning modern day slavery turned into a passion towards advocacy. Lookadoo used this energy to lead a two year focus on human trafficking on campus which culminated in The Uniting Minds, Transforming Lives: Kentucky Conference on Human Trafficking which was held on March 22-24^th, 2012. Itwas the first statewide conference in Kentucky on Human Trafficking that incorporated both awareness and specific advocacy methods for professional and educational settings. The purpose of the conference was to spread knowledge of the injustice of human trafficking and engage and unite Kentuckians with local and national organizations to fight against human trafficking across the globe. Georgetown College now has a student abolitionist group that organizes monthly events to raise awareness of the issue of human trafficking and Lookadoo is hopeful that the college can again host another conference for the state in the near future.

"Gendercide Undone: Evaluating the Causes of South Korea's Return to Normal Sex Ratios" by Nicole Christine Frazer

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:25:00 -0400

Summary: After studying the problem of gendercide in China, I decided to examine another nation—South Korea—that struggled with gendercide in the 80s and 90s but somehow managed to bring its sex ratio within normal ratios during the past decade. My submission is the fruit of that examination—in the form of an extensive piece of original research. I focus a large portion of the paper on outlining six primary theories on what elements played the most important roles in ending Korea’s gender imbalance; later, I weigh the validity of these theories. To my knowledge, there is no other piece of research as extensive as this one that examines the plausibility of the different theories as to how South Korea fixed its gendercide problem. I hope that this piece can be used by both laypeople and policymakers to help end gendercide in China and throughout the world because it examines different aspects of South Korea’s transformation and discusses whether or not facets of South Korea’s transition can be exported to other nations.

I wrote this piece because I find South Korea’s story both confounding and inspiring. Confounding because the myriad forces that drove Korea’s resolution of gendercide are difficult—and sometimes impossible—to nail down. Inspiring because Korea is the only nation in modern times that has reversed rampant gendercide. And ultimately, for me, this piece represents hope: hope for the unwanted women and girls of Eastern Europe, India, and China—and anywhere else that gendercide is rampant. As I write in the paper, this piece holds deep meaning for me because Korea’s history of gendercide is a tragic and muddled one—yet, its experience is ringed about with hope.

Bio: A graduate of Patrick Henry College with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Nicole is currently a law student at the University of Virginia. While an undergraduate, she founded the college chapter of All Girls Allowed at Patrick Henry College and sat on the national student board for AGA. Her professional experience includes working for Prison Fellowship Ministries, the Heritage Foundation, and United States Senator Richard Lugar. Currently, Nicole is pursuing her degree in law at the University of Virginia; she one day hopes to use her legal experience to help abused, battered, and underrepresented women throughout the world obtain legal representation within their own legal systems.

I want to be able to continue to research on the issue of gendercide. I especially want to focus on other countries that have, or had in the the past, abysmal gender ratios, looking at how the experiences of other countries with gendercide can help us understand—and hopefully come closer—to solving China’s problem.

Below is an excerpt from the paper. Click here to read the paper in its entirety

Gendercide Undone: Evaluating the Causes of South Korea’s Return to Normal Sex Ratios

“A woman must follow three men in her lifetime: her father, her husband, and finally her eldest son.” ~ Confucian principle of samjong-jido[1]

“”There are three unfilial acts: the greatest of these is the failure to produce sons.” ~ Confucius[2]

“[To] choose the sexes of our children … is one of the most stupendously sexist acts in which it is possible to engage. It is the original sexist sin … [Both pre- and post- conception technologies] make the most basic judgment about the worth of a human being rest first and foremost on its sex.” ~ Tabitha Powledge[3]

The modern world is facing a demographic and human rights crisis of astronomical proportions: one hundred sixty-million girls are missing from the world today. Throughout much of the world, and especially Eastern Europe and Asia, a decided preference for male babies is held by much of the population. Women and men in many cultures want to have sons—and are using modern technologies, such as sex-selective abortion, to unsure that they do so. In China, over 120 boys are born for every 100 girls, and in India 108 boys are born for every 100 girls. The slaughter of millions of female fetuses has resulted in a host of problems, including increased human trafficking and abysmally high suicide rates among women.

But in the midst of this dismal picture for baby girls throughout the world, one bright light stands out: South Korea. In 1990, South Korea was experiencing a gender imbalance almost as high as China’s today and the highest in the world at the time. Yet as of 2007, South Korea had brought its male-female ratio at birth down to a natural level. But how did South Korea manage this unheard-of feat in such a short period of time? And what implications and hope does South Korea’s experience hold for other nations—such as China and India—that are facing similar gender imbalances? This paper will examine the answers that various authors have given to these questions, ultimately concluding that demographic and reproductive law enforcement theories stand up better than do theories centering on the status of women in Korea. While a cursory look at the various theories might lead one to believe that factors that have elevated the status of women in Korea have done the most to decrease gendercide, this paper ultimately finds that demographic and reproductive law enforcement have played the most important role in ending gendercide in Korea.

Part I of this paper will lay the background for the remainder of the paper; it will flesh out terms and concepts utilized to describe woman-killing, explain normal sex ratios and modern sex ratios throughout the world, and briefly outline the development of modern sex selection technologies. Part II will give a brief history of sex selection and changing sex ratios in South Korea. Part III will outline six primary theories on what elements played the most important part in ending Korea’s gender imbalance. Part IV will form the conclusion of this paper and will briefly discuss the relevance of Korea’s experience to the experiences of other nations facing similar gender imbalances. Ultimately, Korea’s history of gendercide is a tragic and muddled one—yet, its experience is ringed about with hope.

Part I: Background in Terms, Sex Ratios, and Sex-Selection Technologies

The Killing of Women: Terms and Concepts

A plethora of terms and concepts are utilized in the discussion of various actions and crimes that result in gender[4] disparities. When narrowly-defined, femicide means “the misogynist killing of women by men.”[5] More loosely, femicide can be defined as “the killing of females by males because they are females”;[6] in other words, all types of killings propagated by men against women for sexist reasons. In contrast, the term gendercide applies to any killings directed against a particular sex, regardless of whether the perpetrators of the killings were male or female. Mary Anne Warren, who originally coined the term, defined gendercide as “those wrongful forms of sexual discrimination which reduce the relative number of females or males, whether through direct killing or in more indirect ways.”[7] Some authors, however, find gendercide to be a “somewhat misleading and limited term”[8] since it has been used too broadly by some writers to portray every murder as an inherently gendered act. Notably, the term gendercide can apply to sex-based killing of men or women, while femicide includes only the killing of women.

