tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/machismo-2746/articlesMachismo – The Conversation2022-03-11T13:20:35Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1787092022-03-11T13:20:35Z2022-03-11T13:20:35ZThe American founders could teach Putin a lesson: Provoking an unnecessary war is not how to prove your masculinity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451355/original/file-20220310-27-stamzr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C7%2C4700%2C3136&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are lots of official photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin shirtless, including this one from August 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-sunbathes-during-his-news-photo/826469180?adppopup=true">Alexey Nikolsky/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Vladimir Putin of Russia loves shows of machismo. He constantly pumps up his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2015/dec/16/the-gunslinger-gait-of-vladimir-putin-walk-video">swagger</a>. He is wont to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/vladimir-putin-cnbc-sexist-pipeline-b1938528.html">disparage women</a>. And he has repeatedly appeared on the public stage <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-defends-shirtless-photos-i-see-no-need-to-hide-2018-6">bare-chested</a> or as a formidable judo athlete. </p>
<p>Putin likely carries out such performances for a series of reasons: to reassure himself that he belongs to a group of famous <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/strongmen">strongmen</a>; to demonstrate his theory that a good leader is one who thrives on flamboyant, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/lawless-masculinity-gop/620732/">unchecked virility</a>; and to show his constituents – <a href="https://krytyka.com/sites/krytyka/files/sperling_0.pdf">including many international acolytes</a> – that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504220920189">male authority isn’t really under threat</a>.</p>
<p>You might laugh at such childish and cartoonish convictions and attitudes. But attitudes sometimes are not just a matter of personal style or political opportunism; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2022/03/09/putin-ukraine-invasion-militarized-masculinity-psychology/9426237002/">they can lead to dramatic global consequences</a>, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<p>Looking at Putin, you could make the case that <a href="https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/leaders-toxic-hyper-masculinity-results-in-war/">machismo results in war</a>: For these types of men and leaders, a war seems to offer the ultimate test in masculinity.</p>
<p>As a historian who has spent years writing a book on <a href="https://press.prod.jhu.mindgrb.io/books/title/12786/first-among-men">George Washington’s leadership and masculinity</a>, I have no qualms about stating that, for that long-gone generation that created an independent country, wars didn’t feed their egos.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in white judo costumes with one man throwing the other onto the floor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451354/original/file-20220310-21-1myuszr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vladimir Putin (top), then Russia’s prime minister, takes part in a judo training session during a visit to St Petersburg on Dec. 18, 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-prime-minister-vladimir-putin-takes-part-in-a-judo-news-photo/1223813355?adppopup=true">Alexey Druzhinin/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>On the battlefield</h2>
<p>The American founders were often misogynists and racists. They could be reckless and brutal. But they didn’t crave wars just to prove that they were real men.</p>
<p>It’s true that Alexander Hamilton once made a shocking confession to a friend, “<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0002">I wish there was a War</a>.” But that’s precisely the point: He was a 12-year-old boy when he wrote that, not yet a man. </p>
<p>None of the founders were <a href="https://archive.org/details/halfwaypacifistt0000stua">pacifists</a>. Together they built a navy and an army. They studied the art of war by reading <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Caesar-Roman-ruler">Julius Caesar</a> or <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Treatise_of_Military_Discipline.html?id=xHtUAAAAYAAJ">Humphrey Bland</a>, author of a popular “Treatise of Military Discipline.” They all accepted wars as a necessity, especially when every other option was impractical.</p>
<p>Moreover, they saw war as inevitable because they didn’t trust human nature: “This pugnacious humor of Mankind,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “<a href="https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FOEA-print-04-02-02-2840">seems to be the law of his nature</a>.” </p>
<p>“So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities,” James Madison had already declared, that “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp">their most violent conflicts</a>.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dead body lying under a bloody white cloth, with a suitcase next to it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451362/original/file-20220310-15-1tbl6tk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A local volunteer lies dead after the the Russian army shelled an evacuation point in Irpin, Ukraine, on March 6, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/local-volunteer-lies-dead-on-the-ground-after-the-shelling-news-photo/1381188012?adppopup=true">Diego Herrera/Europa Press via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>The majority of the founders also didn’t shelter in their palaces, as Putin has done, seated at an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/vladimir-putin-ukraine-russia-crisis-long-table-kremlin-memes-rcna16670">impossibly long table</a>. “I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me,” George Washington wrote after the <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/battle-of-the-monongahela/">battle of the Monongahela River</a> in 1755. “Death was levelling my companions on <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-01-02-0169">every side of me</a>.”</p>
<p>Washington, Hamilton and others could be easily found on actual battlefields where <a href="http://holgerhoock.com/books/scars-of-independence/">countless horrors took place</a>.</p>
<p>On May 31, 1777, William Martin, lieutenant of Oliver Spencer’s Additional Continental Regiment, for instance, was ambushed by a British-Hessian unit near Bound Brook, New Jersey. Wounded, he asked for clemency, but to no avail. He was “<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-09-02-0588">butchered with the greatest cruelty</a>,” wrote one observer. He was bayoneted about 20 times. His nose was cut off and his eyes yanked out.</p>
<p>Washington ordered some soldiers to bring Martin’s body to his headquarters. He had the body washed and shown as proof of the enemy’s inhumanity and lack of virility. Eventually, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-09-02-0588">he sent the body to the British commander, General Cornwallis</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An antique letter in flowery handwriting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451358/original/file-20220310-17-1ps3d89.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘It is with infinite regret, I am again compelled, to remonstrate against that spirit of wanton cruelty, that … influenced the conduct of your soldiery,’ Gen. George Washington wrote to British Lieutenant General Cornwallis on June 2, 1777.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw4.042_0079_0080/?sp=1">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Never crave wars’</h2>
<p>In the 18th century, the soldier was a good example of a truly virile man, but only provided he kept acting soldierly.</p>
<p>Look at our enemies, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-18-02-0029">Washington exclaimed</a> in a letter to Patrick Henry; look at the spectacle of recklessness they offer. They only bring “devastation,” whether upon “defenceless towns,” or “helpless Women & Children.” His conclusion was clear: “Resentment & unsoldiery practices” have “<a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-18-02-0029">taken place of all the Manly virtues</a>.”</p>
<p>Walking the razor-thin line between real and pretended masculinity isn’t easy. But 18th-century leaders knew what had to be avoided at all costs. Only “Unmanly Men,” <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-11-02-0012">Benjamin Franklin realized</a>, would “come with Weapons against the Unarmed.” They would “use the Sword against Women, and the Bayonet against young Children.”</p>
<p>Manly men, in fact, put up with wars; but they never crave wars, let alone provoke wars, according to the American founders. A virile man, especially a soldier, must be propelled by the vision of an intellectual, cultural and moral refinement: “I must study Politicks and War,” John Adams once wrote, so that “my sons may have liberty to study <a href="https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17800512jasecond">Mathematicks and Philosophy</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine">Thomas Paine</a>, the author of influential political pamphlets, would articulate the same idea: “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm">that my child may have peace</a>.”</p>
<p>That inspiring image of children reaping the fruits of peace — definitely at odds with Putin’s shows of bravado through the years — is taken from the Bible. But the image has a political bent and doesn’t belong to any specific religion: People shall “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Isaiah%202%3A4">shall they learn war any more</a>.”</p>
