Boys are the cure for machismo

In Boys Are the Cure for Machismo, Nana Queiroz proposes that a loving feminist education is the vaccine against our patriarchal pandemic.

After working for a decade to combat machismo, focusing on women, Nana Queiroz realized that, in a way, it was like drying ice. Women were undoubtedly the most effective remedy she knew against machismo, with their outcry and their courage to break silences and win rights. But that's all they were: an antibiotic for a widespread infection that refused to recede. They were the desperate cry of a social body in intensive care.

As the mother of a little boy, she saw the opportunity to work to eradicate this evil. Boys can be the cure for machismo. A loving feminist education is the vaccine against our patriarchal pandemic. Because no one is born insensitive, no one is born an aggressor, no one is born a rapist—this is, in fact, what machismo wants us to believe about men. That there is some perverse nature that debases them and leads them to act irrationally.

Nana chose to believe in boys: they will change everything—as long as we stop training them to oppress. Boys Are the Cure for Machismo teaches us how to cultivate an anti-army of decent men who dare to change the world for the better.

The metaphor that best describes my point of view is that of the conscious host and the virus. A sick person is not to blame for contracting a virus (at least not in most cases), but if they don't seek available treatment, they are responsible for the deterioration of their own health and the infection of those they come into contact with. Structural machismo is the virus in this story. Men are the host. We, society, are the health professionals who must make treatment available. We can—and should—use strong medicines like protests, laws, and punishments. But we must also work on prevention, building an education that prevents boys from being seduced by the torpor of this fever.