The 4 main types of micromachisms

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

This imposed structure, totally unbalanced in favor of men, in which different expectations are different for men and women. women, is governed by rules that are determined by the gender stereotypes assigned to us before birth based on whether we are girls or children. Let's see the relationship that exists between this concept and that of the types of micromachisms.

The foundation of patriarchy

The sustenance of this patriarchal system is 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 and producing a model what installs and perpetuates violence against women.

The unequal distribution of the exercise of dominance power produces a relational asymmetry whose central axis is the choice of gender (female or masculine) because patriarchal culture has legitimized the belief that the masculine is the only gender with the right to power self-affirming. That is, being a man supposes having the right to be a full individual with all his rights and to exercise them.

The patriarchal system and androcentric culture deny that right to women, leaving men in a superior position, exercising power of control and dominance over them as a result of the equation protection in exchange for obedience, one of the keys that is clearly reflected in the traditional couple 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 that still assigns the domestic space to women in a naturalized and automatic way.

• Lack of resources and social delegitimization of the right of women to exercise self-affirmative power.

• The use by men of the power of macrodefinition and microdefinition of reality and power, that is, the ability to guide the content and type of social interactions based on one's own interests, beliefs and perceptions. Named by authors such as Saltzman as a scoring power that supports the idea of ​​"male as the authority that defines what is correct."

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

This perpetuation manifests itself in very different visible and explicit ways (assassinations, assaults, rapes), invisible and explicit (emotional blackmail, devaluation, blaming) and invisible and subtle (sexist language and advertising, invisibility and micromachisms).

This article aims to visualize the micro-bullies in today's society that, supported by gender stereotypes, help perpetuate unequal relationships.

The types of micromachisms

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

Micromachisms are those subtle and everyday behaviors that constitute control strategies that undermine the personal autonomy of womenThey 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:

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

• Recover or reaffirm that domain before a woman who "rebels".

• Resist the increase in personal and / or interpersonal power of a woman with whom you associate or take advantage of that power.

These behaviors are "micro-abuses" and are effective due to the fact that the prevailing social order ratifies them when they are exercised repeatedly until achieving a significant decrease in women's autonomy and are so subtle that they tend to go unnoticed by both those who suffer them and those who observe them.

Examples of types of micromachisms

Luis Bonino established a typology of the types of micromachisms classifying them as:

1. Utilitarian micromachisms

They are those who force female availability by taking advantage of different domestic and caring aspects of traditional female behavior with the aim of benefiting from them. They are carried out especially in the domestic sphere.

Some examples of these behaviors are: taking advantage and abuse of “female service” capacities (they as providers and they as caregivers), delegation of the work of the caring for people, not taking responsibility for the domestic, non-involvement and / or pseudo-involvement, overlapping abusive requirements, denial of reciprocity and paternal cronyism.

2. Covert or indirect micromachisms

They involve the abuse of female trust and credibility by hiding 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.

Include behaviors such as paternalism, emotional manipulation, affective / aggressive double messages, sulking, breach of trust, creating lack of intimacy, silence, setting limits, defensive-offensive communication, cheating and lies, disavowal, devaluation, misogynistic micro-terrorism, self-indulgence and self-justification, advantageous comparison and undervaluation of one's own mistakes.

3. Crisis micromachisms

They force the permanence in unequal status when these are unbalanced due to an increase in the personal power of women or by the diminution of the power of men. They are behaviors such as hyper-control, false support, passive resistance, and emotional distancing, avoid criticism and negotiation, promise and make merits, victimhood and give pity.

4. Coercive or direct micromachisms

They imply the retention of power, those in which uses physical, economic or personal force to try to convince women that they are wrong. They fulfill their objective, since they provoke in the woman a feeling of defeat later when verifying the ineffectiveness, loss, or lack of strength and ability to defend their own decisions or reasons. These are behaviors such as control of money or sabotage of communication, expansive - abusive use of space and time for oneself, abusive insistence and the imposition of privacy.

Concluding

The different types of micromachisms produce multiple effects on the quality of life of women 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 both genders participate individually. Both should recognize, identify and be aware of these behaviors and their effects, resist them, modify them for more egalitarian behaviors and help those who exercise them to identify and eliminate them. In addition, it is necessary that professionals in the different fields of action (health, educational, therapeutic) are aware of the daily existence of these behaviors, know how to detect them and know their effects in order to eradicate them.

Bibliographic references:

• Bonino, L. (2004). The Micromachismos. La Cibeles Magazine (2).