<p>Washington, a man and a leader graced with a hefty dose of masculinity, agreed completely: “That the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks — and, as the Scripture expresses it, <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-06-02-0202">the nations learn war no more</a>.”</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A leader’s machismo can lead to war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has long displayed his version of hyper-masculinity. A historian says that for America’s founders, wars never fed their egos.Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di TorinoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1437912020-08-24T12:20:49Z2020-08-24T12:20:49ZLatin American women are disappearing and dying under lockdown<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354176/original/file-20200821-24-mmqoe6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C2687%2C1715&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Funeral for a woman and her 11-year-old daughter, both found dead inside a burnt out vehicle in Puebla state, Mexico, June 11, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/relatives-and-friends-of-gardenia-ortega-and-her-11-year-news-photo/1221065114?adppopup=true">Jose Castanares/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s a pandemic within the pandemic. Across <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/22/mexico-femicides-president-amlo-women-shelters">Latin America</a>, gender-based violence has spiked since COVID-19 broke out.</p>
<p>Almost <a href="https://www.elperiodico.com/es/internacional/20200730/peru-mujeres-desaparecidas-durante-cuarentena-8058781">1,200 women disappeared in Peru</a> between March 11 and June 30, the Ministry of Women reported. In Brazil, 143 women in 12 states were murdered in March and April – a <a href="https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/direitos-humanos/noticia/2020-06/casos-de-feminicidio-crescem-22-em-12-estados-durante-pandemia">22% increase over the same period in 2019</a>. </p>
<p>Reports of rape, murder and <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/642432/las-mujeres-golpeadas-por-la-austeridad-de-la-4t">domestic violence</a> are also <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wG6qya31zzz4m1YUgowZWSSH0z748HDt/view">way up in Mexico</a>. In Guatemala, they’re down significantly – a likely sign that women are too <a href="https://www.prensalibre.com/guatemala/comunitario/mujeres-escapan-de-la-violencia-en-plena-crisis-del-coronavirus/">afraid to call the police on the partners they’re locked down with</a>. </p>
<p>The pandemic worsened but did not create this problem: Latin America has long been among the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-is-better-not-to-have-a-daughter-here-latin-americas-violence-turns-against-women-11545237843">world’s deadliest places to be a woman</a>. </p>
<h2>Don’t blame ‘machismo’</h2>
<p>I have spent three decades studying <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Nrb73ZoAAAAJ&hl=en">gendered violence</a> as well as women’s organizing in Latin America, an <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexican-women-are-angry-about-rape-murder-and-government-neglect-and-they-want-the-world-to-know-122156">increasingly vocal and potent social force</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women dressed in black and wearing face masks clash with police in Mexico CIty" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354145/original/file-20200821-22-40gt38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women demand justice for Mexico’s many murdered women at a protest against gender violence in Mexico CIty, Aug. 15, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-take-part-during-a-demonstration-to-protest-protest-news-photo/1228075733?adppopup=true">Nadya Murillo / Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Though patriarchy is part of the problem, Latin America’s gender violence cannot simply be attributed to “machismo.” Nor is gender inequality particularly extreme there. Education levels among Latin American women and girls have been rising for decades and – <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/465074-why-american-politics-needs-gender-quota">unlike the U.S.</a> – many countries have quotas for women to hold political office. Several have elected <a href="https://theconversation.com/female-presidents-dont-always-help-women-while-in-office-study-in-latin-america-finds-91707">women presidents</a>. </p>
<p>My research, which often <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03066150.2018.1534836">centers on Indigenous communities</a>, traces violence against women in Latin America instead to both the region’s colonial history and to a complex web of social, racial, gender and economic inequalities. </p>
<p>I’ll use Guatemala, a country I know well, as a case study to unravel this thread. But we could engage in a similar exercise with other Latin American countries or the U.S., where violence against women is a pervasive, historically rooted problem, too – and one that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4302952/">disproportionately affects women of color</a>. </p>
<p>In Guatemala, where <a href="https://www.horizons.ca/blog/2018/1/3/guatemala">600 to 700 women are killed every year</a>, gendered violence has deep roots. Mass rape carried out <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/53/2/445/1856585">during massacres</a> was a tool of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40926273?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">systematic, generalized terror</a> during the country’s 36-year civil war, when citizens and armed insurgencies rose up against the government. The war, which ended in 1996, <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/1997/02/truth-commission-guatemala">killed over 200,000 Guatemalans</a>. </p>
<p>Mass rape has been used as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-as-a-weapon-of-war-what-the-law-can-do-10038">weapon of war</a> in <a href="https://theconversation.com/rape-in-syria-a-weapon-of-war-or-instrument-of-terror-8816">many conflicts</a>. In Guatemala, government forces targeted Indigenous women. While Guatemala’s Indigenous population is between <a href="https://www.censopoblacion.gt/mapas">44%</a> and <a href="https://www.iwgia.org/en/guatemala.html">60% Indigenous</a>, based on the census and other demographic data, about 90% of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/28/guatemalan-women-mass-rape-give-evidence">over 100,000 women raped during the war</a> were <a href="https://hrdag.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CEHreport-english.pdf">Indigenous Mayans</a>. </p>
<p>Testimonies from the war demonstrate that soldiers saw Indigenous women as having little humanity. They knew Mayan women could be <a href="https://www.ijmonitor.org/2018/04/the-legacy-of-rios-montt-guatemalas-most-notorious-war-criminal/">raped, killed and mutilated</a> with impunity. This is a legacy of Spanish colonialism. Starting in the 16th century, Indigenous peoples and <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">Afro-descendants</a> across the Americas were enslaved or compelled into forced labor by the Spanish, <a href="https://www.zaoerv.de/59_1999/59_1999_2_a_497_528.pdf">treated as private property</a>, often brutally. </p>
<p>Some Black and Indigenous women <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fractional-freedoms/0EA2CEF3959952AAE7966EC7F284E437">actually tried to fight their ill treatment in court</a> during the colonial period, but they had fewer legal rights than white Spanish conquerors and their descendants. The subjugation and marginalization of Black and Indigenous Latin Americans continues into the present day.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colorful image of Spanish on horseback attacking Native people at a temple" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354204/original/file-20200822-14-1l2eath.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=685&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A depiction of the 1519 Cholula Massacre by Spanish conquistadors in 1519, made by Mexico’s Indigenous inhabitants.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Matanza_de_Cholula_por_conquistadores_espa%C3%B1oles_Lienzo_de_Tlaxcala.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Internalized oppression</h2>
<p>In Guatemala, violence against women affects Indigenous women disproportionately, but not exclusively. Conservative Catholic and evangelical moral teachings hold that <a href="https://www.futurechurch.org/women-in-church-leadership/women-in-church-leadership/scriptures-that-subordinate-women">women should be chaste and obey their husbands</a>, creating the idea that men can control the women with whom they are in a sexual relationship. </p>
<p>In a 2014 survey published by the <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights/IO923en.pdf">Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University</a>, Guatemalans were more accepting of gender violence than any other Latin Americans, with 58% of respondents saying suspected infidelity justified physical abuse. </p>
<p>Women as well as men have internalized this view. During my research in Guatemala and Mexico, many women shared stories about how their own mothers, mother-in-law or neighbors told them to “aguantar” – put up with – their husbands’ abuse, saying it was a man’s right to punish bad wives. </p>