Both femicide and gendercide may be loosely considered to fall under the broader category of genocide, which the United Nations’ 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:(a) Killing members of the group;(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”[9] Thus, femicide and gendercide are forms of genocide, because both involve the intent to destroy a large group of individuals based exclusively on their “indelible group membership.”[10]

Two key terms are commonly-used to frame the means by which gendercide and femicide are carried out against children at a young age. Infanticide, or the killing of infants, is one method. Infanticide has roots that extend far back into history; R.J. Rummel concludes that “the death toll from infanticide must exceed that from mass sacrifice and perhaps even outright mass murder.”[11] While on an individual basis infanticide can be carried out against any infant, “there are almost no examples of groups engaging in preferential male infanticide as a universal social practice.”[12] Another method of killing is feticide, or the killing of a fetus; in this paper, abortion will be included under the umbrella term of feticide. Both “infanticide and feticide have been used as the means to eliminate unwanted children throughout history; however these practices have been and still are disproportionately applied to females.”[13] In general, as access to abortion and other reproductive technologies increases, feticide seems to be replacing infanticide as the preferred means of sex-selecting children.

In this paper, the term gendercide will be utilized, as it rightly encompasses the fact that sex-preferential policies and actions in South Korea were forwarded and instigated by both men and women. Additionally, although gendercide can be committed against either men or women, this paper will utilize the term exclusively in the context of gendercide against women, and will be narrowly-utilized to apply only to the killing of women and girls inherently because they are female. While this paper will touch on infanticide, it will primarily focus on the feticide directed against females in South Korea. Ultimately, utilizing these basic definitions, this paper will seek to shed light on why South Korea experienced high levels of gendercide, primarily through feticide—and how South Korea managed to end widespread gendercidal practices.

Global Sex Ratios: Gender Balanced and Imbalanced

Across all societies that record births throughout documented history, between 103 and 106 boys are born for every 100 girls;[14] this ratio “appears to be the natural order of things.” This slightly-skewed, natural ratio of male to female births appears to level out later in life due to the fact that mortality rates differ for men and women during different times of their lives. For example,

Males are generally more susceptible to death in the first year of life, with a marked difference in mortality rates during this period, and throughout childhood males continue to have higher mortality rates. In addition to increased vulnerability to genetic disorders, male infants are more susceptible to infectious diseases… . As males and females approach old age, males tend to die younger than females.[15]

Ultimately, “boys outnumber girls at birth because men outnumber women in early deaths.”[16]

As of 2010, most regions in the world fall within the range of 103 to 106 males to every 100 females at birth. Africa’s ratio is 104:100; Europe’s, 106:100; South America’s, 105:100; and North America’s, 105:100.[17] As the population ages, these ratios naturally drop and even reverse themselves due to the fact that men generally have a shorter life expectancy than women. For example, the overall male to female sex ratio of the population in Africa is 100:100; in Europe, 93:100; in South America 97.6:100; and in North America 97.5:100.[18]

However, Asia falls far outside the normal range with 109 females born for every 100 males. This ratio is even more shocking when one compares this ratio with the ratio that some demographers believe should be prevalent throughout Asia; due to their high fertility levels and youthful age structure, Asian populations should exhibit sex ratios of 101 to 103 males born per every 100 females.[19] In Asia, the wide gender disparity at birth is largely due to the abysmal birth ratios in India and China. Both India and China, along with various other countries in Asia, have troubling and unnatural sex ratios at birth; China’s ratio is 120:100, and India’s is 108:100.[20] As China and India account for one-third of the global population, “their lopsided birth totals have already skewed the sex ratio at birth of the entire world, which has risen from 105 to the biologically impossible 107.”[21] Gendercide against women has ultimately led to millions of missing women in the world—the World Health Organization places the number of missing women in China alone at fifty million, while other demographers put the number as high as one hundred million.[22] Overall, there are 160 million missing women in the world due to gendercide.[23]

Sex-Selection Technologies and Population Control

South Korea presents a unique exception to the troubling trend of increasingly large sex-selection ratios in Asia; it “was the first country to report exceptionally high sex ratios and has been the first to cut them.”[24] But before the ratio improved in Korea, the male to female birth rate was abysmal. New reproductive technologies and new mindsets helped to make sex-selective abortion prevalent in Korea, particularly during the 1980s. Yet, many of these new mindsets did not originate in Korea; rather, they were conceived and popularized in the West.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the use of different types of contraceptives was on the rise in the West, and technologies such as the ultrasound were being developed that would eventually enable parents to ascertain the sex of their child in utero. At the same time, a dangerous idea was coming into vogue—an idea that, when united with these new reproductive technologies, would prove to have dramatic affects on demographics worldwide. This idea was population control, and some of its promoters embraced radical solutions to what they believed was an impending demographic and resource crisis. Paul Elrich’s 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, advocated Malthusian ideas and claimed that world population would shortly outpace basic resources and production capabilities on a global level; he urged for radical responses to the purported population crisis. Among his solutions, he “helped popularize the idea that ensuring couples sons was an effective means of curbing population growth.”[25] This idea was quickly exported from the West. Initially, however, the curbing of population growth was not gendercidal, since reproductive technologies were not yet advanced enough to determine the sex of a child before birth. Thus, at this time, sex-preferentiality was exhibited through what became known as the “stopping rule”—the phenomenon that occurred when “couples kept having children until they had a son.”[26] Once they had a son, they would stop having children. This trend was especially prevalent in Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, and was so prevalent that demographers could often determine whether a couple would have another child by knowing the gender of the couple’s last child.[27]

But technologies that determined the gender of a child in utero—such as amniocentesis and superior ultrasound technology—were soon developed and access to them quickly became widespread. In 1976 the United States government approved the use of amniocentesis for second-trimester pregnancies. Amniocentesis involves the extraction of amniotic fluid and the subsequent analysis of fetal material found within the fluid to determine various attributes of the embryo—including its gender. By 1979, amniocentesis “could identify fetal sex to nearly 100 percent accuracy.”[28] A few years later, cheap, mass-produced ultrasounds arrived on the global scene.[29] As the 1970s drew to a close, the scene was set for massive levels of both feticide and female-focused gendercide through sex-selective abortion.[30]

Part II: Sex-Selection and Sex-Ratios in South Korea: A Brief History

The wide sex ratios that occurred in South Korea in the 1980s appeared partially because “the widespread use of sex-selective technology in South Korea preceded that of other Asian countries.”[31] When the Korean War ended in 1953, South Korea experienced a baby boom that helped to make it “the next major crisis zone for population workers.”[32] The groundwork for widespread sex-selective abortion was laid in the early 1960s, as the United States pressured Korea to increase its efforts to stem its population. The International Planned Parenthood Foundation formed the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea on April 1, 1961, and the Population Council began officially working with the Korean government in 1962.[33]

Western proponents of family planning—both employees of the federal government and workers for NGOS—wielded a large amount of influence over the South Korean government under Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1979. During the 1960s, Korea allocated twenty-five percent of its health budget to family planning, and 1,500 Korean family planning fieldworkers placed themselves at the disposal of Western advisers.[34] In order to help Korea create a fleet of mobile population control clinics, the U.S. Agency for International Development donated eleven reconditioned U.S. Army Ambulances, fifty Jeeps, and fifty busses and half-ton trucks.[35]

Meanwhile, Korean law and law enforcement were adapting to the new reproductive climate. While sections 269 and 270 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Korea of 1953 prohibited abortion for any reason, with the family planning programs of the early 1960s “abortion became a common practice despite the legal prohibition, mainly because a large number of physicians were willing to perform abortions and the officials were reluctant to enforce the law.”[36] The 1973 Maternal and Child Health Law established exemptions to this prohibition;[37] still, most abortions remained illegal. Yet the non-existent level of enforcement meant that abortion could and would become widespread.

