Monday 12th August - Friday 16th August 2002
Prague, Czech Republic

Session 9: Masculinity and Violence

Victor Arrocha - The Deconstruction of Machismo through Education
Chicago USA

For most people, the word machismo conjures images of male aggression and power. But that stereotype is being challenged by special school programs, which are redefining the definition of maleness through new information, role playing, open dialogue, interactions, and videos. In The "Machismo Program", professional artists, like tap dancer Glenn Wood, are helping boys discover that being a man can mean many things, and in little time, the change has been remarkable. This program is about redefining manhood through creative endeavor. The initial idea was just to get boys to broaden their horizons and have them working with other people, particularly positive male role models, which are very hard to find, because many of them are sporting male role models that they have. Hands-on materials and bibliographies will be distributed.

Matias Waldemar - Cultural Concepts of Masculinity
Chicago, USA

It takes culturally-enforced norms of manhood to define what masculinity is and how it is defined and created in different ways and various cultures around the globe. In this presentation, a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary approach will be used, analyzing ways by which men achieve status across cultural contexts with respect to the social and ecological conditions faced by a given society. In the US, in the popular press, in reference materials, and in the academic literature, the term machismo has been used in many different, quite often contradictory ways. Evelyn Stevens has described machismo as "a cult of virility" whose chief characteristics are "exahggerated aggressiveness and intransigence in male-to-male interpersonal relationships and arrogance and sexual aggression in male-to-female relationships."