<p>The media, police and often even official justice systems reinforce strict constraints on <a href="https://www.prensalibre.com/tema/hombre-mata-a-su-conviviente-por-celos-en-chimaltenango/">women’s behavior</a>. When women are murdered in Guatemala and Mexico – a daily occurrence – headlines often read, “<a href="https://www.milenio.com/policia/hombre-mata-a-su-esposa-por-celos">Man Kills His Wife Because of Jealousy</a>.” In court and online, rape survivors are still accused of “asking for it” if they were assaulted while out without male supervision. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A newspaper front page with blurred out image of a murdered woman's mutilated body, reading 'Burnt Alive!'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354227/original/file-20200823-20-14s7sf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mexican newspaper exclaims ‘Burnt Alive!’ to tout a story about a murdered woman, June 7, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/newspapers-front-page-reads-burnt-alive-under-the-bridge-news-photo/479356448?adppopup=true">Omar Torres/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How to protect women</h2>
<p>Latin American countries have made many creative, serious efforts to protect women. </p>
<p>Seventeen have passed <a href="https://www.cepal.org/en/pressreleases/eclac-least-2795-women-were-victims-femicide-23-countries-latin-america-and-caribbean">laws</a> making <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77421/WHO_RHR_12.38_eng.pdf?sequence=1">feminicide</a> – the intentional killing of women or girls because they are female – its own crime separate from homicide, with long mandatory prison sentences to try to deter this. Many countries have also created <a href="https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/article/view/891">women-only police stations</a> , produced statistical data on feminicide, improved <a href="https://www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/en/home/library/womens_empowerment/del-compromiso-a-la-accion--politicas-para-erradicar-la-violenci.html">reporting avenues for gendered violence</a> and funded more <a href="http://cedoc.inmujeres.gob.mx/documentos_download/101219.pdf">women’s shelters</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Eight pink wooden crosses mark a mass grave at a construction site" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C2681%2C1765&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354142/original/file-20200821-16-128fuzi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Latin America has long been one of the world’s most dangerous regions for women. Crosses mark where the corpses of eight missing women were found outside Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/wooden-pink-crosses-are-seen-in-the-place-where-the-corpses-news-photo/1228095222?adppopup=true">Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Guatemala even <a href="https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/sites/default/files/Hector%20Ruiz_Guatemala%20VAW%20Article_2017.pdf">created special courts</a> where men accused of gender violence – whether feminicide, sexual assault or psychological violence – are tried. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2018.1534836">Research</a>
I conducted with my colleague, political scientist Erin Beck, finds that these specialized courts have been important in recognizing violence against women as a serious crime, punishing it and providing victims with much-needed legal, social and psychological support. But we also found critical limitations related to insufficient funding, staff burnout and weak investigations. </p>
<p>There is also an enormous linguistic and cultural gap between judicial officials and in many parts of the country the largely Indigenous, non-Spanish-speaking women they serve. Many of these women are so poor and geographically isolated they can’t even make it into court, leaving <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-domestic-abuse-and-anti-gay-violence-qualify-as-persecution-in-asylum-law-98354">flight as their only option of escaping violence</a>. </p>
<h2>The collective body</h2>
<p>All these efforts to protect women – whether in Guatemala, elsewhere in Latin America or the U.S. – are narrow and legalistic. They make feminicide one crime, physical assault a different crime, and rape another – and attempt to indict and punish men for those acts.</p>
<p>But they fail to indict the broader systems that perpetuate these problems, like social, racial, and economic inequalities, family relationships and social mores. </p>
<p>Some Indigenous women’s groups say gendered violence is a collective problem that needs collective solutions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women and a child in traditional Indigenous clothing look at a crime scene where a home was burned" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354144/original/file-20200821-14-u4lemo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gendered violence in Guatemala disproportionately affects Indigenous women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-look-at-rubble-after-a-house-was-burnt-in-an-attack-news-photo/1228096531?adppopup=true">Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“When they rape, disappear, jail or assassinate a woman, it is as if all the community, the neighborhood, the community or the family has been raped,” said the Mexican <a href="https://www.congresonacionalindigena.org/2017/11/27/palabra-marichuy-neza-las-mujeres-los-feminicidios">Indigenous activist Marichuy at a rally</a> in Mexico City in 2017. </p>
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<p>In Marichuy’s analysis, violence against one Indigenous woman is the result of an entire society that dehumanizes her people. So simply sending the abuser to prison is not sufficient. Gendered violence calls for a punishment that both implicates the community and the offender – and tries to heal them. </p>
<p>Some Mexican Indigenous communities have <a href="https://nacla.org/article/indigenous-justice-faces-state-community-police-force-guerrero-mexico">autonomous police and justice systems</a>, which use discussion and mediation to reach a verdict and emphasize reconciliation over punishment. Sentences of community service – whether construction, digging drainage or other manual labor – serve to both punish and socially reintegrate offenders. Terms range from a few weeks for simple theft to <a href="http://www.rachelsieder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Justicias-Indigenas-y-Estadointro.pdf">eight years for murder</a>. </p>
<p>Stopping gendered violence in Latin America, the U.S. or anywhere will be a complicated, long-term process. And grand social progress seems unlikely in a pandemic. But when lockdowns end, restorative justice seems like <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10714839.2017.1373970">a good way to start</a> helping women and our communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynn Marie Stephen receives funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and a variety of sources at the University of Oregon including the Center for the Study of Women in Society, her Philip H. Knight Chair, and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. </span></em></p>Reports of rape, domestic abuse and murdered women are way up in Brazil, Mexico, Peru and beyond since the coronavirus. But Latin America has long been one of the most dangerous places to be a woman.Lynn Marie Stephen, Philip H. Knight Chair, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Faculty Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1331822020-03-12T12:30:33Z2020-03-12T12:30:33ZFilm review: Moffie is a harrowing meditation on white masculinity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319383/original/file-20200309-118913-1ljnn2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Manners/Moffie</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the opening moments of the film <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10699362/">Moffie</a></em>, Nicholas van der Swart is walking away from a family gathering. As he disappears into the darkness, he is wishing that a part of himself will disappear. </p>
<p>It’s 1981. The 16-year-old is about to leave for his two years of <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/youth/the_militarisation_of_the_south_african_state.htm">conscription</a> into the South African army. During <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> it was compulsory for white men to serve in the military because South Africa was waging wars against liberation forces on its borders and beyond. Nicholas must enlist to fight the <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/CWIHP_SouthAfrica_Final_Web.pdf">“communist threat”</a> at the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">Angolan border</a>. </p>
<p>Nicholas is gay. To the Christian nationalist rulers, he is just as much of a threat as the black resistance fighters who are nameless, faceless enemies to be exterminated in the film. Everything that is not <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-lingering-unspoken-pain-of-white-youth-who-fought-for-apartheid-46218">in service of the apartheid state</a> must be extinguished or repressed.</p>
<p>This repression is hammered home for the viewer through the constant verbal assaults that the young men suffer – and mete out – during their military training. In the South Africa portrayed in <em>Moffie</em>, every white character, be it a parent, general, pastor, even a friend, is policing borders and boundaries; there are clear lines that cannot be crossed. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rMOycDIbNTg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Moffie examines the violent persecution of gay men under apartheid.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Violence and language</h2>
<p>The most powerful way that this mental conditioning takes place in the film is through the use of the word <a href="https://dsae.co.za/entry/moffie/e04835">“moffie”</a> (often translated as “faggot”) which those in charge use relentlessly to <a href="https://www.channel24.co.za/Movies/News/watch-marc-lottering-armand-aucamp-pieter-dirk-uys-on-being-called-a-moffie-20200305">insult and control</a> the troops. The scenes of training are often harrowing, and the word comes to be an act of violence on the viewer as well. </p>