Despite an influx of foreign support for family planning and a changing legal climate, the Korean populace was not initially keen on embracing contraception and abortion. Some women rejected contraception because they wanted to have a son.[38] Additionally, many South Koreans lived in rural areas that were difficult for family planners to reach. Here, the roving population control fleet came into play; small teams traveled the country, performing IUD insertions and sterilizations in the backs of the vehicles. Team members were incentivized to perform as many IUD insertions and sterilizations as possible, as they were paid on a per-procedure basis.[39] While most abortions were illegal, the roving clinics did perform them, often pressuring women to abort and then undergo sterilization. Reports indicate that Korean women did not seek abortion at their own volition, and in some cases were even forced to have abortions or undergo sterilizations.[40]

In the end, mindsets about abortion began to shift; in a 1971 survey “81 per cent of the women reported a strong preference for legalizing abortion.”[41] By 1977, “doctors in Seoul were performing 2.75 abortions for every birth—the highest documented rate of abortion in human history.”[42] Ultimately, the fertility goals of the population planners were met; the number of children born per women dropped from 6.33 between 1955 and 1960 to 4.71 between 1965 and 1970, and continued to drop, falling to 2.92 between 1975 and 1980.[43] At the same time, the disparity between males and females born began to grow. Until 1970, the sex ratio at birth in South Korea was between 105 and 107 boys to every 100 girls; after 1970, it began to slowly climb, hitting a ratio of 108.3:100 in 1980.[44]

In the 1980s, efforts to continue to decrease population growth in South Korea intensified. Korea’s new military ruler, Chun Doo-hwan, realized that population control “had proven a reliable source of foreign aid”[45] and eagerly continued to pursue funding for population control initiatives. The World Bank gave Korea a loan of $30 million that was earmarked for family planning and later transferred millions more to the country through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.[46] Mobile clinics re-appeared and a new slogan informed Koreans that “Even Two Is A Lot” as Chun implemented a policy similar to China’s one-child policy; he decreased the recommended number of children to one and denied social benefits to women who violated the policy.[47] Ultimately, “the additional pressure the campaign placed on women to restrict their fertility no doubt played a role in South Korea’s 1980s binge of sex selective abortions.”[48]

The long-term effects of two decades of extreme population control and gendercidal sex-selective abortion began to surface during the 1980s and early 1990s. The number of children born per woman continued to plummet, falling to 2.23 between 1980 and 1985 and to 1.60 between 1985 and 1990.[49] The sex ratio continued rise; in 1990 it hit the abysmal number of 116.9 boys born for every 100 girls born[50]—at that point in time the highest sex ratio in the world.[51] The future of women in Korea looked to be increasingly dim, since “there were nearly 25% more males born in 1980-84 than females of the appropriate age.”[52] By the 1980s, the shortage of women available for marriage could already be felt.[53] Additionally, the ability to abort unwanted female fetuses in hope of having a boy enabled women to avoid the phenomenon that occurred with the “stopping rule.” This fact exhibited itself in the increasing male to female ratio with each birth order. In 1992, the male to female ratio for the birth of a first child was 117.9:100, a clear indication that parents were using prenatal technologies to ascertain the sex of their child—and in many cases to abort their girls.[54] But this ratio rose sharply with birth order; in 1992 the sex ratio at birth for fourth children was 228.8:100.[55] Thus, instead of waiting until they had a son to stop having children (as Korean parents had previously done), parents seem to have determined how many children they wanted and then began practicing abortion if they had not had a boy and were pregnant with their last desired child.

Yet from the mid-1990s to the present, dramatic changes occurred in South Korea. While the fertility rate remained very low (1.22 children were born per woman between 2000 and 2005, and 1.29 children were born per woman between 2005 and 2010),[56] the sex ratio completely reversed itself. By 2000, the sex ratio at birth had dropped to 109.6:100.[57] In 2007, the Republic of Korea announced that it had reached normal sex ratios at birth, and the United States Central Intelligence Agency puts the current male to female ratio at birth at 1.069:100.[58] South Korea is the only country in modern history to have a highly-abnormal birth ratio and then to reduce that number to fall within normal ratios.[59] Perhaps even more significant is that South Korea experienced this transformation in less than twenty years. Given the surprising but encouraging anomaly that Korea represents, the means by which it righted its gendercidal problems must be examined, in order to determine what factors should be present in other nations with high sex ratios that hope to fix their gendercidal problems. [Read the rest of the full paper here]

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[1] As quoted by Haejoang Cho, “Male Dominance and Mother Power: The Two Sides of Confucian Patriarchy in Korea,” in Confucianism and the Family, eds. Walter H. Slote and George A. De Vos (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), 192.

[2] As quoted at www.eubios.info/EJAIB72010.pdf.

[3] Tabitha Powledge, “Unnatural Selection: On Choosing Children’s Sex,” in The Custom-Made

Child? Women-Centered Perspectives, eds. Helen B. Holmes, Betty B. Hoskins, and M. Gross (Clifton, New Jersey: The Humana Press, 1981), 196, quoted by Helen B. Homes and Betty B. Hoskins, “Prenatal and Preconception Sex Choice Technologies: A Path to Femicide?” in Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, ed.. Alison M. Jagger (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994), 308.

[4] For the purposes of this paper, the word “gender” is used interchangeably with “sex.” This is consistent with the definition utilized by the International Criminal Court, which holds “that the term ‘gender’ refers to the

two sexes, male and female, within the context of society.” See “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” (Article 7, Section 3), July 1, 2001, http://untreaty.un.org/cod/icc/statute/english/rome_statute(e).pdf (accessed November 11, 2011).

[5] Jill Radford, Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing (New York, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), xi.

[6] Diana E. H. Russell, Femicide in Global Perspective (New York, New York: Teachers College Press, 2001), 13.

[7]Mary Anne Warren, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985), 1.

[8] Alex Alvarez, Genocidal Crimes, (New York, New York: Routledge, 2010), 26.

[9] “United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” December 9, 1948, http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html (accessed November 11, 2011).

[10] Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2008), 31.

[11] Ibid., 66.

[12] Andrea Parrot and Nina Cummings, Forsaken Females: The Global Brutalization of Women (Oxford, United Kingdom: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 56.

[13] Ibid., 53.

[14] “Gendercide: The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility, and Ancient Prejudice are Combining to Unbalance Societies,” The Economist, March 4, 2010, www.economist.com/ node/15636231 (accessed November 7, 2011).

[15] Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer, Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2004), 49-50.

[16] Mara Hvistendahl, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, (New York, New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), xxiii.

[17] Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Sex Ratio at Birth” in World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, 2010, http://esa.un.org/wpp/unpp/ panel_indicators.htm (accessed November 6, 2011).

