The smash hit movie, BARBIE, is hitting theaters now and it is a huge hit in China, but according to the BTJ UK Director, Bethany Hope, it has an overall theme of a world that is ruled by an evil “patriarchy” made up of powerful, privileged males subjugating underprivileged females. The film seems to promote a feminist message that elevates women over men, essentially trading one inequality for another.

This overt message is very familiar with the purposefully forgotten history of the Communist Party.

“I felt that there was damage done to girls in this movie,” Bethany shares during the BTJ podcast, “because there is a natural balance between men and women, and once you remove one of those, or you downplay them… it is damaging on every front.”

“If there was a boy that went to see the BARBIE movie,” she continues, “my goodness he would come out feeling worthless.”

Understanding the true nature of this movie and why the Communist Party in China love it can be better seen through the lens of the Cultural Revolution in China.

During the Cultural Revolution, China’s Communist Party rose to prominence and they believed that all their problems laid at the feet of the C.C.P. No, not the Communist Party of China, but Capitalism, Christianity, and the male Patriarchy.

Two of these problems are very much at the forefront of the BARBIE movie and is one reason why the Chinese love it.

Chairman Mao Zedong, leader of China, worked to replace capitalism with communism – not equality, but equity.

He worked to replace religion, specifically Christianity, with atheism and evolution.

And like BARBIE, Mao worked to replace male patriarchy with a gender neutral world where gender does not exist.

Mao launched his Red guards, who were young college students, to be his attack dogs and implement these new ideas. Propaganda posters with photographs and paintings of “iron girls,” militia women, women performing hard labor and going to war were plastered everywhere to represent the new gender roles and gender representation in Maoist China.

Commercials and movies were made where women were purposefully put into traditional male roles to transform the way that society saw women.

According to the Communist party, gender was only a social structure.

Sound familiar?

Mao wrote a poem saying, “Women can uphold half the sky. The times have changed, men and women are the same…”

The women in the dream of Communist China looked bright and brave, shouldering five-foot rifles on the parade ground lit up by the first gleams of day. According to Mao, China’s daughters had high-aspiring minds and eagerly traded their silk dresses and satin garments for battle fatigues.

Those who did not understand or agree were sent to re-education camps. If their mind had been shaped by social norms, then, arguably, all that was needed was to re-educate them with new social norms.

Those who championed the ideas of China’s new women went to the countryside to educate the country bumpkins. It was in the countryside where the college students making up the Red Guard, found their ideas did not fit reality.

The Red Guard weren’t just trained how to bring equality to the sexes, but their new way would make war-fighting better, engineering easier, pay fair, employment equal, and farming more productive.

Unfortunately for the Communists, the farmers knew how to plant seeds – these students did not. The Red Guard had never planted a seed in their life. They quoted studies, statistics, and ‘facts’ about how to best farm to the farmers and sounded like they knew what they were talking about. The farmers didn’t know any studies, statistics, or facts – they only knew what they knew.

The Red Guard wasted seeds, didn’t know how to use tools or farming equipment, and were more preoccupied with ideology than preparing for the harvest. Their experiment was disastrous. Mao’s farming efforts led to the largest famine in world history.

Their gender wars were equally as deadly. Though the goals were noble, their mode was disasterous. The Communists campaigned and gained followers by championing equality among the sexes, closing the pay gap, banning bound feet, and putting a stop to the selling of brides.

These goals were in alignment with Christian missionaries, but the Communist Party wanted to achieve these goals without God. For them the path forward was to erradicate Christianity, remove gender identity, ban all forms of femininity like wearing dresses, make up, or high heels.

Women cut their hair like men. They dressed like men. They were treated same as men.

Mao viewed himself as the great champion for woman’s rights, while at the same time abusing them on a larger scale than had been seen at any time in Chinese history.

Jung Chang, author of “Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China “ wrote, “Everyone wore the same uniform — a baggy “Mao suit,” usually blue — and, in theory, everyone was supposed to be equal…- that was women’s equality – But I lived in Mao’s China until I was 24 years old and later spent a dozen years researching his life. I can attest that the reality was far from the appearance.”

All of the top officials in Mao’s China were sexually abusing women in ways that would make Harvey Weinstein blush.

According to doctor Li, Mao’s private doctor, the Chairman hosted weekly dances. Though ballroom dancing had been banned after the Revolution as decadent and bourgeois, Chairman Mao was often dancing with dozens of women at the same time and taking them to a special bedroom that was attached next door where he would sleep with groups of women at the same time. Sometimes the girls that he took to his special room were as young as 14 years old.

Many of the women that Mao slept with were daughters of poor peasants who were told that sleeping with the chairman was the greatest experience of their life.

Though the BARBIE movie paints a picture of a more glorious endings, China’s history shows us that that gender equality attempts without God are deadly and counter productive.

The Bible says, “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.” – Genesis 1:27

The idea that there is no difference between the sexes is not just dangerous, but it is a direct assault and ultimate insult to the Creator. God did not make a mistake by making male and female different.

The world does not understand that the value of men and women can be the same while their bodies and roles are different.

The Bible does not give room for those who will one day stand before the throne and demand that God refer to them by their preferred pronoun.

Regardless of the message of the BARBIE movie, God made men and women perfect. He did not make any mistakes.