<p>Its effect is to strip away any resistance, and to associate femininity, diverse sexuality and any emotional range as weakness. To be gay, then, is the ultimate offence against this regime of machismo.</p>
<p>The violence of the word is reinforced with physical violence – menial tasks that lead to exhaustion and deprivation – along with other epithets (racist, gender shaming) that destroy any sense of self-worth or individuality. The young recruits are becoming the men that apartheid South Africa needs in order to cling to life: men who are violent, hateful and emotionless. </p>
<h2>Fear and desire</h2>
<p>Only in moments of darkness and isolation do the characters feel able to be intimate. In the first scene where Nicholas (Kai Luke Brümmer) is alone with his love interest, Dylan Stassen (Ryan de Villiers), the young men are ordered to spend the night waiting in deep trenches. </p>
<p>Their commanding officer, Sergeant Brand (Hilton Pelser), seems to take pleasure in setting a boundary that they cannot cross, to stay in the trenches no matter what, until the sun rises. What Nicholas and Dylan find, trapped in the confines of these limitations on their freedom and movement, is a moment of intimacy, a spark of desire. </p>
<p>The fear that Nicholas feels in realising his attraction for Dylan is palpable. He can never be caught, because not only will he be subject to violence, but he will be sent to a mental facility to “cure” him of his desire. </p>
<p>These forbidden moments are riddled with anxiety, which seems to rob the boys of the love story which this film might have become.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319434/original/file-20200309-118890-1awzhuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jan Combrink portrays Jan Goud in Moffie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Manners/Moffie</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The black body</h2>
<p>Hermanus is masterful in linking oppressive masculinity to racism in <em>Moffie</em>. I’ve <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1021-14972018000100002">written before</a> about his 2011 film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1922721/"><em>Skoonheid</em> (Beauty)</a>, and how toxic masculinity and racism place limits on intimacy. </p>
<p><em>Moffie</em> is in many ways a superior film, with striking cinematography emphasising the bleakness of the surroundings and a punching, unnerving score that points to the conflict and anxiety of the characters. </p>
<p>The film is bookended by two moments of violence against black characters. The first is when the young conscripts throw a bag of vomit into the face of a black man, demanding he not sit on a bench at a train station. The second is when Nicholas kills a black soldier in combat. Nicholas looking down at the corpse, in the dark of the night that he had once found refuge in, shows how he can never escape the racist and patriarchal duties that define apartheid.</p>
<p>There is a similar consciously political placement of black bodies in <em>Skoonheid</em>. Hermanus – a black man – features black characters in two highly charged moments in a film about the secret gay sex lives of white Afrikaner farmers. The one is before a sex scene and the other is on a university campus as <em>Skoonheid</em> reaches its terrible conclusion.</p>
<h2>Standout performances</h2>
<p>The actors in <em>Moffie</em> brilliantly portray these moments of being subject to the assault of toxic masculinity, with a particularly strong performance by Matthew Vey, who plays Nicholas’s best friend, Michael. Another strong performance is from Stefan Vermaak, who plays Oscar, the more willing participant in racist and patriarchal ideology. </p>
<p>Brümmer’s powerful performance as the central character shows both subtle resistance and then participation as an agent of the apartheid state. </p>
<p>At the end, it is unclear whether the young men are able to escape the encroaching ideology that dictates their lives, and whether the moments of refuge and isolation are enough to free them from the memory of the incessant labelling of “moffie” that defined their youth.</p>
<p><em>Moffie</em> is a challenging and deeply affecting film that represents the important, often overlooked realities of living in apartheid for gay men. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319438/original/file-20200309-118881-65zfc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Director Oliver Hermanus surrounded by troops.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Manners/Moffie</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grant Andrews receives funding from the National Research Foundation Thuthuka Grant as part of a project on queer visualities and queer theory in South Africa. </span></em></p>Set in the army during apartheid, the South African film Moffie is a masterpiece. Oliver Hermanus, a black filmmaker, explores how toxic white masculinity breeds racism and homophobia.Grant Andrews, Lecturer, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1229002019-09-09T11:01:51Z2019-09-09T11:01:51ZWhy ‘macho culture’ is not to blame for violence against women in Mexico<p>In recent weeks, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/26/desperation-and-rage-mexican-women-take-to-streets-to-protest-unabated-sexual-violence-glitter-revolution">hundreds of women</a> have taken to the streets of Mexico City protesting against murder, rape and other violence against women in Mexico. Many <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/politica/con-los-de-enfrente-vivimos-en-un-pais-profundamente-machista">commentators blame</a> “macho culture” for the violence <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicans-march-to-demand-justice-for-violence-against-women/2019/09/08/2cb4e2cc-d284-11e9-8924-1db7dac797fb_story.html">they are so furious about</a>. In the first half of 2019 alone, <a href="https://twitter.com/msalguerb/status/1163257116506804225">1,835 women were murdered in Mexico</a>, according to Mexican geophysicist María Salguero, who is mapping the violence. </p>
<p>In these accounts, macho culture seems to refer to a social climate which facilitates or rewards macho attitudes and behaviours. Following the stereotype, in a macho culture, <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/750-machos-mistresses-madonnas">a man earns respect</a> through his ability to lead his family, make sexual conquests, and defend his honour, with violence if necessary. </p>
<p>But what does macho culture mean in real life? And what if blaming it for violence against women in Mexico is in fact part of the problem? </p>
<p>“When we have friends visit from other states, they are frightened,” a young psychologist told me when I visited the central Mexican state of Michoacán in June. Within Mexico, the state is notorious for its high levels of violence, including gender-based violence. Sitting in a cafe among feminist friends of diverse backgrounds, she added: “Here they are macho to the bone.” </p>
<p>This statement, like many similar ones I’ve recorded during my ongoing research in Mexico since 2014, both confirms and challenges stereotypes about Mexican machos. The feminists I spoke to often – unsurprisingly – blamed macho attitudes for violence against women in Michoacán. But they also made a point out of distinguishing different kinds of macho culture in different places and different moments in history. </p>
<p>For instance, the Catholic Church has a much stronger influence in the conservative city of Zamora in Michoacán than in liberal Mexico City. This means that while many parents in Michoacán teach their daughters to be submissive in line with Mediterranean Catholic ideals of womanhood, their peers in Mexico City are socially expected to fend male aggressors off with equal violence.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mexican-women-are-angry-about-rape-murder-and-government-neglect-and-they-want-the-world-to-know-122156">Mexican women are angry about rape, murder and government neglect – and they want the world to know</a>
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<h2>Machismo in many forms</h2>
<p>Paying attention to these differences is important, as the anthropologist Matthew Gutmann explained in his study, <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520250130/the-meanings-of-macho">The Meanings of Macho</a>. Simply blaming macho culture for violence against women allows men to justify their physically abusive behaviour. They can excuse themselves by saying: “I am a product of a macho culture, and that’s why I hit my wife.” Gutmann found that, in reality, machismo comes in many forms. </p>
<p>Both men and women in the working-class Mexico City neighbourhood he studied displayed some qualities commonly associated with being a macho, without fully conforming to the stereotype. Some alcoholic men were caring, nonviolent husbands, while some women beat their children or cheated on their husbands. By contrast, some less “manly” men who avoided alcohol and did not seem like machos did beat their wives. </p>
<p>In my research on <a href="https://www.fhuce.edu.uy/images/comunicacion/publicaciones/Taks-Alzugaray-2019-06-23-todo.pdf">violence against indigenous women</a>, I found that macho culture arguably describes something real. The shape that violence against women takes and how people talk about it is influenced by cultural ideas, for example, whether they consider violence to be normal or a shameful taboo topic. </p>
<p>But even within a single Mexican village, whether a certain act of violence is considered normal and excusable, or extraordinary and abhorrent, varies considerably from person to person. Many of the Mexican men I met in Michoacán and Mexico City associated being a “strong man” – which they also counted as a kind of machismo – with being stoic, rather than violent in the face of conflict.</p>