[18] Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Population Sex Ratio” in World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision.

[19] Hudson and den Boer, 59.

[20] Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Sex Ratio at Birth” in World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision.

[21] Hvistendahl, 6.

[22] Susan Tiefenbrun, Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 348.

[23] Hvistendahl, 6.

[24] “Gendercide: The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility, and Ancient Prejudice are Combining to Unbalance Societies.”

[25]Hvistendahl, 97.

[26] Ibid., 98.

[27] Ibid., 97.

[28] Ibid., 120, 122.

[29] Hvistendahl, 122.

[30] It is important to note that today sex-selection can occur without feticide (through sex-selective abortion) or infanticide occurring. Reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization and artificial insemination allow parents to determine the sex of their child in the embryonic stage, and even before conception. However, “outside of the United States those technologies are still nascent. Today in the developing world, abortion is most of the story. For now.” (Hvistendahl, xviii).

[31] Monica Sharma, “Twenty-first Century Pink or Blue: How Sex Selection Technology Facilitates Gendercide and What We Can Do About It,” Family Court Review 46, is. 1 (January 2008), http://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-1617.2007.00192.x/full#fn59 (accessed November 6, 2011).

[32] Hvistendahl, 129.

[33] Ibid., 129.

[34] Hvistendahl, 131.

[35] Ibid., 130-132.

[36] Population Division of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Republic of Korea” in Abortion Policies: A Global Review, 2002, http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/abortion/ (accessed November 6, 2011).

[37] Ibid.

[38] Hvistendahl, 130.

[39] Hvistendahl, 131.

[40] Ibid., 131.

[41] Population Division of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Republic of Korea” in Abortion Policies: A Global Review.

[42] Hvistendahl, 133.

[43] Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Total Fertility” in World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision.

[44] Hudson and den Boer, 55-56.

[45] Hvistendahl, 133.

[46] Ibid., 133.

[47] Ibid., 133.

[48] Ibid., 134.

[49] Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Total Fertility” in World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision.

[50] Hudson and den Boer, 55-56.

[51] “Gendercide: The Worldwide War on Baby Girls: Technology, Declining Fertility, and Ancient Prejudice are Combining to Unbalance Societies.”

[52] Monica Das Gupta and Li Shuzho, “Gender Bias in China, the Republic of Korea, and India 1920-90: Effects of War, Famine, and Fertility Decline,” Policy Research Working Paper 2140, The World Bank, Development Research Group, Poverty and Human Resources, June 1999, http://books.google.com/books?id= Hm3QJU8xsEgC&printsec=frontcover #v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed November 6, 2011).

[53] Ibid.

[54] Hudson and den Boer, 56.

[55] Ibid., 56.

[56] Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, s.v. “Total Fertility” in World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision.

[57] Hudson and den Boer, 56.

[58] United States Central Intelligence Agency, CIA World Factbook, s.v. “Korea, South,” October 21, 2011, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html (accessed November 7, 2011).

[59] Hvistendahl, 133.

“Gabby & Amiee’s 10th Birthday Party” by...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

“Gabby & Amiee’s 10th Birthday Party” by Tanya

Summary: The girls (Gabrielle & Amiee) celebrated their 10th birthday by hosting an Asian Tea Party for their friends. Each of the attendees was encouraged to bring a donation for All Girls Allowed. They raised enough money to rescue two girls from gendercide. Note: This video was edited in part by Valerie Ross, media producer for All Girls Allowed.

Bio: As a parent of one of the girls, I submitted this video to demonstrate that children can be involved in helping to restore value and dignity to mothers in China who are suffering because of the one child policy. They hope that other children are inspired to raise money and champion this cause. I believe it is a great idea to help children get involved in philanthropy and consider those less fortunate. One benefit is that children can learn that giving can be more rewarding than receiving. I would like to expand this concept of charity parties to aid nonprofit organizations.

“Emily’s Story” by Emily Summary: This video...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

“Emily’s Story” by Emily

Summary: This video is really a request to parents to become more involved and to spread awareness about the issue of gendercide in China. Additionally, it will also speak to members of church communities that value life to become involved in AGA’s mission. Note: This video was produced by Valerie Ross, media producer for All Girls Allowed.

Bio: I was interviewed because of a letter I sent a while back with my response to the forced abortion of a Chinese woman’s second child when she was eight months pregnant. The director is a good friend from my church and works at AGA.

If I won a grant from All Girls Allowed, I would put the money towards sponsoring child-care at a Mom’s group to read Chai Ling’s book and start a conversation about how we as Moms can do more to help.

“The Baby Blanket Ministry” by The Baby Blanket...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

“The Baby Blanket Ministry” by The Baby Blanket Ministry

Summary: The Baby Blanket Ministry was created to provide a tangible way to show that these baby girls are valued and loved, even from thousands of miles away. We care about these babies and their families, and by sending a blanket over with All Girls Allowed’s Baby Shower Gifts, we can let them know that there is a specific person who is thinking of them, praying for them, and hoping that their blanket will be a permanent reminder of how valued they are, by us and by God.

Bio: I am the adoptive mother of 2 amazing girls born in China, so the issue of the one child policy is close to my heart. I want people to know that there is something we can do, however small, that can have a big impact on families in China and how they view their girls.

Seeing young girls come together this spring at a blanket-making event was so powerful. Any funds awarded would be used to organize and provide supplies for more blanket-making parties for kids so that, not only will baby girls and their families in China receive a tangible gift, but the kids here can receive the gift of helping others, which is also incredibly powerful.

“China Silk Screens/Missing Chinese Baby Girls” by...

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:37:00 -0400

“China Silk Screens/Missing Chinese Baby Girls” by Lois Andersen

Bio: I am a Boston area painter/illustrator/educator http://loisandersenfineart.com/. As a Christian and blessed by God’s mercy, I am required to cry for justice for the oppressed. The challenge of the Red Sea Project prompted me to think imaginatively what sort of visual art might create awareness of gendercide in China and galvanize a response of engagement.

Summary: My hope is that through a visually stunning presentation, viewers will experience a visceral sense of loss and understanding of gendercide in China. The intent is to unambiguously represent this tragedy; leading to awareness, compassion and engagement.

As people walk around and/or though the the exhibit, they will be engaged by winsome images. Each of the 6 silk panels will be divided into 9” squares by rows of fine stitching and will be 6 squares high by 3 squares wide, with one cut-out square missing/vacant out of every six. The images/faces will be drawn on the silk from photos of real, individual Chinese baby girls, and will be as clearly visible on the reverse.

The screen/model you see in the photos is a rough approximation of my full idea. The actual frames of the screens are to be made of bamboo, with panels of red silk (budget permitting)or silk-like cloth. The (6) frames will be approximately 6’ high and 32”wide, with silk panels suspended between bamboo dowels, which fit into the large, vertical supporting bamboo poles.

