What Is Hembrism And How Is It Different From Feminism?
In the world of social sciences and cognitive psychology, biases related to sexist attitudes generate a lot of interest. However, around this topic there are many terms that generate confusion for many people who do not have training in this area.
The terms “feminism” and “feminism,” for example, are two labels that are often confused as if they were synonyms.
However, the meaning of what feminism has historically been and what has been recently given to the word hembrism is very different. Let’s see where the confusion comes from.
First of all, we will give an approximate definition of each of these words and then we will go on to see in detail how they differ.
feminism
Feminism is a set of social movements whose objectives are based on the visibility and empowerment of women and the questioning of the gender roles in which It is considered that the feminine is overshadowed by the masculine Consequently, feminism is a social phenomenon linked to a specific historical context, and it is transformed over the years as history progresses. It focuses on claims related to both legislation and the customs and habits of a society that still has sexist overtones due to centuries of domination over women.
Hembrism
In theory, hembrism is a neologism that is used to refer to an attitude that legitimizes contempt and attacks towards men for the fact of being men. It is usually equated with the concept of misandry, which means “hatred towards men”, although the latter term has more to do with an attitude that can be expressed in a more direct way or not, while the former is something observable. Consequently, the idea of hembrism has to do with sexism.
Let’s now look at the differences between both concepts.
Social phenomenon vs attitude
As we have seen, feminism is, fundamentally, a product of history, and its reason for existence has to do with an inequality that has historically harmed women. This means that feminism is not simply a person’s propensity to think and act in a certain way.
Feminism is not something that is found in individuals, but in groups of people; It has to do with a collective phenomenon: the social movements that shape feminism. It exists in response to an element that cannot be defined as individual either but is conceived as something systemic: patriarchy.
Hembrism, on the other hand, would be an individual attitude, because it is not derived from a cultural or legal system of inequality in which the people who have had the most power have historically been women.
Somehow, hembrism is more a psychological than a social phenomenon, while with feminism the opposite happens. This, however, is half true, because everything social has an impact on the psychological and vice versa. However, this distinction between these two spheres (the social and the individual) serves to understand them better, since in practice they coexist and depend on each other.
Product of history vs psychological bias
Feminism can be given a date of birth, which is normally coincides with the era of the Enlightenment, because it is a social and intellectual movement. That means that the idea that feminist people could exist, for example, in Ancient Greece, is technically incorrect.
Hembrism, on the other hand, can theoretically be found at any time in the past, because it only depends on there being a person who, for one reason or another, rejects or hates men. Its existence does not depend on a dynamic of events that have generated a chain effect throughout history, but rather appears in a more spontaneous way.
Unilateral rejection vs integration
Feminism does not propose measures to indefinitely subtract well-being and power from men for the simple fact of being men, something that machismo does do through justifications based on “the natural order of things”, tradition, etc. Even the positive discrimination measures defended by a part of feminism They are intended as a provisional arrangement to allow, for example, women to access management positions under the same conditions as men.
Hembrism, on the other hand, would be the hatred towards men for the simple fact of being men, that is, indefinitely and regardless of the context. It is, therefore, an essentialist bias because it does not depend on what a person does or the conditions in which he relates to others, but rather it is his condition as a man that produces rejection due to sexism.
The controversies around the idea of hembrism
The very use of the word “hembrismo” has been highly criticized, since it is understood that it is a word born to harm the social movement. In some way, it is assumed that its use can only have negative consequences for egalitarian movements and positive consequences for conservative and traditionalist positions.
However, this does not have to be the case and, in fact, the fear that some feminist circles show regarding the possibility of addressing the meaning of the word hembrism can make this identifies with feminism as it is considered taboo something that is not talked about and that is made invisible because it effectively attacks the foundations of the movement.
For example, the position of assuming hembrism as taboo reaches absurdities such as considering that “hembrism does not exist”, something that is evidently false. Hembrism does not cease to exist because it is not comparable to machismo, in the same way that contempt for fans of a football team exists despite the fact that there is no evidence of a political and cultural system that discriminates against them.
