China One Child Policy Failed
Chinese American female comedians remind me of the double standard about the womb. The state wants to control why and when to have abortion and will persecute women who want to do it, based on their personal situation.
China’s one child policy formally introduced in 1980 is a good example. Comedians born either in the U.S. or mainland China, use it as material in their skits. Just recently, I came across a female comedian who made a joke about her mother retrieving her from a dumpster, where she had thrown her because she is a girl. Why? Because of the one child policy. In-laws prefer boys. This led to state abortion, sterilization and orphanages all over the country full of baby girls.
A colleague in the office where I worked in Toronto kept on talking about her leave and when she and husband were going to China to fetch Alex. Both of them were born in China. One day I made the mistake of saying Alex was a boy. It turned out to be a girl in a Chinese orphanage they were adopting.
The adoption was successful and they brought Alex to Canada. When she came back to work, she told us Alex’s mother did not ‘throw’ her away. She left a piece of paper inside the baby’s blankets. The orphanage kept it in their files. That paper had Alex’s Chinese name.
Chinese American female comedians can joke about it online, but I keep wondering if some of them are remotely connected to the girl named Alex, my colleague and her husband saved from a crowded orphanage in China.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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