Macho violence, masculinities and male change
We will call sexist violence specifically to the forms of violence exerted by men that are based on gender stereotypes and the unbalance of power that socially confers the masculine (fond especially in reads read as male), at the expense of the feminine (incarnate especially incarnatein bodies read as feminine).
To begin with, we must consider that more than human beings in abstract, we are human beings with gender: generated men and women. Thus, we are all differentiated from our sexual characteristics, even before birth. From these sexual differences, different functions, activities, behaviors and even feelings and ways of thinking about the sex-gender system are assigned. Precisely because of the existence of this system of permanent social learning is that we say that all these gender differences are socially built and do not obey people’s biology.
The formation process of what we will call "the male identity" in the abstract, has a construction path generally guided by the denial of the feminine. As Badinter points out: “… Traditionally, masculinity usually defines avoiding something… Being a man means not being feminine, not being homosexual;not be docile, dependent or submissive;not to be effeminate in physical aspect or gestures;not to maintain sexual or too intimate relations with other men;And finally, not be helpless with women … ". At the origin of this long chain of denials, however, the first affective relationship in which men and women are involved is the relationship with the mother. The passive position of this relationship of part of the Son (a) s is very marked in humans. It is at this stage of psychic life that the first identifications are built. At that stage the Son (a) is one with the mother’s body. Thus during the process of independence of subjectivity, in a sense "… the first obligation for a man is not to be a woman …"
This would mean that, for men it is not only necessary to demonstrate, when growing, that you are no longer one with the mother;This would imply demonstrating that you are not a woman. In this process a third figure will enter into play: the father.
On the way to this resignation of what we could call a kind of "protofeminity" associated with the passivity and dependence of the early childhood of children, the father’s voice is a privileged sound of guide. It is through the father (or substitute, even cultural) that children learn the necessary attributes to belong to the group of men. However, this waiver of the feminine will necessarily imply a loss, related to the abandonment of everything associated with close relationships of affection. Thus understood the relationships of care, attention, service, etc. Activities just necessary for the reproduction of life and traditionally associated with women in the core of the sexual division of labor.
On the other hand, this process of loss and resignation can also be seen as a kind of "investment";Well, from it, a series of "benefits" that we can call more appropriately privileges are obtained. But that resignation implies a huge repression of the world of their affections and feelings because they do not disappear, but an unconscious repressive surveillance that prevents its free expression forms. A Luck of Police 24/7 of emotions from the earliest stages of childhood.
This process is permanently reinforced by the social messages that permanently inform male children to be afraid, grief, shame and express them publicly involve the risk of losing masculinity, of losing identity. And then, men learn that masculinity can be lost.
During adolescence, a key stage for the formation of male identity, there is a strong need for identity statement. This is evidenced in the importance that male adolescents attribute to full masculinity of colleagues, unlike women. At this stage there are a series of mandates related to the need to demonstrate that he is a man in relation to the achievement of socially hegemonic attributes of masculinity. At this stage the sex-gender system demands that masculinity is acted under the hegemonic criteria of hardness, violence, unstoppable sexuality, etc. At this stage it is learned that masculinity must be permanently staged, under penalty of loss.
Thus, competitiveness is constantly reinforced. It is competed to demonstrate who is more man in the terms of the system. That is: who has more couples, who fights better, who is more capable of dominating more men, who has the biggest penis, etc. At this stage, probably more than any other, who fails to achieve the attributes of masculinity, would not be a true man. And who is not a true man, so he is a homosexual, or a woman4.
In the relationship with women, masculinity also needs to be acted to be affirmed, especially in the erotic/sexual field. In this sense, women outside the family will have the role of "giving" guns to the extent that they recognize the male as a couple (in the long term or momentary) potential. This position would grant women a key power in the gender system because they could grant or deny masculinity to men.
However, it is important to note that precisely because of the same sex-gender system in which what is associated with the masculine acquires greater value than the feminine, said role and said power are generally ignored. Therefore, from the male social command of unstoppable sexuality, the denial of a woman to have sexual/erotic approaches with a male does not fit as a possibility within the system of interrelations conceived as "natural". In this case, access to women’s body would prevail through violence as a path perceived as "fair" from the learned male superiority.
In summary, the social environment generates and reinforces through a clear system of punishments and prizes those behaviors that are understood as traditionally masculine. In this context, aggressiveness for example would be one of the main markers of masculinity. The ability to exercise power over other subjects (especially those socially read as feminine) would be one of the main markers of masculinity and its learning process is a long, tedious and full process of denial, fears and shame. Men learn to be violent with violence. And at the center of sexist violence, hegemonic masculinity lives.
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