The journey of the
Odyssey
begins with a war for a woman, Helen of Troy, and ends with the hero's return home to fight another war for another woman, this time his wife Penelope.
With this example, Antonio J. Rodriguez usually explains the first knot of
La misma masculinity de siempre
(Anagrama), an essay fed with a wealth of cultural references, from rap to sports, gender theory, interviews and even immersions in his own biography
Traditional masculinity - also known as normative or hegemonic - is seen in the book as a political category based on two pillars: the colonization of the woman's body and the state of permanent war with other men.
A construction that would be cementing since before the time of Homer, but that has recently been revised under that fashionable term,
new masculinities
, turned into the second knot of the essay and that for the author is nothing more than a trick, a cosmetic change so that everything remains the same.
“It sounds to me like the pedagogy of cruelty of Rita Segato (the Argentine feminist anthropologist) when she says that men can be defined by their relationship of suprasubordination of the body of women understood as a territory to be colonized, among other analyzes on how the masculinity is defined by the way in which men relate to power ”, explained this Wednesday about the first thesis of the book Ignacio Lozano, psychologist and member of the Mexican Academy of men's gender studies, during a digital debate organized by THE COUNTRY.
From the subtitle -
Capitalism, desire and phallophobia
- the reflections of the essay are framed in the contemporary climate of anxiety and fragile bonds.
For Melissa Fernández, a social anthropologist specializing in gender studies and professor at the Cloister of Sor Juana in Mexico City, the political-economic anchor is also important: “Beware of discursive fictions and beware of assuming new men and new women, when the material and historical reality remains the same.
How much does the pop news, the ones that go viral, make us believe that reality is changing? "
On the tension between the more classic activism and the new feminisms, another sign of the times, Rodríguez solves it with a quote from a heavyweight: “It is common to hear that there is a
queer-
feminist
conspiracy
that is leaving aside the economist reading or material of the moment, or that it is a distraction.
But I think they are closely linked.
Engels already said that the first class oppression is suffered by women at the moment in which the division of labor occurs and they are condemned to what today we call care ”.
Silicon Valley vs.
Wall street
Closing the focus on the label new masculinities, the essay illustrates the transition from the stereotype of the plump and aggressive banker, that kind of predatory animal of the financial markets, towards the executives of technology businesses, slim anatomy, temperate character, lovers of
jogging
and the early risers: "The sober virility of Silicon Valley rebels in this way against the uncontrolled drunkenness of Wall Street."
Fernández considers that it is possible to find a Zuckerberger jogging at dawn through the upper class neighborhoods of Mexico City but, at the same time, he puts the alert on another mask: “The new masculinities are defined by western and hegemonic parameters in the face of the caricature of the Average Mexican.
I mean, the less Mexican you look, the better.
The Mexican macho in the novels still exists, but in the upper classes there is also this recalcitrant and violent masculinity ”.
In Mexico, eight out of 10 women have suffered sexist violence.
Almost half of the crimes are committed by the husband or partner.
Every day nine murders of women are registered.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg because barely 4% of crimes of sexual violence in the country are reported.
"There may be men who move towards more egalitarian models, but there is an institutional logic of historically male justice administration that produces subjective masculine positions even though the institution is occupied by women," adds Lozano about the insistent demands to introduce the gender perspective in the police and justice departments.
The third knot of the essay raises the lines of flight to that traditional masculinity that devours women and at war with the rest of the men.
“I'm interested,” Rodríguez explains, “in everything that has to do with expressions of sexual or gender dissidence, in the sense of questioning that monogamous and androcentric heterosexuality that has been present throughout history.
The new models known as polyamory or relational anarchism are expressions of a will to be and desire that question those ideas of colonizing the body of the other ”.
What are we talking about when we talk about heterosexuality?
Delving into the origins of desire, one of the conclusions is the demolition of gender categories and, specifically, of heterosexuality.
Saying 'I'm straight' is not just a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is literally a lie.
When you say 'I am heterosexual' you are saying something else: I like a type of female subject limited by a series of characteristics that in turn serve to define oneself.
This one looks great on dating apps, ”says Rodríguez.
Anchored in the thesis that desire is anything but biological or natural, the essay even proposes a reappropriation of elements of radical feminism such as political lesbianism.
That is to say: stop sleeping with men so as not to take a step back from the enemy.
"If the starting point is that hegemonic masculinity is a war between men, we have to stop seeing them as adversaries to literally start a more loving relationship."
Fernández picks up the glove: “I don't understand it as a simile to the style: let's see colleagues, fall in love with each other, lie down and see what happens.
I would give it a swerve and tell the men to get together to talk, to be human, to talk about their fears to remember that they are a body and not some kind of demigod. "