Brief History of Machismo

Olavo de Carvalho
Jornal da Tarde, August 16th, 2001

(This translation has not been reviewed by the author)

The women have always been exploited by the men. If there is a truth that nobody disputes, this is the one. From the solemn conference rooms in Oxford to the Fausto Silva show, from the Collège de France to the band of Ipanema, the world reinforces this certainty, maybe the most unquestioned certainty that has passed through the human brain, if it really has ever been on it and did not leave the womb straight to the academic thesis.

Since I am not willing to oppose such lordly unanimity, I propose to list some facts that can reinforce, in the believers of all existing genders and the genders yet to be invented, their feeling of hate against the adult heterosexual male, this despicable type that no one who has had the misfortune of being born male wants to be alike when grown up.

Our narrative starts in the dawn of time, in an imprecise moment between the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon. In those dark ages, the exploitation of women started. Those were hard times. Living in caves, the human communities endured constant attacks from the beasts.

The males, taking advantage of the prerogatives of the dominant class, have soon took the safest and most comfortable places in the social order: the interior of the caves. The nerve of these scoundrels! Making food for the babies and combing their hairs while the poor females, armed with only clubs, left to fight lions and bears.

When the economy of gathering was replaced by agriculture and animal breeding, again the men came with their smartarseness, giving the women the heaviest tasks, such as carrying stones, taming the horses, plowing the earth, while the males, the slackers, stayed at home painting the pottery and playing with textile mills. Disgusting!

When the great empires of antiquity were dissolved, giving place to the feuds in perpetual war against each other, these soon formed their private armies, composed entirely of women, while the men sheltered in the castles and relaxed there, enjoying the poems that the warrior women composed in the interval of combat to praise their virile charms.

When someone had the extravagant idea of Christianize the world, making necessary to send missionaries everywhere, where they risked being impaled by the unbelievers, knived by highway robbers or lynched by the audience bored with their sermons, it was again on the women that the heavy burden was put, while the machos stayed, machiavellically praying novenas before the domestic altars.

An identical exploitation the unfortunate women suffered during the Crusades, when, armed with the heaviest armor, they crossed deserts only to be cut with a sword by the Moors (also women, since the machismo of Mohammed followers could not be any less than ours).

And what about the great navigations? Seeking gold and diamonds to decorate the lazy men, the brave women crossed the seven seas and fought ferocious native cannibals.

Finally, when the modern State created the conscripted military service, the state armies were drafted from the women, subjecting them to the guillotine for the stubborn and the draft dodgers - all of this so that men could stay at home reading "The Princess of Clèves".

For thousands of years, in summary, the women died in the battle fields, carrying stones, constructing buildings, fighting with beasts, crossing deserts, seas and jungles, sacrificing everything for us, the idle males, to which there is no challenge more dangerous than to make our hands dirty with the diapers of our babies.

In exchange of the sacrifice of their lives, our heroic female defenders have not demanded from us anything other than the right to be the head of the family, to leave their clothes in the wrong place and, sometimes, to leave a pair of socks in the middle of the room for us to pick up.