What Is a Male Chauvinist?

From a Feminist Viewpoint:

Whether or not you ever heard of a male chauvinist, you do need to know about them. The phrase has been all but replaced, but it still rises to the surface occasionally.

Nicolas Chauvin was a legendary soldier in the First Army of the French Republic and in the Grand Armee de Napoleon. He is said to have been wounded in battle 17 times, resulting in considerable maiming and disfigurement.  A noble fellow, Chauvin adored his commander and loved his homeland even more--if that were possible--so much so that Napoleon personally granted him a Sabre of Honor and a pension of a few hundred francs. He is thought to have served in the Old Guard at the Battle of Waterloo, and to have shouted "The Old Guard dies but does not surrender!" implying that ultimate blind and unquestioned devotion to one's country was not only a good thing, but the expected thing.

 

There is some doubt the real Nicolas Chauvin ever existed, but is, rather, a folk hero emblematic of a kind of fanatic patriotism whose zealotry bordered on a personality disorder rather than genuine heroism. The French word Chauviniste was coined to cover extreme patriotism, but, as Bonaparte fell from favor, the term evolved to mean a mindless bias on almost any topic.

 

It was not until the late 19th century that chauvinism took on the meaning "excessive or prejudiced support for one's own cause" and came to used in contexts other than nationalism. As the Women's Liberation movement grew in the early 1960s in the United States, the phrase "male chauvinist" was born. A man who patronized, disparaged, or otherwise denigrated females in the belief that they were inferior to males and thus deserving of less than equal treatment or benefit was termed a male chauvinist by women who were in the vanguard of the fight for women's rights. The word "pig" was added to the phrase, as more people used the word pig to describe a group perceived as the enemy--as the counterculture of the day used the term pig to characterize brutal police. 

 

Now, rather than male chauvinist, we're more likely to use the word misogynist, which means a man who hates women. A male chauvinist was likely to deny he hated women--frequently responding that, to the contrary, he "loved women too much," which indicated an extremely skewed definition of the word love.  If they, as healthy heterosexuals did, participated in sex with women, such men equated the act with love, in spite of the fact that the two are hardly one and the same. Misogyny manifests in numerous ways, including sex discrimination, overt hostility,  patriarchy, male privilege, the belittling of women, the disenfranchisement of women, violence against women, and the sexual objectification of women. This behavior had been rampant in the 20th century, and women's objections to it came as a total surprise to the men who were criticized for it as women began to revolt in mid-century. In the 1950s and carrying over to the 1960s and 70s, women were portrayed in advertising and pop culture as objects, playthings, and obedient mental deficients. We were either overtly sexual objects or happy housewives. Billboards and bus cards used images of women to sell all manner of items, from wine ("Had Any Lately?") to automobiles. Throughout the 60s many of those ads were critiqued by graffiti saying THIS INSULTS WOMEN. If an attractive female office worker in a major city walked past a construction site on her way to the office, she was likely to be bombarded with catcalls and profanity by the macho men operating shovels and heavy machinery. They were male chauvinists, all--exercising their right to exert their masculine impulses. The fight for women's rights and the subsequent movement against male domination and exploitation was sometimes confusing.  

 

Society has made great strides since then. However, male chauvinism is not dead; it's not even asleep. It survives in many guises, and the exposure of more of its facets does boggle the mind. We've lifted the stone to uncover sex trafficking (known in the days of the Feminism of the 19th century as "white slavery," yet not spoken about much for almost a century.) We are pondering the value of pornography. We know about the psychological grooming of young girls--and boys--and the exploitation of them by their teachers and priests. Today we can examine the phenomenon scientifically. But at the root of it all is the acceptance of male supremacy and power. This stems from the prevailing Victorian attitude of male superiority, which we are bound to find out is a baseless concept that has been allowed credence for a couple of centuries too long. 

 

We are inundated with new names for things. New phrases for old behavior pepper our conversations. Machismo has become toxic masculinity, simple courtesy and civility ia now known as political correctness, and is not seen as a good thing. 

 

Things have changed somewhat, and at least we are talking about them differently. We are offended by the overt exploitation of women for the pleasure of men. We cringe at the portrayal of women as merely sex objects in the films of the 1950s and 60s. The man of those days was almost invariably a male chauvinist, and who could blame him? Hugh Hefner was a hero to them, and young women actually vied for places in Playboy Magazine. An examination of this phenomenon is still ahead of us, as strip clubs abound, the porn industry is thriving, and plastic surgery has become an art of body reconstruction.    

Too much emphasis on physical appeal has led us to this. We human beings are naturally sexual creatures. But that is not all we are. One gender is not superior to the other and it does not require force to support the idea that it is. If there is a battle of the sexes, there will not be a victor. The Old Guard may have to surrender, or at least compromise.