Good brothers against machismo

I went to give a talk at a high school and asked the students if they had witnessed any act or instance of discrimination based on sex. I directly addressed the boys because years ago I realized an obvious truth that had not occurred to me: that many of the men with whom we have lived throughout our lives, even though we have had them by our side in schools, homes, jobs, and recreational spaces, have not the faintest idea of what we have suffered for the simple fact of being women. I am not talking, of course, about those who have discriminated against us, whether out of custom and culture, ideological conviction, or simply because they did not want to give up the privileges that being part of the dominant sex gives them. I am referring to the men who have never seen us as inferior or as humanly different. Children, boys, and men who are genuinely egalitarian because they do not conceive of relationships in terms of submission until they are taught to be the masters of their female counterparts. Although feminism must primarily deal with the dire consequences that patriarchy has on women, we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not also keep an eye on how they live this social organization that is given to them. Some fit into it and accommodate themselves without any problem, but others do not.

“I have seen sexism”, a 1st year ESO student dared to intervene, and the whole class listened to him. “I have always been able to go on school trips –he said–, and my sister hasn't. And it’s because she is a girl and I am a boy”. School trips, swimming, excursions, extracurricular activities, clothing, that they can’t go out without being accompanied, that they have to take care of more domestic chores than them, that they are educated to become, sooner or later, selfless and obedient wives and mothers. This process of alienating the will of sisters, which aims to enslave them, to force them into the corset of gender, must necessarily, I say, have terrible effects on the brothers. First of all, because witnessing violence can often be as traumatic as experiencing it firsthand. That is why when there are children involved, all sexist violence against the mother is also violence against minors, and mistreating children is always mistreating the mother as well. Blows to one’s own body dissipate, their effect lasts as long as the impact on the flesh; but to see live the discharge of rage against a human being to inflict pain and suffering, even more so when the person is in a position of inferiority or cannot defend themselves, when there is abuse, even more so when it is within a space sacred for individual safety and peace, such as the domestic space, even more so when the aggressors are those who have the duty to care for us, even more so when we love them and believe they love us, when violence occurs with all these circumstances, it inserts itself into consciousness like a deep stab wound that causes a wound that may take a lifetime to heal. Even if it doesn’t seem the same, a sexist education, without shouts or blows, is also a form of brutality that traumatizes anyone who still retains the sensitivity of someone whose humanity has not been eroded. So, when boys are urged to accept the framework of rules that harms their sisters and then asked to follow discriminatory models of masculinity, what is being done is putting them between a rock and a hard place: either they are on the side of the winners, the strong and patriarchal men, or they are like the weak, the submissive. When the culture has not yet penetrated deeply enough into the consciousness of the brothers, they respond as that student responded to me when I asked him how he felt in the face of these kinds of situations: “I don’t think I can do anything about it; it’s unfair, but I can’t do anything about it”.