Brazil, Amazon, World: Toxic Masculinity
AUGUST 6, 2021
BY JEAN WYLLYS – JULIE WARK
What does homophobia and sociopathic (worse than “toxic”) masculinity have to do with savanna and pandemics? A lot. And, in Brazil, the relationship is stark and alarming. Savanna is what the Amazon rainforest is about to become because, if it hasn’t yet reached tipping point, it will quite soon, perhaps as early as 2039: 14.2% of the rainforest has already been lost and scientists calculate that a loss of 20-25% will set off an irreversible transition to savanna. President Jair Messias Bolsonaro (“Not one centimetre will be demarcated for indigenous reserves”) is doing his best to accelerate the process. So far, he has sabotaged environmental law enforcement, falsely accused NGOs of burning the rainforest, and undermined Indigenous rights to the point of crimes against humanity by egging on land grabbers to use violence against the rainforest peoples and, now, his latest attempt is to push through legislation granting ownership rights to property that was illegally invaded and cleared before 2014.
This isn’t only about loss of an extraordinary territory, home to more than three million species and some 10% of the world’s biodiversity. Bolsonaro and men like him are also driving the probability of a whole new array of zoonotic pandemics that are linked with habitat fragmentation, deforestation, biodiversity loss, intensive agriculture, livestock farming, land grabbing, and pollution, all of which feature high on Bolsonaro’s get-done list. Shortly before he was elected, the Spanish daily El Pais described him as “a former captain in the Army’s paratrooper brigade, lover of military government, torture, police executions; macho, racist, and profoundly ignorant about any matter that doesn’t entail testosterone displays”. The title explains why a country would want to be led by this “thing”, as he is called by many Brazilians who can’t bear to pronounce his name: “The Elite Prefers an Alpha Macho”. This brings us to the part about homophobia and sociopathic masculinity. As for the elite, more than Bolsonaro, they actually prefer his ultraliberal economic guru, Paolo Guedes. Anyway, elites have never been expected to like the goons they employ to do their dirty work.
Whatever their testosterone levels, alpha machos still have to find a way of justifying their behavior and comments (for example, “human rights are bullshit”) which are still thought indecorous in at least some government circles. One of the more effective ways to ensure that this vile virility is venerated is to enlist the help of religious zealots, in Brazil’s case, the evangelicals who occupy many first- and second-level positions in government, mainly in the areas of education, culture, human rights, and foreign policy (forging alliances with Israel, the Trump Administration, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, the Law and Justice Party in Poland, etc.) thus getting international support as well as providing the sanctified extremist discourse the thuggish president needs.
These fundamentalists are very powerful, with a flock of more than 60 million out of a population of about 2,011 million. Even under Lula’s government, and then Rousseff’s, they achieved serious human rights setbacks, including cancellation of the anti-homophobia kit, undermining anti-AIDS policy and, to make a parody of obscenity, they got pastor Marco Feliciano (“Africans are descendants from ancestors cursed by Noah”) appointed as president of the Commission of Human Rights and Minorities Commission. With comments like pastor Feliciano’s, it’s not surprising that followers of Afro-Brazilian religions are increasingly being attacked by “soldiers of Jesus”, armed evangelical gangs with support from drug traffickers who, once converted, expel non-believers from their patches.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/06/brazil-amazon-world-toxic-masculinity/
Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016298757
= new reply since forum marked as read
masculinity", "homophobia and sociopathic", plus "alpha machos" and "fundamentalists"
are covered
under the label of "Fascists and Fascism". And we know that Fascists are the enemies of everyone
except their own circle. No matter what we call them we must defeat them, again and again and again.