Each of the frames are to be lashed together with cord or slices of bamboo to keep a consistent theme of genuine Chinese materials. All parts could disassemble for relocating the exhibit. Also, panels can be organized three in one section, separate from the other three, depending on the space, traffic flow, etc.. Together they can be arranged in half circles, or at angles, depending on the visual impact in a particular space. Varying arrangements of the “screen” will allow viewers many ways to walk around and engage with the project.

If I am granted award money, I will use it to construct the exhibit with quality materials (from 3 to 6 panels; depending on what funds provide).

“The Disappeared” by the Art for Change Foundation...

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:31:00 -0400

“The Disappeared” by the Art for Change Foundation and the Let Her Live Campaign

Bio: Art for Change Foundation is a small arts organization started and run by local artists in New Delhi, India, with the vision to see art shape society with beauty and truth. In 2006 the Art for Change Foundation began responding to the issue of violence against women in India, in particular the problem of female foeticide. Since 2011 the Art for Change Foundation has partnered with Let Her Live, a movement working to change mindsets in India which discriminate against women & girl children and result in sex-selective abortions and other forms of gender-based violence.

Summary: Besides being responsible for most of the 163 million missing women in Asia, India and China are both geographic neighbors and political & economic rivals. What is good for India, however, is good for China and vice versa—internal stability, people-centered policies, and a culture of valuing women.

Although legislation has banned determining the sex of a foetus and sex-selective abortions in India, the law has had negligible effect on the alarming imbalance of male-to-female sex ratios in our country. Indian government officials have admitted that without addressing the mindset—that set of values and beliefs that lie at the root of the practice—change will not be possible.

We believe that art has the power to change society by addressing and shaping the ideas that underlie culture. The paintings presented in this short video are a selection of works created in artist residencies and painting workshops run by us as an attempt to address the root causes behind female foeticide in India, in this case the question of what it means not just to be female, but to be male.

The selection of works in the video were created during several one-month artists residencies and one-week painting workshops involving 33 artists over the last 6 years. The artists ranged from a homeless man who paints, to young professional artists, to a 75 year-old self-taught painter, to an art college lecturer.

The artists met intentionally to understand the issues of female foeticide and broader violence against women in India, explore the roots of these problems, and in community use their skills to create artwork that could be used to both ‘show a mirror to society’ and speak truth to the issue. Besides impacting regular viewers, the artists themselves were deeply moved through this process, as the mirror was shown not just to society but to their own hearts and minds.

Although we have run a number of physical exhibitions using the works resulting from these activities, Art for Change Foundation and ‘Let Her Live’ made this video to create a virtual gallery experience in order to get these paintings out to a wider audience. The purpose for the video is both to give an overview of the problem as well as address a key underlying belief.

If we win any grant money we plan to use it towards two purposes: (1) Celebrating the ‘International Day of the Girl Child’ in New Delhi this Oct 11th, (info packs for churches, street theater performances, college-campus screenings of the new ‘It’s A Girl’ movie). (2) Funding a CD of songs written during a song-writing workshop we organized earlier, for which we haven’t had the funds to record yet.

*Administrator note: Because of a technical glitch during the voting process, 67 “likes” which were lost upon editing this entry will be added to the final count.

“SHE JUST CAME TOGETHER AT THE RIGHT TIME” by Adrian...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:23:00 -0400

“SHE JUST CAME TOGETHER AT THE RIGHT TIME” by Adrian Johnston

Bio: Adrian is an artist living and working in Boston.

Summary: The greatest holocaust of our present time is the war against the unborn. It has taken the clothes of liberty and freedom in the west, and the form of policy and social preservation in the east. But regardless of the trappings, the fruits of violence, destruction, and death are the same worldwide. These paintings are quiet reflections of hope shining back against this annihilating darkness.

I created these two images over the period of about 7 years, and finished them in 2011. They are quite small, yet I came back to them time and time again, painting, and repainting. They changed often, in subject, form, and color. But though small, and not very good paintings, I was loathe to discard them. After many layers of thin veils of paint, they began to become something in and of themselves. I saw in them a reference to the icon traditions of Europe. Icons were small, personal paintings that served as reminders of devotion and love and worship. After much toil and labor, these paintings have become 1) a memorial to celebrate those who will not grow to maturity in this world, or to those whose sufferings have gone voiceless, dark, and unrecorded, and 2) a reminder of the unseen, the life in the womb in all its potential.

Can a painting restore value and dignity to girls and mothers in China?

A painting is a quiet witness, and a reflection of our thoughts and our world. “Anonymous” shows a form in silhouette, surrounded by what seems to be particles of light or feathers, numerous as God’s thoughts. The silhouette is evocative, and begs to be filled: Is it a human figure? Is it a keyhole? Is it a bell? Is it a saint, or martyr?

Can an image end gendercide?

The image of a living infant, the reminder of the unseen, is iconic. It can fill us with wonder at the thought of the life within the womb. In painting “She Just Came Together at the Right Time” I was filled with amazement when I considered the complex detail of the developing baby, and the process by which a living being is knit together. I remember that when I first “saw”—-via a picture— my first child, though yet in his mother’s belly, was the instant I knew his name. Somehow seeing this awoke a new relationship in my life.

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light about me be night,

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is bright as the day,

for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there were none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them

-Psalm 139:11-1

Grant money would be used to continue in labors of love, and works in faith.

“Daughters and Sons” by KMOV Bio: KMOV...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:17:00 -0400

“Daughters and Sons” by KMOV

Bio: KMOV (www.kmov.org) is a multimedia engine for artworks and collaboration in an international ministry context. This song is by artists Stone and Anjun, who live and serve and work both in the United States and China. They collaborate on much of their music via email.

Summary: This song is called Daughters and Sons, and speaks in a voice of lament and encouragement to the women and children of China who have suffered the violence of the One Child Policy over the last thirty plus years. The melody was originally written by an unknown author for the haunting song “爱的呼唤/Love’s Calling” (not to be confused with the pop song from Hong Kong) whose lyrics talk about finding hope in a world of brokenness in the love of Jesus Christ (rough translation from Chinese):

Life is like a deep sleep 

Life is like a broken kite

Tossed by the wind, and vanishing like smoke 

It’s hard to see the truth when you are crying, alone and lost 

Jesus wants to forgive your sins

Jesus wants to fill your emptiness….

In this song, we hope to contrast the holocaust of the last thirty years with the prophetic voice of Isaiah (see chapters 48, 52, 54, 55, and 60). The horror of a forced abortion, or a fetus in a trash can is a chaotic reality, a shadow that is prolonged by a policy that teaches 1/6th of the world’s population that human life is expendable, that children are a needless burden, that girls have little value. Yet even those responsible for propagating this policy acknowledge the brutal result of these lies. One retired officer in China’s Family Planning Committee, whose job it was to establish and strengthen the Birth Control centers nationwide was reported to have said, “wherever we went, blood flowed like a river.” But the systematic killing of little sisters and brothers still continues.

This song expresses our hope in a time of renewal, justice, and forgiveness. Can the dead live? O for such a resurrection that the aborted would be able to find their mothers, and bring healing to them, where the women who have suffered so much violence might at last be mothers of peace. O that righteousness would be as continual as waves of the sea, and peace, not blood, like a river!

