The 4 main types of micromachismos

These small displays of sexism legitimize unequal treatment that is detrimental to women.

Etymologically, the concept of patriarchy comes from the Greek, meaning "rule of the fathers".. It is a cultural heritage strongly rooted in our society based on gender differentiation, and describes a structure in which men have power over women.

This imposed structure, totally unbalanced in favor of men, in which different expectations are differentiated for men and women, is governed by rules that are determined by the gender stereotypes that are assigned to us before we are born depending on whether we are girls or boys. Let us look at the relationship between this concept and that of the types of micromachismos..

The basis of patriarchy

The basis of this patriarchal system is to be found in a disciplinary society in which people have been framed in certain imposed conditions, affecting all areas of the public and private sphere, the way of relating to each other and producing a model that perpetuates violence against women..

The unequal distribution of the exercise of dominating power produces a relational asymmetry whose central axis is the gender option (feminine or masculine) because the patriarchal culture has legitimized the belief that the masculine is the only gender with the right to self-affirmative power. In other words, being a man implies having the right to be a full individual with all his rights and to exercise them.

The patriarchal system and the androcentric culture denies this right to women, leaving men in a superior position, exercising power of control and dominion over them as a result of the following equation protection in exchange for obedienceone of the keys that is clearly reflected in the traditional couple's contract.

Public and domestic spaces

To this must be added the implicit belief in the division of spaces, the domestic and care space assigned to women and the public space reserved for men. This relational asymmetry continues in our culture and is maintained and perpetuated for various reasons:

• The sexual division of labor The sexual division of labor, which still naturalizes and automatically assigns the domestic space to women.

• The lack of resources and the social delegitimization of women's right to exercise the of women's right to exercise self-affirmative power.

• The use by men of the power of macro-definition and micro-definition of reality and power, that is, the ability to the content and type of social interactions according to their own interests, beliefs and perceptions.beliefs and perceptions. Referred to by authors such as Saltzman as punctuation power that upholds the idea of the "male as the authority that defines what is right."

• The so-called "power of love": the exploitation of female capacities to care for and to help to raise human beings in which our culture makes women experts.

This perpetuation manifests itself in many visible and explicit (murders, assaults, rapes), invisible and explicit (emotional blackmail, devaluation, blaming) and invisible and subtle (sexist language and advertising, invisibilization and micromachismos) ways.

This article aims to visualize the micromachismos existing in today's society that, based on gender stereotypes, help to perpetuate unequal relationships.help to perpetuate unequal relationships.

Types of micromachismos

In our daily life we encounter situations such as differentiating between lady and lady, asking the waiter for the bill and having him give it to the man, compliments, women who pay less in discotheques and phrases such as "behave like a lady", "and you still don't have a boyfriend"? All of them constitute types of micromachismos.

Micromachismos are those subtle and daily behaviors that constitute strategies of control that control strategies that threaten women's personal autonomy, are often invisible and may even be invisible.They are usually invisible and may even be legitimized by the social environment.

Authors such as Luis Bonino define it as practices of male domination and violence in everyday life that include a Wide range of interpersonal behaviors that aim to:

• Maintaining dominance and supposed superiority over the woman who is the object of the conduct.

• Reclaiming or reasserting such dominance in the face of a woman who "rebels".

• Resisting the increased personal and/or interpersonal power of a woman with whom he bonds or taking advantage of such power.

These behaviors are "micro-abuses" and they are effective because the prevailing social order because they are ratified by the prevailing social order when they are exercised repeatedly until women's autonomy is significantly diminished, and they are so subtle that they often go unnoticed by both the sufferer and the observer.

Examples of types of micromachismos

Luis Bonino has established a typology of types of micromachismos, classifying them as follows:

1. Utilitarian micromachismos

These are those that force women's availability by taking advantage of different aspects of women's domestic and caring behavior. domestic and care aspects of traditional female behavior in order to benefit from them. with the aim of benefiting from them. They are carried out especially in the domestic sphere.

Some examples of these behaviors are: taking advantage of and abusing "feminine service capacities" (they as providers and they as caregivers), delegation of care work, not taking responsibility for domestic matters, non-involvement and/or pseudo-involvement, underhanded abusive requirements, denial of reciprocity and paternal cronyism.

2. Covert or indirect micromachisms

These involve the abuse of female trust and credibility by concealing their objective. Some of these behaviors can be more effective than the rest, since they are so subtle that they go especially unnoticed. These types of actions produce in women feelings of confusion, helplessness, guilt and doubts that favor a decrease in self-esteem.

They include behaviors such as paternalism, emotional manipulation, affective/aggressive double messagesThe following are some of the most common forms of crisis micromachisms: sulkiness, abuse of trust, creation of lack of intimacy, silence, setting of limits, defensive-offensive communication, deception and lies, disavowal, devaluation, misogynist microterrorism, self-indulgence and self-justification, advantageous comparison and undervaluation of one's own mistakes.

3. Crisis micromachisms

They force the permanence in the unequal status when these are unbalanced due to an increase in the woman's personal power or due to a decrease in the man's power. They are behaviors such as hypercontrol, false support, passive resistance and emotional distancing, shying away from criticism and criticism of the woman.These are behaviors such as hyper-control, shying away from criticism and negotiation, promising and merit-making, victimhood and pitying.

4. Coercive or direct micromachismos.

Involve the withholding of power, those in which the uses physical, economic or personality force to try to convince women that they are wrong.. They achieve their objective, since they provoke in the woman a feeling of defeat when she realizes her ineffectiveness, loss, or lack of strength and capacity to defend her own decisions or reasons. These are behaviors such as the control of money or sabotage of communication, the expansive - abusive use of space and time for oneself, abusive insistence and the imposition of intimacy.

Concluding

The different types of micromachismos produce multiple effects on women's quality of life, among them emotional exhaustion among them emotional exhaustion, mental blockage, limitation of freedom, irritability, low self-esteem and insecurity.

It is necessary to change this form of domination that continues in our current society, for this it is necessary that at an individual level both genders participate. Both should recognize, identify and be aware of these behaviors and their effects, resist them, modify them for more egalitarian behaviors and help the perpetrators to identify and eliminate them.They should resist them, modify them for more egalitarian behaviors and help those who engage in them to identify and eliminate them. It is also necessary that professionals in the different fields of action (health, education, therapy) are aware of the daily existence of these behaviors, know how to detect them and know their effects with the aim of eradicating them.