Masculinity in pandemic times: where power decreases, violence increases

Abstract

The emergence of the covid-19 pandemic imposes the need for thinking about the narrowing of the man-power-violence relationship and the resignification of the place of men. In this context of social isolation, seeking to understand the increase in domestic violence against women, the objective of this essay is to reflect on the man-power-violence relations based on the concepts of Hannah Arendt, problematizing the normalized concept of hegemonic masculinity. Throughout this essay, we seek to deconstruct the idea that there is a single model of hegemonic masculinity and that it proposes a global domination of men over women, since women also present aspects of masculinity, which is a historical-social construction that is continuously transformed. Thus, in the face of historical gender reforms, and the instability caused by the pandemic of covid-19, there is an increase in domestic violence as an effect of the decrease in patriarchal power, in an attempt to stabilize the masculinity model defined by this patriarchal power, or the attempt to reconstitute it in new configurations.