Grant money would be used towards purchasing recording equipment, further recording and distribution of music.

The lyrics of Daughters and Sons:

Darling, my afflicted one

Storm tossed, not comforted

All your children shall be taught by the Lord

And great shall be their peace.

Awake! Shake yourself from your dusty grave

Clothe yourself with strength and rise again

O Captive daughter of Zion

Your righteousness is like the waves of the sea

And your peace like a river

Arise! Shine your light has come.

Here they are, all your daughters and your sons.

From the east I heard a cry:

My rage is an ocean in flood above the sky

Where are all your children?

Now all I see is a river of blood that flows to me.

Your righteousness is like the sea

And your peace like a river

Arise! Shine your light has come

Here we are, all your daughters and your sons.

“Cards to Show Love and Care” by Ellen Summary: The...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 10:01:00 -0400

“Cards to Show Love and Care” by Ellen

Summary: The personal touch of a handmade greeting card can have a lasting impact on the receiver. As I read an AGA weekly newsletter a few months ago, I read how monthly stipends were delivered in pink envelopes. I am a card maker and those two words were like a light bulb coming on in my brain…then my heart. I have often asked the Lord to use my love for making cards as a ministry and I truly believe He put this idea in my mind. Friends from church came to my house and we started making cards to express our love and concern for the Chinese mothers. Christian Chinese students from a local university wrote out messages in Chinese for the cards and I had rubber stamps made. Another student wrote many scripture verses in Chinese and I made copies to be put in each pink card. With love and prayers, I send 305 baby cards to AGA with the hope that each card would convey that we American moms and women truly care about them and wish to encourage and praise them for making the right decision to keep their baby girls.

Bio: I am Ellen, a wife, mother, grandmother. My heart for missions started when I was a child. After college I spent 3 1/2 years in Japan teaching English conversation in a girls’ mission school. Now my husband and I host Japanese and Chinese students from Kent State through a Christian organization. I am involving some of our grandchildren in our activities so that they can also develope a heart for all God’s people.

“Hope Begins with Love” by Ame’ Summary: When...

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:14:00 -0400

“Hope Begins with Love” by Ame’

Summary: When we moved to China, we quickly became friends with our Chinese co-workers, our students loved us, and we made the five best friends girls could ever have. The best part was meeting a fellowship of believers who also shared our passion for spreading God’s love. It wasn’t, however, all happiness and joy. When one of our Chinese friends came to the fellowship study with us, the school warned us she couldn’t come again because she was a student. Another student told us she liked to be beaten because it meant her boyfriend loved her. Many opened up to us about how the One-Child policy had affected them and their families through forced abortions, constant fear, and feelings of disappointment at not being born a boy. Most of all we couldn’t believe how lowly women valued themselves. They would say they didn’t deserve more.

The song “Amazing Grace My Chains Are Gone” by Chris Tomlin became our prayer for the girls of China. We heard time and time again from women and girls of all ages that they wanted to believe there was more for them. I believe God has issued a call to Christians all over the world to show his love to these hurting but amazing people. Through friendship and love, we are hoping to help Chinese girls begin a relationship with their Heavenly Father and discover the true value they possess inside.

This video shows many of the people we met and worked with this past year, and the music is a recording of a performance we did at Churches while at home raising funds and awareness for our work in China. We are shortly heading back to China for another year of service.

Bio: I’m Ame’(23). My friend Jillayne (23) and I are oral English teachers in Shandong Province, China. I first learned of the teaching opportunity after spending a semester abroad learning Chinese. Jillayne is my best friend so she was the perfect person to embark on this adventure with me. We first learned of gendercide and the struggles of women in China through All Girls Allowed at the 2011 Students for Life conference. We were both very active in the pro-life movement here at home so it was natural for us to want to help in China. Unfortunately our jobs prevent some traditional methods of reaching out to our students and co-workers. We believe the best way we can help the women and girls of China is by building relationships based on trust and love so they might see Christ in us.

"Hitting Close to Home" by Ariana Vaughn

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 13:44:00 -0400

Summary: I am definitely an advocate for stopping gendercide in China. While studying Chinese, I have met a number of wonderful Chinese women of all ages. They have truly touched my life and impacted me tremendously. Hearing their stories about how hard it can be as a woman in China temporarily places me in their shoes. As our relationships continually grow, their heartache has become my own. Thus, I want to tell you all some of these women’s stories (and others that I have seen, heard, or observed) in hopes of bringing forth compassion in your hearts to respect, honor, and love women as well as support the end to gendercide. My hope is that these stories will help us to rise up out of our comfort zones and into action. I want us to take to heart the struggle of these women and the true detriment of gendercide in society. It is important to highlight the need to value women in Chinese society; once value is placed and realized, this will be the root to exterminating gendercide!

Bio: My name is Ariana Vaughn. I am originally from Brooklyn, New York and I currently reside in Kunming, China. I have been living here for almost two years now and I study Chinese at one of the local Universities. I have a Bachelors and Masters Degree in sociology. I hope to become fluent in Chinese, receive a law degree in International Human Rights, and work with the United Nations or other affiliated organization to advocate for human rights around the world. If I win the grant money, I plan to donate it to an orphanage here in China that takes care of young girls and a few boys so that they can afford to have other orphans come and stay at the house.

HITTING CLOSE TO HOME

“You are smart. I would teach you more, but you are a woman…” I sat there in awe as Jane told me her story. Jane is a Chinese college student here in China, one who is bright, brave, and bodacious. Yet time and time again, comments such as these are thrown her way by chauvinistic male professors who put a cap on her growth as a person, an individual, and a human being, all because of her gender. I had no clue what to say to her. Usually, I am good at encouraging people, but not today. She was rightfully discouraged, angry, and heartbroken. I wanted to cry for her, but held it together.

“I went to live with my grandparents at a very young age. My mom was disappointed because I was a girl. So she sent me to live with my grandparents and became pregnant twice more before having my brother…” Every Saturday afternoon, I was blessed to have the presence of this beautiful young lady Hannah and five other friends at my home. They would come to practice their English with me through a variety of activities I would set up for them. We would share our goals, dreams, and life stories. Hannah’s story wasn’t the only one like this. There was a consistent pattern of these young girls being devalued and thrust to the side to make room for boys. The unfortunate results about it all are the emotional scars that have accompanied these young women up to this point, making them doubt and disregard their worth as women and as human beings. They are some of the most beautiful young women I have ever met. Their lives have great purpose and they are having a tremendous influence within their school and the people around them. The world is a better place with them in it.

…

In a class of twelve children, I noticed that only two girls were present. This stark contrast surprised me and I began to wonder why. While there may have been factors I did not know about, I also wondered how many other young girls could have been sitting in this classroom, if they were seen as people to love instead of possessions to discard….