<p>So, given that macho culture has many different meanings and it’s difficult to find a perfect embodiment of it in real life, using macho culture to explain violence against women is inadequate. Worryingly, it may prevent an examination of the real causes of such violence.</p>
<p>While there is considerable evidence that <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Gender+Violence%3A+A+Cultural+Perspective-p-9781444357141">macho attitudes normalise male aggression</a> and dominance, culture on its own doesn’t explain why violence happens. There are many factors at play in causing and facilitating violence against women around the world, including power inequalities, sexist and racist discrimination, peer pressure, adverse childhood experiences and trauma, emotional dependency, and sadism, just to name a few. </p>
<h2>Other types of masculinity are possible</h2>
<p>There is another reason why blaming macho culture might stand in the way of reducing violence against women in Mexico: it stigmatises Mexican men. Stereotyping Mexican men as violent machos limits their ability to embody other, more empathetic and caring kinds of masculinity. This particularly applies to poor, indigenous, and rural Mexican men, who are stereotyped as machos by other Mexicans. </p>
<p>For example, a 20-year-old interviewee from the rural southern outskirts of Mexico City told me he wanted to become a veterinarian, but failed to get into one of the highly selective universities of Mexico City. While his lighter-skinned twin sister went on to study, he soon decided his best option was to become a police officer. Now he spends his days carrying a large gun, just like his father before him.</p>
<p>He is just one of many examples of indigenous and rural Mexican men, who can only find poorly paid or risky work, such as farming, construction work and police. These jobs often involve shows of strength and endurance that are closely associated with machismo. Statistically, only very few of them manage to get into <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1468796810372305">more prestigious professions</a>, such as teaching. </p>
<p>When people speak of macho culture, this often says less about gender relations than racist and class-based discrimination. This discrimination itself breeds frustration and, too often, violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>At different stages of this research, Catherine Whittaker has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Foreign Ministry of the Mexican Government, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the American Anthropological Association. </span></em></p>As protests continue in Mexico about violence against women, some have blamed macho culture. But that may do more harm.Catherine Whittaker, Research Fellow in Hispanic Studies, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1130992019-03-08T13:32:11Z2019-03-08T13:32:11ZWhy Spain needs more feminism in the classroom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262908/original/file-20190308-155499-gzwwq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C33%2C5548%2C3699&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1042027204?id=1042027204&size=huge_jpg&src=download_history">Shuttersock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was a crime that shocked all of Spain: Five men raped an 18-year-old woman at Pamplona’s <a href="https://www.bullrunpamplona.com/default.asp">running of the bulls</a> in July 2016, in a brutal assault captured on tape by the attackers. </p>
<p>The case – known as <a href="https://elpais.com/tag/caso_la_manada/a">La Manada</a>, which means “mob” – led to national outrage in Spain, both online and in the streets, and a nine-year jail sentence for the perpetrators.</p>
<p>Taken together with the <a href="https://metoomvmt.org/">#MeToo movement</a>, which began in the United States in 2017 and quickly spread around the globe, sexual assault awareness has seen a sudden and dramatic increase in Spain. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/educacion-feminista-en-los-colegios-y-las-familias-aun-queda-mucho-por-hacer-112792">Educación feminista: en los colegios y las familias aún queda mucho por hacer</a>
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<p>Young women have joined feminist activism in record numbers, marching to defend the survivor of the La Manada attack, protest <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/25/spain-protest-march-oppose-violence-against-women">violence against women</a> and protect <a href="https://www.publico.es/mujer/aborto-tren-libertad-movimiento-sostuvo-derecho-decidir">abortion rights</a>. </p>
<p>Last March 8, International Women’s Day, Spanish women staged a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/03/08/dia-internacional-de-la-mujer-2018/">domestic strike</a>.” More people participated in Spanish women’s marches that day than in any other developed country. </p>
<p>The impact of La Manada and #MeToo in Spanish schools, however, has been much weaker.</p>
<h2>Gender stereotypes start early</h2>
<p>Children as young as six years old already show the strong influence of stereotypes about gender, according to a 2017 article <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/389.full">in Science magazine</a>. At that age, girls are less likely to say that members of their gender are “really, really smart” and more likely to avoid activities they perceive to be extremely challenging. </p>
<p>In the long run, the false perception about what girls can and cannot do explains, in part, <a href="https://theconversation.com/por-que-hay-menos-mujeres-en-carreras-de-ciencia-111282">why women are underrepresented in prestigious, rigorous professions</a> like physics and engineering. They learn very early on that <a href="https://theconversation.com/stereotypes-can-hold-boys-back-in-school-too-72035">brilliance is a masculine trait</a>. </p>
<p>It doesn’t help that women are almost entirely <a href="https://theconversation.com/las-cientificas-siempre-han-estado-ahi-pero-eran-invisibles-hasta-ahora-111413">absent</a> from the images in science textbooks. </p>
<p><a href="https://reunir.unir.net/bitstream/handle/123456789/1830/2013_05_27_TFM_ESTUDIO_DEL_TRABAJO.pdf?sequence=1">Other developmental psychology research</a> has shown that as young as four years old, children choose toys, games and roles traditionally associated with their genders: trucks and playing war for the boys, dolls and playing nurse for the girls. </p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.uah.es/es/estudios/profesor/Maria-Soledad-Andres-Gomez/">educational psychologist</a>, I know that school is one of the main places that children construct their worldviews. Through play and by observation, they accumulate the experiences that inform how they think about themselves, their <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-do-children-develop-their-gender-identity-56480">gender identity</a> and, therefore, their place in the world.</p>
<p>Games are more than child’s play: When children role play, they’re showing us the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-snow-white-and-what-scandinavia-can-teach-us-about-it-70358">social models they believe to be true</a>.</p>
<p>When little girls play house, or nurse, or perform other domestic duties, I recognize it as a sign that they have already internalized the stereotype that women are “natural” caretakers. </p>
<p>And when boys play at war, it can mean that they associate violence with masculinity. </p>
<h2>Sexism at school</h2>
<p>In an effort to avoid teaching stereotypical gender roles at an early age, some Scandinavian countries have <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-snow-white-and-what-scandinavia-can-teach-us-about-it-70358">banned fairy tales</a> in schools and sought to use <a href="https://neu.org.uk/media/1676/download">gender-neutral language in the classroom</a>. Toymakers in the United States and United Kingdom have also stopped <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-pink-and-blue-the-quiet-rise-of-gender-neutral-toys-95147">marketing products</a> to children based on gender. </p>
<p>But surveys show that even in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/sexism-schools-poll-teachers-stereotypes-boys-girls-stem-subjects-sciences-maths-tech-a7567896.html">these countries</a>, children still subconsciously hold <a href="https://neu.org.uk/media/1676/download">sexist beliefs</a>. </p>
<p>One in three female British secondary school students has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/12/sexual-harassment-rife-in-schools-but-largely-unreported-study-says">sexually harrassed</a>. Sixty-six percent have heard sexist language used at school. </p>
<p>The percentage is higher in Spain. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.proyectoscopio.es/barometro/barometro-juventud-y-genero-2017/47-percepciones-violencia-genero">survey conducted in 2017</a>, one in every two young girls has suffered or witnessed sexual abuse, harassment or gender-based violence.</p>
<p>One <a href="http://www.adolescenciayjuventud.org/sala-de-prensa/noticias/ampliar.php/Id_contenido/127023/">recent study</a> showed that 56 percent of adolescents – nearly all of them boys – do not believe that gender inequality is a significant problem. Predictably, the other 44 percent of students – those who demonstrate awareness and concern about sexism – mostly comprises girls.</p>
<p>In my assessment, the gap between boys’ and girls’ awareness of gender inequality is compounded when boys and girls are educated separately. Spain, a <a href="https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2018/04/11/5ab10462468aebcd7b8b45d6.html">traditionally Catholic country</a>, still has hundreds of <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=3110518">single-sex schools</a>. </p>
