Is "enthusiasm for war" a masculine trait?
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Is "enthusiasm for war" a masculine trait? Listening to Ben Shapiro, or the now late Lindsey Graham (and our president) talk about bombing people with glee, I don't find their lust for violence masculine, I struggle to see the threads of humanity in it.
It's peevish, spiteful, petty. None of these men can fight, someone else must do it for them.
@futurebird just for the sake of pedantry, the Spanish machismo is more general sexism, not necessarily about how macho you are
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@futurebird just for the sake of pedantry, the Spanish machismo is more general sexism, not necessarily about how macho you are
It's become kind of a different word in English I think.
Has the meaning of the word changed over the past several decades in Spanish do you think?
Is is more negative than positive?
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Is "enthusiasm for war" a masculine trait? Listening to Ben Shapiro, or the now late Lindsey Graham (and our president) talk about bombing people with glee, I don't find their lust for violence masculine, I struggle to see the threads of humanity in it.
It's peevish, spiteful, petty. None of these men can fight, someone else must do it for them.
I think "war" is what some men consider masculine. It's imho part of a problematic role image that's centered around "strength". (And the overlap with some aspects of fascism isn't random, unfortunately.)
It's crazy how much it is a pattern in entertainment. It's a broad generalisation. But even in fantastic literature, where people can produce anything, a lot of male authors tend to produce power fantasies, while many female authors tell stories of survival.
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@futurebird the UK has just changed its prime minister. Apparently one of a new PM's first jobs is to write instructions for the commanders of the nuclear submarines on what they should do in the event that there is a nuclear war and London is destroyed.
The idea that a PM would instruct them to destroy other nations has always disgusted me. How could anyone promote "mutually assured destruction"? Sickening.
I thought the pretext of a nuclear response was meant to be disabling the launch sites of the opposing country. Which would also kill a lot of people but is very different from targeting large population centers.
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It's become kind of a different word in English I think.
Has the meaning of the word changed over the past several decades in Spanish do you think?
Is is more negative than positive?
@futurebird @ehproque Yes. "Machismo" is pretty much negative: it has associated sexism, toxic masculinity, homophobia, bigotry and generally being "rancid" as a person.
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Is "enthusiasm for war" a masculine trait? Listening to Ben Shapiro, or the now late Lindsey Graham (and our president) talk about bombing people with glee, I don't find their lust for violence masculine, I struggle to see the threads of humanity in it.
It's peevish, spiteful, petty. None of these men can fight, someone else must do it for them.
@futurebird just a note: masculinity in Spanish is masculinidad, not machismo. For the bad traits associated with masculinity we commonly use in Spain "toxic masculinity" (masculinidad tóxica). Machismo is the set of ideas of the cisheteropatriarchy that make toxic masculinity grow.
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It's become kind of a different word in English I think.
Has the meaning of the word changed over the past several decades in Spanish do you think?
Is is more negative than positive?
@futurebird I haven't really noticed any shift over the years; The Spanish is pretty neutral about it being the belief that men are superior, not really about doing macho stuff like showing off your strength or dismissing nonviolence (although those obviously tend to happen together). And, yeah, like @Illuminatus said, it's pretty universally recognised as negative. Anyone defending it will try to say "it's not machismo, it's neutrality/realism" because machismo is by definition a biased worldview
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Is "enthusiasm for war" a masculine trait? Listening to Ben Shapiro, or the now late Lindsey Graham (and our president) talk about bombing people with glee, I don't find their lust for violence masculine, I struggle to see the threads of humanity in it.
It's peevish, spiteful, petty. None of these men can fight, someone else must do it for them.
@futurebird I have to say, “peevish, spiteful, petty, and violent” is a strongly (if not, piecewise, exclusively) masculine-coded set of traits from my biased perspective.
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@futurebird the UK has just changed its prime minister. Apparently one of a new PM's first jobs is to write instructions for the commanders of the nuclear submarines on what they should do in the event that there is a nuclear war and London is destroyed.
The idea that a PM would instruct them to destroy other nations has always disgusted me. How could anyone promote "mutually assured destruction"? Sickening.
@patrickhadfield @futurebird I was going to mention the dance we do every General Election where any left-leaning political leader has to assure the public that, yes, they'd be willing to push the button and kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people (and bring about the associated environmental catastrophe blah blah).
If they equivocate in any way, they will be criticised and mocked for not being up to the job and incapable of taking "hard decisions".
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Is "enthusiasm for war" a masculine trait? Listening to Ben Shapiro, or the now late Lindsey Graham (and our president) talk about bombing people with glee, I don't find their lust for violence masculine, I struggle to see the threads of humanity in it.
It's peevish, spiteful, petty. None of these men can fight, someone else must do it for them.
I was musing about the word machismo... which I didn't know enough about so I decided to remove that since it's not the main point.
Machismo which is as similar-sounding word in Spanish. But NOT, I have learned the same word. (I tend to think of machismo as "masculinity, but with a stylish mustache.")
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