…

They asked her…no, pleaded with her, not to throw the baby away. “Whatever you do, don’t throw the baby away…” My friend Dana told me the horrific details of the account. A Chinese friend of hers who was pregnant (but by some divine intervention had kept this information hidden!) threatened to throw her new born baby in the trashcan upon first glimpse. “…Please don’t do it! Please don’t do it! Give her to me…”. Dana took the child and placed her own life in jeopardy in order to find the proper assistance for the baby. Fortunately, Dana was able to get help for the child but still thinks of her to this day and is unsure as to what has become of the little girl.

…

One day I was walking home from a long day of assorted activities, when I heard a commotion behind a van parked on my right hand side. As I passed the van and peered over the hood, there was a man and woman fighting on the other side. Well, I don’t know if you could call it a fight…the man held the woman by her hair and when he saw three other women running over to help her, he then pulled her up into the air and she flew to the ground in a spiral like motion. Her friends yelled at the man and pushed him away as her body lay limp on the ground. He lit a cigarette and walked away.

…

There are these stories and many others that I could tell you about regarding the challenges that women face in China. Small girls are being aborted because the value of their lives is suppressed underneath a distorted view and sickening hunger for prestige, wealth, and commodity. If women aren’t respected and valued now, then the annihilation of the next generation is a sad reality that China has succumbed to today. Don’t get me wrong, China is an amazing place with people full of servitude, generosity, and humility; however, having to walk alongside so many women who are discouraged, confused, and oppressed, has caused me to internalize what I have seen and heard as my own burden as well, because I too am a woman. We are not only the crown of creation, but we are the givers of life, and need to be exalted as such. Through aborting young girls, China is forfeiting so many blessings and wonderful contributions that the nation can give to the world. I stand against gendercide because without women, the world will not survive. I stand against gendercide because building relationships with so many great Chinese women has impacted my heart by showing me the importance of loving others and the special role that only women play in that. If I were still living in America, this issue would probably not hit so close to home for me. But now that so many women that I love have felt the effects of gender tension, I can’t help but become passionate about the issue and admire their tenacious spirits and magnanimous hearts. The world is a better place because of them. I’m glad their lives were spared. And lastly, I stand against gendercide because it is an injustice to children, to women, and to the world. Martin Luther King made the following statement: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We don’t know what could have become of the girls who were thrown away, abandoned, or aborted. Only God knows what the outcome could have been. But we do know that our futures are a clean slate and a new opportunity to make a change and value human life!

…

A good friend of mine hosted a Valentine’s Day party at her home. Thirteen girls showed up and we spent the time playing games, eating (a favorite Chinese past time), and encouraging one another to be great women of great faith. Some of the women were in their mid thirties, some just entering college. We shared our battles, wounds, and heartbreaks that we have faced as women; yet, we found hope, strength, and the love of our Creator in each other to comfort our souls. We are beautifully and wonderfully made, with unique purpose and perfect design. Many girls walked away from that night with a new perspective on their lives and value as women. Some even began to take small steps to fulfilling dreams and goals in their hearts within that same week! This is only a small scale example of what it looks like when women’s hearts are restored to the truth about their beauty and when we unabashedly proclaim to the world our undeniable God-given rights and indescribable worth. We must stand in unity for future women that have yet to be able to speak for themselves. They can make a difference in you. In me. In the world.

“FEWER” by Eric Arthur Blair Summary: My work has a...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 09:59:00 -0400

Delivered children at a hospital, Henan

Family of three at Tiananmen Square

Family outside of apartments, Zhengzhou

Family of three in Guangdong

Boy born by cesarean section in Sichuan

Family with three children from Henan

Advertising children for marriage

Boys from all over enroll in Kung Fu

Family Planning poster in Xi'an

Woman 9 months pregnant, Henan

“FEWER” by Eric Arthur Blair

Summary: My work has a purpose to tell the story of individuals that have been left out of the public domain. These individuals who have been abused through no fault of there own are justification enough to spend energy and all my resources trying to highlight their plight. I focus on women as I believe the empowerment of women is one of only a few ways to truly alleviate poverty. And a woman’s right over her own body while being able to make informed choices must be respected if we are serious about creating a better world. It is with this said that I have begun to continue my body of work that I wish to build on and make many people aware of in order to highlight the issues the birth planning policy forces upon people and to restore life, add value and dignity to girls and mothers in China.

I began to work on the Chinese Birth planning policy as an individual concerned with the World’s population as it approached 7 Billion. Believing that we are at a significant place in history where natural resources are increasingly becoming a matter of life and death for a great many people, my concern as an individual became a need to understand and present some of the most extreme and often unnecessary steps people and governments are inflicting on others in the name of ‘progress’. China’s controversial policy on birth planning is an immense concern as it is and was completely avoidable if public discourse through the work of Ma Yinchu was listened to. We are hopefully getting closer to the day that the policy will end; but the damage has been done and we as a global community should never forget and do our best to restore life to those who have lost theirs.

Bio: Eric is a Documentary photographer from the UK who has spent much of his adult life living and working in east Asia. Eric creates photo stories in a bid to raise awareness of issues that are often unreported. His drive has always been to focus on people and places determined to document the nature of lesser known and complicated matters that have far-reaching implications. Eric has been working in China for 2 years following the Family Planning policy in the Peoples Republic. His aim is to produce the first comprehensive photographic book on the 30 plus year policy, documenting the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ so it can never be forgotten.

Check out the fascinating full captions to Eric’s photos on The Red Sea’s Flickr page.

“Gendercide: Exposing the Hidden Holocaust” by Prof....

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:49:00 -0400

“Gendercide: Exposing the Hidden Holocaust” by Prof. Redding

Summary: This video was created in collaboration with All Girls Allowed to help build awareness about the issue of gendercide and the impact of China’s One-Child Policy on girls and mothers in China.

Bio: Prof. Redding teaches at Columbia University and lectures at a variety of institutions about gender-selective violence, human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law. He is the Executive Director of the Global Gendercide Advocacy and Awareness Project, an advocacy and educational initiative confronting the practice of gender-selective violence and the role of the international community in the “gendercidal” process.

“Back to Innocence (Short Film on Sex Trafficking)”...

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 12:27:00 -0400

“Back to Innocence (Short Film on Sex Trafficking)” by The Jubilee Project

Summary: The Jubilee Project created the short film “Back to Innocence” to give voice to the millions of women and children who are forced and manipulated into sex trafficking every year. This film was inspired by the real injustices that girls in China have to face. The goal of this film is to empower viewers to learn more about this important cause and to take action to help end sex trafficking and gendercide in China. Learn more about this issue and watch the behind the scenes video here: (http://jubileeproject.org/?p=2287)

Bio: The Jubilee Project is a productions group that makes videos for a good cause. In the past two years, we have made 70 videos, raised $35000 for various causes, and garnered over 4 million views on YouTube. Our goal is to make videos that will educate, empower and enable others to do good as well. The grant money from the Red Sea would allow us to continue producing these kinds of videos around issues related to sex trafficking, forced abortions, and gendercide.

“China’s gendercide: Ellysa Lim’s Original...