<p>It is not uncommon at girls’ schools to hear teachers explicitly instruct their students to act in a way that reflects traditional feminine values. </p>
<p>“Girls don’t do that,” they may say. “Girls don’t carry that. Girls don’t wear this.”</p>
<h2>Coeducation matters</h2>
<p>If education is the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Ac7EnedPk">vaccine for violence</a>, as the saying goes, then Spain clearly has a lot of work to do.</p>
<p>It’s only fair to note, of course, that the government officials responsible for developing school curricula and the teachers who write their lesson plans every night are products of this same sexist educational system. They are not necessarily freer of prejudice and stereotypes than anyone else.</p>
<p>But change may be starting to reach Spain’s classrooms.</p>
<p>Feminist organizations and <a href="http://ligaeducacion.org/cep/">progressive educators</a> in various regions of Spain have begun developing lessons plans and other <a href="http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/institutodelamujer/index.php/areas-tematicas-coeducacion/curso-2018-2019/agenda-escolar-coeducativa">resource materials</a> that teach <a href="https://www.educacion.navarra.es/web/dpto/programa-skolae">boys and girls that they are equal</a> and to treat each other with respect.</p>
<p>The Spanish sociologists Marina Subirats, Amparo Tomé and Nuria Solsona recently published an excellent edited volume aimed at policymakers and educators about <a href="https://www.grao.com/es/producto/coeducar-poner-la-vida-en-el-centro-de-la-educacion-doe04">the urgency of coeducation in Spain</a>.</p>
<p>In it, the scholars lay out the importance of teaching boys and girls together and push for a more feminist education system in Spain, one that incorporates gender-neutral teaching practices, sexual assault awareness and openness to nongender-conforming children.</p>
<p>“Feminism is the only movement that actually makes visible the violence and oppression under which women in a patriarchal society live,” writes Tomé of her chapter on feminist education. </p>
<p>“This system that also hurts boys by depriving them of their emotional development, expression of emotions, intimate communications and full participation at home and in childcare.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113099/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>María Soledad Andrés Gómez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A brutal rape at Pamplona’s 2016 running of the bulls outraged Spain. Then came #MeToo. With ever more Spaniards taking up the feminist mantle, schools – many of which are not coed – lag behind.María Soledad Andrés Gómez, Profesora Facultad de Educación, Universidad de AlcaláLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/846302017-09-27T14:47:48Z2017-09-27T14:47:48ZRoy Lichtenstein had only one great idea in his Pop Art – but made the most of it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187399/original/file-20170925-17390-1piuw1a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ohhh... Alright... (1964).</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In one of Roy Lichtenstein’s first paintings to use graphics taken directly from comic books, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are on a wooden jetty. Donald Duck raises his fishing rod and, feeling a tug, shouts out: “Look Mickey, I’ve hooked a big one!!” </p>
<p>Donald doesn’t realise that the fishhook – much to Mickey’s amusement – is caught on his own tail. The image, entitled Look Mickey (1961), is bright, eye-catching and entertaining – but also playfully subversive. Lichtenstein’s decision to appropriate a scenario from a comic book marked a serious challenge to the Abstract Expressionism of artists like <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jackson-pollock-1785">Jackson Pollock</a>, which had dominated American art since World War II. </p>
<p>Lichtenstein was in the vanguard of the Pop Art phenomenon, which was fascinated with industrial processes and mass consumerism. He built an entire artistic career on deceptively simple works that appropriated from comic books, advertisements and pulp fiction – isolating, cropping or enlarging selected elements to create striking compositions. September 29 marks the 20th anniversary of his death: so what is his legacy, and to what extent has it endured? </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187363/original/file-20170925-17437-1nihw3g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Look Mickey (1961).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
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<p>Lichtenstein was born in 1923 into a wealthy family in New York. After attending summer classes at the city’s <a href="http://www.theartstudentsleague.org">Arts Students League</a>, he studied at Ohio State University. This was disrupted by World War II, in which he served in the army in Europe. He then returned to university on the <a href="https://www.vets.gov/education/gi-bill/">GI Bill</a>, which funded ex-servicemen and women through education. </p>
<p>In 1960, back in New York, he began teaching at Rutgers University in New Jersey during a flowering of avant-garde activity at the institution. The campus became a site for performances, events and collaborations: a point of confluence between movements such as <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/f/fluxus">Fluxus</a> and <a href="http://www.theartstory.org/movement-happenings.htm">Happenings</a> as well as <a href="http://www.widewalls.ch/environmental-art/">early environmental art</a>. Lichtenstein counted among teaching colleagues other important artists including <a href="http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kaprow-allan.htm">Allan Kaprow</a>, <a href="http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/visiting-artists-geoffrey-hendricks/?mcubz=0">Geoff Hendricks</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/04/obituaries/robert-watts-artist-and-fluxus-figure-dies-of-cancer-at-65.html?mcubz=0">Robert Watts</a>, while students at the school included <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lucas-samaras-2400">Lucas Samaras</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187372/original/file-20170925-18946-13fjata.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">General Custer (1951).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lichtenstein’s previous works had experimented with Abstract Expressionism – opposite is General Custer from 1951. But now his paintings began to draw on the bold, arresting designs and narrative drama of comic books, featuring the iconic <a href="http://www.awdsgn.com/classes/fall09/webI/student/trad_mw/burgan/final_project/pages/technique.html">Ben-day dots</a> that comic printers used for cheap colour shading.</p>
<p>Lichtenstein’s work exemplifies Pop Art’s rich and complex relationship with consumer culture and social change during the febrile decade of the 1960s. His paintings are alive to contemporary obsessions with youth and beauty, the tyranny of consumer objects, and the intense emotional drama of advertising and the mass media. </p>
<p>In Whaam! (1963), for example, Lichtenstein revealed the tensions and militarism of the post-war period and the Cold War. He used an image gleaned from the 1950s DC comic series <a href="https://www.comics.org/series/955/">All American Men of War</a> to show one plane launching a missile at another, immolating the enemy craft in a ball of flame. The dynamism of the composition, together with the inclusion of the work’s onomatopoeic title above the fireball, both skewers and indulges the cultural connection between machismo and war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187375/original/file-20170925-17421-1fw4izt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whaam! (1963).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Machismo and misogyny are constant obsessions in Lichtenstein’s work – from early images of femme fatales and women abandoned by men, drowning in their own tears (<a href="https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/lichtenstein-drowning-girl-1963">Drowning Girl, 1963</a>), to the saccharine nudes of his <a href="https://guyhepner.com/product/yellow-nude-by-roy-lichtenstein/">later canvases</a>. The gender politics in his work remain open to lively, provocative debate: do these images critique the fetishisation of women, or are they guilty of replicating the gender stereotypes of their source material? </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187386/original/file-20170925-17397-13ze81v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yellow Nude (1993).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Along with <a href="https://theconversation.com/andy-warhol-still-surprises-30-years-after-his-death-73328">Andy Warhol</a>, who <a href="http://www.theartstory.org/artist-warhol-andy.htm">also experimented</a> with appropriating consumer packaging and design, Lichtenstein’s work helped to significantly grow the art market in the 1960s. Contemporary art began to fetch high prices on the back of a new network of dealers and collectors, culminating in its own hyper-commodification. And Lichtenstein remains in great demand today, of course – the title picture, Oh… Alright… <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8TT_RdqIg">sold for</a> a record $43m (£32m) at auction in 2010. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187396/original/file-20170925-17379-80ovg2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roy Lichtenstein, 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Roy_Lichtenstein_%281967%29.