Machismo and feminism

The Machismo makes a set of attitudes and thoughts (perhaps without the systematic nature of an ideology) that account for the superiority of men over women; the feminism , however, is an ideological movement that a priori conscious advocates for gender equality, both in the social sphere, as a cultural, political and economic.

What is machismo?

Machismo cannot be considered an ideology, although it can be a reservoir of ideas. In truth, they make up a great community of attitudes that clearly denote a perception of superiority of men over women . Everything associated with the masculine has such an overwhelming superiority that it is sometimes linked to the total, the universal, the feminine being inferior and merely particular

Therefore, to give a definition of machismo, it can be said that it is a set of attitudes, actions and ideas developed over time that wield a superiority of the masculine over the feminine . Multiple historical positions have contributed to machismo, even ancient sciences with supposed objectivity (think of psychiatry and the role of hysterics).

So machismo is not systemic, it perhaps has a system effect. In truth, it has a fragmentary nature, since it can hatch at various times, places, settings, etc. Some anthropologists have even posited a universal machismo, declaring that a vast majority of civilizations historically have placed men before women.

Machismo, which poses a superiority of men over women, often implies not only submission to the female world (which is clear), but also to the male sphere. It is that Man (with a capital H as a totality) can end up being a substantiated identity, an ideal to which men of flesh and blood must aspire and that in truth many times they do not reach.

Machismo implies ideas of strength, intelligence, violence, lack of emotion, principle of activity, universality, among other attached ideas. Perhaps the word machismo comes more from the Latin American environment, but it is a phenomenon that can be perceived in multiple civilizations around the globe.

Characteristics of machismo

Machismo exhibits a good number of characteristics that are summarized below for a clearer study of the matter.

• It constitutes what is usually called patriarchy.
• The male has ingrained the idea of ​​heterosexuality not only as valid sexuality, but as truly the only possible one (the rest enter the world of the pathological).
• It promotes the culture of sexual conquest.
• It constitutes the active principle, an idea that perhaps extrapolates sexual activity (the use of the phallus) to the global social and cultural world.
• The woman is an object of desire and does not possess masculine independence.
• Man is, therefore, a desiring subject, the only one possible.
• The man is superior in practically all social activities (those considered of greatest importance) and the woman must be reduced to the domestic sphere (the owner of the Greek oikos ).
• Machismo is related to a certain aggressiveness in behavior, an extra strength (linked to a certain animality).
• Any feeling that shows emotion or feelings are not typical of Man, since they do passive activities (therefore feminine).
• It promotes different types of violence against women: physical, cultural, social, economic and psychological.
• The woman is a dependent being, a being for the man.

What is feminism?

Feminism has a complex history, with diverse activists and waves in terms of its development, but it can be defined as a set of movements and ideological positions that seek equal rights for women, both individually and in groups .

The idea of ​​equity is very important to be clarified. Equity does not mean superiority of women over men, which would be a hembrismo, an equivalent to machismo. Equity means equality, but an equality that develops within diversity. Women do not want to be equal to men, but rather want to enjoy the bonanzas that men enjoy: freedom of thought, economic independence, sexual development, open possibilities in the workplace, recognition of rights, among other ideas.

Feminism, we repeat, has an extremely heterogeneous character, since there have been an enormous number of historical perspectives over time. In any case, they all have one point in common: the man is not, from any point of view, superior to the woman. 

Feminism breaks with the hierarchy scheme, trying to develop a new configuration of forces: there is no verticalism, but a certain horizontal between the two sexes. There is almost a task of redemption in feminism (that is why there may be religious currents of it), since in a broad sense it not only came to liberate women, but also the man himself, many times overwhelmed by the imperatives of masculinity .

Characteristics of feminism

Feminism also has certain characteristics that deserve to be taken into account to complete its characterology.

• Challenge all forms of justice suffered by women.
• To consider null the idea of ​​the superiority of the man over the women.
• Try to seek equity from every point of view in which women can develop: economic, political, legal, social, cultural, historical, etc.
• It is made up of various movements, ideologies and positions, which have also varied over time.
• Fight conventional versions of men and women.
• The woman is not a particular or passive principle in the dyad that conforms to the man.
• Fight machismo and patriarchal culture.
• He does not look down on the collaboration of man in his movement.
• The woman can develop any activity equal to or better than the man.
• It breaks with the macho principle of locking women into the womb of housewife, owner of the private world and producer of offspring.
• Being a woman is not reduced to being a mother (although it does not denounce motherhood in women if it is desired).