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 15:01:00 -0400

“China’s gendercide: Ellysa Lim’s Original Oratory 2012” by Ellysa Lim

Summary: I competed with this speech this past year in a Christian homeschool speech and debate league (Stoa). I have placed 3rd, 22nd, and 7th at three qualifying tournaments. At the National Invitational Tournament of Champions, which hosted around 600 competitors, I ultimately placed 5th out of 96 students in my category.

After I heard Chai Ling speak about this topic, God broke my heart and told me that this was the topic I was to speak on. My family is Chinese, and I’m the second out of three daughters. I realized that I could have easily been a victim of gendercide.

I wrote this ten minute speech in the course of two weeks, right before my first major tournament. My goal with this speech was to further the anti-gendercide movement. Each time I performed this speech, my prayer wasn’t to rank high, or to beat everyone else. I told God that no matter the circumstance, I wanted to leave the room knowing that this speech touched someone and that they would join in prayer for these Chinese girls. Many people in the audience and the ballots I’ve received from many judges have told me that they didn’t know that the gendercide was still happening, and that they would definitely pray for gendercide victims.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Bio: My name is Ellysa Lim, and I’m 15 years old. I have competed in a Christian homeschool speech and debate league (in which this speech competed) for four years. God broke my heart for this issue when Chai Ling visited my church, Saddleback Church, in January.

“The Giver and the Taker” by Aowen Jin see the...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:41:00 -0400

“The Giver and the Taker” by Aowen Jin

see the powerful video component to the exhibition (including interviews with Chinese women) here:

Summary: This work explored the social effects of the first generation of women born under the One-Child Policy. It set out to demonstrate the impacts of the policy on these women, such as their personalities, experience and expectations which were based on 300 interviews with Chinese women. Through a series of paintings and video clips, the works celebrate the resilient spirit of Chinese women: They make the best of what they have, and fight to get and keep power.

Bio: Aowen Jin is a Chinese-born British artist and among the first generation of daughters born under China’s One-Child policy. Aowen is both academic and critically acclaimed, with appearances on BBC News 24, BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, The Times and the BBC World Service. Her works are highly prized by collectors and she has produced commissions for various influential people, including The Queen and former Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

The artworks aimed to challenge both the Western and Chinese view of the One-Child Policy by giving a more complete understanding of its impact, and by exploring the personal experiences of the artist and other Chinese women.

See more of her work at http://www.jinaowen.com

“Lucky Red” by Jackie Bagley see the powerful video component of...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:32:00 -0400

“Lucky Red” by Jackie Bagley

see the powerful video component of one of her past Art Installations here:

Summary: In a recent trip to China, I received my adopted daughter, one of more than 1,000,000 babies who are abandoned each year in China (almost entirely girls). This show’s focus is to build a story for her and for the other millions of girls who have been abandoned since the One Child policy began in China, wrapped up in an exploration of China’s growing modern economics against its firmly rooted traditional culture. These abandonments are done in secret to avoid punishment and the mothers’ identities are never known.

The show will tell the stories of young mothers who have given up their children, in order to comply with the One Child Policy, an inside look into the secret lives of these women in China.

It is a body of work which seeks to unite mothers’ stories with a “discardable gender” of no story, bringing value and life to the stories of women through visual arts and digital media/video.

I am intrigued by the courage and love that a woman has, who will carry her child, and then risk not just abandoning it in a public space, or by the wayside, but secretly to an orphanage – to risk punishment, and to choose to hide a pregnancy over ending it. It takes time to absorb the statistics, to understand the impact of the issues at hand, when a comparatively low percentage of girls escape abortion and infanticide, and out of those who are born, and later abandoned, only a fraction are abandoned to orphanages. Fewer yet survive their first year in the orphanage, and of those who do, only a small number are adopted out internationally. One’s mind cannot comprehend the magnitude of whatʼs happening, and of how the fate of these girls is absorbed into the unknown.

This show is entitled “Lucky Red”. I look at my daughter with a sense of deep grief and overwhelming gratitude - grief at the absence of her story, which I so desperately want to know but have no information on - and for her mother’s loss. And gratitude that her life was spared, and that she was one of so few chosen for oversees adoption. As much as I don’t want her to grow up carrying any of this herself, I can’t seem to let go of wanting to know and transmit as much of the stories as possible. She was not part of the “river of Red blood” of abortions and infanticide. She is “Lucky Red” - a symbol of joy, truth, prosperity, dignity, mystery, as the color Red in China implies. And “Red” is also the irony of the loss of ”luck”, “joy”, and “prosperity” for her biological mother.

This show began with just images - photos - taken in China, using photographic film that accentuates the color Red, to be printed onto large sheets of aluminum. It is still in its infancy, with the research phase just underway, but its vision has grown to become “Lucky Red”, an Art Installation that will include video, motion graphics, and sculpture, as a means of bringing the stories to light. The Grant money will be used to create this show.

Bio: For 12 years Jackie Bagley worked in the Film Industry on Film and Television Productions as varied as Art film (shown at the MOMA in New York), right through to Hollywood Productions produced by names such as Steven Spielberg, Brad Pitt, Warner Bros., Disney, Ridley Scott. Capacities included dealing with networks, producers, directors, actors, and coordinating various heads of departments, and working as a Production Designer, Art Director and/or Assistant Art Director. Prior to this she worked as a Corporate Graphic Designer for Western Canada’s largest Design and Advertising agency, and has serviced National Canadian clients such as Telus Communications, Canadian Airlines, Gulf Canada Resources Limited, CN Railway, Health Canada, National Energy Board of Canada, National Lotteries. As a Visual Artist, her studio practice includes group shows in New York, and Toronto. She presently teaches Design at ACAD (Alberta College of Art and Design).

“China Girl” by Lexijane Summary: I created this...

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 10:22:00 -0400

“China Girl” by Lexijane

Summary: I created this dress to enter into a competition called FCCLA. For the competition I used All Girls Allowed as my theme. So when classmates or other people ask about my dress I mention All Girls Allowed. I also gave a baby shower gift and bought stuff from the All Girls Allowed shop. I had to make a board and thought it would be cool to have stuff writen in Chinese on it. So my dad took me to Chinatown and while I was there I shared about All Girls Allowed. I know that it does not seem like much but it’s getting the word out there. If one person looks more into it and starts doing what it takes to help restore life, value, and dignity to girls and mothers in China, it’s worth it. Unfortunitly the time has not been right to fund raise.

Bio: I am a senior in high school. My dress means a lot to me for many reasons. For one, I have worked really hard on it and spent lots of time on it. This is also my last year doing the competition — the last but the best. My dress can potentially help the women and girls in China.

Regarding the grant — I am a freashman now at College of DuPage which is a 2 year comunity college. I am majoring in fashion design but might get an associates degree in both fashion design and fashion merchendising. I go back and forth with ideas on what I want to do with my life, like starting a buisness, but I do know that I want to help girls in China. So what I would do with a grant is use it to either help pay for my degree at the College of DuPage or save it and then use it to help to pay for Christian University.