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>Lichtenstein’s enduring popularity was confirmed with a major <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/press/press-releases/lichtenstein-retrospective">retrospective</a> in London, Paris and Chicago in 2012 – his first in more than two decades. Alongside all the comic-based paintings, it demonstrated his wider experimentation in materials. The show included sculptures, prints, collages and even a wall hanging, testifying to a degree of restlessness that gives the lie to any idea that Lichtenstein stuck to a formula. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187816/original/file-20170927-24162-1cr9wn0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frightened Girl (1963).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Having said that, Lichtenstein is perhaps most remembered for 1960s appropriation. He was by no means the first artist to use it in his work, but he did it with remarkable verve, invention and boldness. Other artists who have engaged with his oeuvre have employed similar techniques. The American practitioner <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/19/elaine-sturtevant">Elaine Sturtevant</a> even appropriated directly from Lichtenstein himself – her 1966 painting Frighten Girl (below) of Lichtenstein’s 1964 lithograph Frightened Girl (right) is part homage, part critique, as its slightly altered title wryly indicates. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187391/original/file-20170925-17386-yz705v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frighten Girl (1966).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elaine Sturtevant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This ambiguity is arguably a key part of Lichtenstein’s legacy. While his work continues to delight and engage audiences, it also raises significant questions about gender, consumption and representation. His paintings are part of an important story of 1960s art which continues to be re-told and re-visited in new and inventive ways by artists, art historians and curators.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84630/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Spencer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The New York Pop artist who turned dots into icons died 20 years ago.Catherine Spencer, Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/769722017-06-02T19:22:25Z2017-06-02T19:22:25ZScandals at Uber and Fox show dangers of letting macho cultures run wild<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171894/original/file-20170601-25689-81pb22.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Macho men?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most of us have probably seen the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB0A3KkmY-s">video</a> of Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick scolding one of his own drivers, cursing and lamenting that “some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit.”</p>
<p>Fox News, meanwhile, continues to reel from a cascade of <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/20/media/fox-news-sex-harassment">sexual harassment</a> allegations and charges that its corporate culture demeans women, leading to the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/07/21/ailes-steps-down-fox-news-ceo-after-sexual-harassment-lawsuit/87402864/">ouster</a> of founder Roger Ailes and star <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/business/media/bill-oreilly-fox-news-allegations.html?_r=0">Bill O’Reilly</a> following an exodus of advertisers.</p>
<p>What do these anecdotes have in common? These are more than just manifestations of men behaving badly. They are expressions of hyper-masculine values emanating from the top and shaping the culture down to the bottom.</p>
<p>I have studied gendered, macho cultures and the role <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Discourse-Leadership-Appraisal-Bert-Spector/dp/1107049784/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496345925&sr=8-1&keywords=bert+spector">top leaders</a> play in imposing and perpetuating them. Such cultures are harmful to organizations and their employees in many significant ways. </p>
<h2>Importance of culture</h2>
<p>Corporate culture has been recognized by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter-ebook/dp/B0033C58EU/ref=la_B001H6NM1K_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496408598&sr=1-11">scholars</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnaround/dp/0060523794/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=">executives</a> as a powerful force for shaping the behaviors of employees at all levels. “Culture is not the most important thing,” observed Jim Sinegal, Costco’s co-founder, “<a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/08/21/costco-leader-culture-is-not-the-most-important-th.aspx">it’s the only thing</a>.” </p>
<p>Indeed, high-performance organizational cultures can help propel companies to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriscancialosi/2015/06/15/how-exceptional-companies-create-high-performance-cultures/#2ebc70515fd1">great heights</a>. A solid strategy and superior products are required, of <a href="https://www.inc.com/magazine/201210/leigh-buchanan/why-strategy-matters-most.html">course</a>. But cultural attributes such as trust, respect and openness to diverse opinions are also important for long-term <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter/dp/1451655320/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493237015&sr=1-1&keywords=corporate+culture+and+performance">effectiveness</a>. </p>
<p>Companies as diverse as <a href="https://www.officevibe.com/blog/7-secrets-of-googles-epic-organizational-culture">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/1657030/happiness-culture-zappos-isnt-company-its-mission">Zappos</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/04/30/another-workplace-of-the-future-sun-hydraulics/#ce3057573f44">Sun Hydraulics</a> show it can provide significant <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/258317?&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">competitive advantage</a>.</p>
<p>But not all cultures are benevolent. Some can hurt and even destroy a company. <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/enron-what-went-wrong/id456958031?mt=11">Enron</a>, for example, collapsed in 2001 <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/10878570710745794">under the weight of a culture</a> that prized “making numbers” over long-term performance, with a kind of ruthless lawlessness that emanated from the very top.</p>
<p>A faulty corporate culture can <a href="https://hbr.org/2010/06/the-bp-cultures-role-in-the-gu">encourage short-term advantage</a> at the cost of looming catastrophes, <a href="https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/who-killed-nokia-nokia-did-4268">stifle innovation</a>, <a href="https://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/sears-ceo-eddie-lampert-should-stop-reading-ayn-rand.html">foster distrust</a> or <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-leadership-blind-spots-at-wells-fargo">fuel excessive risk-taking</a>.</p>
<p>In summary: “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q1Z65UM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Culture</a> trumps everything.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/171895/original/file-20170601-25673-1mj3ouj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protest-fueled backlash over sexual harassment allegations prompted advertisers to flee Bill O'Reilly’s show and eventually his firing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who wants to be a macho man?</h2>
<p>An especially damaging subset of corporate culture relates to the over-emphasis on macho values.</p>
<p>It wasn’t too long ago that <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/03/17/the-data-on-women-leaders/#ceos">every CEO of a Fortune 500 company was a man</a>. While things have improved a lot since the era depicted so dramatically in “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804503/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Mad Men</a>,” the macho cultures on display at Uber and Fox powerfully illustrate that it’s still a “man’s world” in some companies. </p>
<p>In such environments, stereotypically masculine <a href="https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/jaro2009/PSB_516/6390561/the_leadership_styles_of_women_and_men.pdf">characteristics</a> such as assertiveness, top-down control, overconfidence, daring and competitiveness are held to be attributes of top performance, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191308500220042">valued above all others</a>. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Baseball-Preadolescent-Original-Paperback/dp/0226249379/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496409014&sr=1-1&keywords=With+the+Boys%3A+Little+League+Baseball+and+Preadolescent+Culture">Winning</a> is pursued as its own end rather than as an outcome of effectiveness.</p>
<p>Conversely, stereotypically feminine characteristics – such as being helpful, kind, sympathetic and nurturing – are diminished as less effective. Despite their powerful <a href="https://hbr.org/2013/08/research-male-leaders-should-think-more-like-women">contribution</a> to the implementation of a company’s strategy, these values tend to be <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Her-Place-Table-Negotiating-Challenges/dp/0470633751/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496349261&sr=1-1&keywords=her+place+at+the+table">unrecognized and unrewarded</a> in a macho culture.</p>
<p><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1744935912444357">Extensive research</a> into hyper-masculine culture has uncovered unsurprising but nonetheless disturbing patterns of discrimination against women. Uber’s culture provides a dramatic example of this. Offensive sexual references by the boss, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/21/uber-sexual-harassment-discrimination-scandal">reports of sexual harassment</a> within the company and <a href="https://qz.com/966908/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-is-the-kind-of-boss-who-works-on-his-laptop-at-a-strip-club/">meetings at strip clubs</a> forced Uber to <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/03/21/uber-internal-investigation/">engage an external investigator</a> to uncover just how widespread this macho dysfunction has spread.</p>
<p>In such cultures, the contribution made by women to the strategic functioning of the company is devalued as “soft,” and promotions become systematically more <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Acts-Gender-Relational-Practice/dp/0262062054/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=">unlikely</a>. </p>
<p>Denied equal opportunity, women with options may simply <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cjas.111/pdf">leave</a>. Those who stay often <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2015/10/02/beware-a-macho-corporate-culture-that-demoralizes-women/">curtail their ambitions</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Business-Management-Original-Reference/dp/1848441762/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496350116&sr=1-1&keywords=Handbook+on+Women+in+Business+and+Management">depriving</a> organizations of an indispensable resource, particularly at the higher levels of the executive hierarchy. Men may also flee such a macho culture, as a recent <a href="http://fortune.com/2017/03/20/uber-brian-mcclendon-quits/">string of executive departures</a> from Uber suggests.</p>
<p>The paternalistic, rigid nature of macho cultures can manifest itself in a more general intolerance of differences and a rejection of groups labeled as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Sociology-Deviance-Howard-Becker/dp/0684836351/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=">outsiders</a>” by the white males who dominate. For example, they are more likely to target both sexual <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.neu.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/02610150510788060">orientation</a> and <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0012-1649.44.3.637">racial minorities</a>, something that <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/25/media/fox-news-racial-discrimination-lawsuit/">appeared to be the case</a> at Fox as well. </p>
<p>Beyond damaging morale and leading to the departure of talent, such a reckless disregard for boundaries also threatens the long-term viability of a company, placing it at financial and legal risk.</p>
<h2>Where culture comes from</h2>
<p>Those of us who study leadership and culture have long recognized that the values, behaviors and decisions of an organization’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Organizational-Leadership-Jossey-Bass-Business-Management/dp/1119212049/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493232723&sr=1-1&keywords=edgar+schein+organizational+culture+and+leadership">leaders</a> exert the most powerful force in shaping cultural values – that is, what behaviors they reward and punish; where they assign the company’s financial assets; and, perhaps most importantly, how they <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/10/leaders-can-shape-company-culture-through-their-behaviors">behave</a> themselves.</p>
<p>When our leaders are running around berating and sexually harassing their employees, we clearly have a problem. But what can we do about it when the man at the very top of our society <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/09/10/trump-fiorina-look-face/71992454/">dismisses women opponents based on their looks</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/donald-trump-sexism-tracker-every-offensive-comment-in-one-place/">rates women on their sexual attractiveness</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/10/07/497087141">brags about assaulting them</a>?</p>
<p>This is what begins to normalize such abhorrent behaviors in our business organizations and broader society. Everyone must be held accountable, of course, but we can start by acknowledging the special role and particular responsibility of those who sit at the top.</p>
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<p><a href="http://aom.org/">Bert Spector is an Academy of Management Scholar</a></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bert Spector is an Academy of Management scholar.</span></em></p>Recent incidents reveal more than just men behaving badly. They show the consequences when corporate cultures are driven by hyper-masculine personalities at the top.Bert Spector, Associate Professor of International Business and Strategy at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/62212012-04-05T01:25:27Z2012-04-05T01:25:27ZMacho, macho man… who wants to be a macho man?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9346/original/n6w4wq9b-1333586700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Citing machismo as an all-around barrier to men being healthy doesn't help address the problem.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ingrid Lemaire</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The attempt to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/a-win-for-wowsers-not-women-20120330-1w3dw.html">rein in offensive “shock jock”</a> style radio commentary received mixed reaction in the media, but the notion of banning words that might demean a particular group opens up an enticing possibility. </p>
<p>Many of us can imagine the satisfaction of being the media regulator for a day, cutting out the terms for putting down groups that include ourselves and our loved ones. In my case, negative terms for academics and column writers come to mind. </p>
<p>But for my money, if I were the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) czar for a day, I’d ban the use of the word “macho” – although, maybe not every use of the term needs to be banned. After all, I bop along to the Village People’s hit “Macho Macho Man” at the time. </p>
<p>And there are products now that may come in handy, such as <a href="http://machismoforhunks.com/">Machismo Pills</a> – the all-natural erection enhancers that last for five days and guarantee multiple orgasms. Or the distinctive <a href="http://machounderwear.com.au/">Macho underwear</a> – “designed in Spain and manufactured in Columbia”. </p>
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<p>More borderline cases come from the quirky names that astronomers give to their projects, such as one searching for the dark matter in the universe. The <a href="http://www.astro.caltech.edu/%7Egeorge/ay21/eaa/eaa-wimps-machos.pdf">Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHO)</a> project followed the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS) theory of dark matter. And let’s not forget the <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995ApJ...442L...5M">Robust Associations of Massive Baryonic Objects</a>, or RAMBO project.</p>
<h2>Too macho to care</h2>
<p>It’s when macho or machismo are used to explain men’s approach to looking after themselves that offence occurs. Macho <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/macho-views-can-lead-to-booze-problems-study-finds/story-e6freuyi-1226214375158">perceptions of booze</a> are blamed for the higher rates of men’s drinking in regional Australia and machismo is cited as an <a href="http://www.ausmedonline.com/Promoting-Men-s-Health/Machismo-as-a-Barrier-to-Health-Promotion-in-Australian-Males.html">all-around barrier</a> to men being healthy. </p>
<p>This puts the blame for men’s ill health onto men’s attitudes and the way that men want to appear “manly”. If we took the same tack with smokers we would blame them for wanting to look like the people in tobacco advertisements rather than hassling tobacco companies about their advertising. </p>
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<span class="caption">Blaming bad health on machismo doesn’t help anyone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Fornal</span></span>
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<p>It’s not as if defining the problems in men’s health as being due to machismo helps to connect men with the support they need. The new app “<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/28/australia-men-app-idUSSGE71O02O20110228">myHealthMate</a> released by Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital last year is a good example. It features a symptom checker allowing men to match 20 areas of their body to over 50 common symptoms. This is a pain-free low-cost way to check up on your health that doesn’t require fronting up to a doctor. </p>
<p>Although the publicity around the app’s launch cited "The Australian male’s machismo” as the problem, the app doesn’t try to change men’s attitudes. What it seems to do very well is to provide user-friendly, practical information tailored to men’s health issues. </p>
<h2>The positive side of macho?</h2>
<p>Author <a href="http://web.me.com/stevebiddulph/Site_1/Home.html">Steve Biddulph</a> is fond of saying, if you are trapped in a car crash, a bloke who will ignore the cuts or burns to get to pull you out is exactly what you need. So there are positive sides of men’s idea of “being a man” that most of us value but rarely talk about.</p>
<p>Men in Australia have high rates of preventable injury and disease. In my ACMA dream world, we would dispense with offensive language and get on with designing effective health promotion for men so we can change that. </p></figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The attempt to rein in offensive “shock jock” style radio commentary received mixed reaction in the media, but the notion of banning words that might demean a particular group opens up an enticing possibility…Richard Fletcher, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Health , University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.