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Masculine Identity in School Textbooks during the Franco RegimePage 1 of 6
Author: Miguel Somoza Introduction to the Chapter This chapter aims at discussing the representation of a particular masculine identity portrayed through school textbooks during the years of the Franco regime.
A. Gender and Sex It must firstly be noted that not only in the mass media, but even in scientific articles, the concept of “gender” tends to be applied almost exclusively to feminine issues, to the extent that the words “gender” and “woman” are erroneously and automatically associated. For us, gender will refer to the symbolic construction, as well as the individual and sociocultural assumption of sexuality1. The traditional Western European culture (if we only limit our analysis to this historical-geographical area) is grounded upon the inequality of genders and sexes, which it views as a “natural” phenomenon”, and this asymmetry is firmly legitimated in society through religion, politics, and culture, including various “scientific” discourses embodied in theories, social practices, and institutions, such as the principal socialising agency of modernity: the school. This educational institution implemented policies of sexual and gender differentiation, which aimed to establish enduring identities based on the inequality of attributes, properties, access to material resources and positions of prestige and power, rights and duties, freedoms and obligations, beyond the strictly biological differences determined by pregnancy, maternity, and breastfeeding. These values and the “knowledge” associated with them were the objective of a specific policy of differentiation and inequality embodied in a more or less explicit, more or less hidden school curriculum, depending on the historical period, an issue which has been explored by an extensive and diverse field of research. The majority of these studies focus on the form, content, and procedures for the discrimination and subordination of women under masculine domination. Fewer studies have devoted themselves to the contents and procedures for the construction of a masculine identity which, although its ultimate aim has been the formation of a dominant social subject, constitutes a process of socialisation grounded upon violence and restrictions against males themselves, perhaps equivalent to that suffered by women. The ultimate prize of a dominant position (of some men over the majority of men and women; and of men in general over women, with the exception of those of the upper social class) can only be achieved by paying the price of the deprivations, prohibitions, humiliations and violent aggressions employed, assumed, and internalised by boys and young men.
B. Masculine Identity in the Francoist Regime In this paper, we shall attempt to point out the main aspects in the construction of a traditional masculine identity (an identity configured for domination, but paradoxically elaborated via fear, humiliation, shame and its opposites, pride and honour) through the curricular contents and the schoolbooks of the Francoist period. During this political regime and, above all, during its first two decades of power, there was a “restoration” and an apogee of what we could call “traditional” social and political values: authority, order, hierarchy, honour, patriotism, Catholicism, militarism, dogmatism, fanaticism; exaltation of heroism and “heroes”; contempt for, intolerance towards, and persecution of dissidents and all opinions and beliefs which differed from the official ideology, rejection of pluralism and democracy, etc. Hence, these values were represented by and belonged almost exclusively to men. The natural capacities of women, as is well known, were reduced to their “natural” biological functions: reproduction and childrearing. As a schoolbook of the period affirmed: “The Spanish authority has always aimed to be the first and greatest amongst his men, and has possessed the highest degree of the characteristic virtues of his race: faith, abnegation, austerity, exemplarity, heroism, the spirit of service and sacrifice, determination, initiative, equanimity, foresight (…) Such qualities of the Spanish people have made possible the birth of great leaders in all periods of history”2. One must take into account that as a result of the Civil War and the spirit of the “Holy War” against Communism, atheism, and liberalism, the values, beliefs, and attitudes of militarism are perhaps overrepresented, and there is an exaggerated exaltation of the most orthodox version of the Catholic dogma. But, bearing in mind this precaution, the conceptual and moral universe of Francoism reflects the dominant social values of Spain from the 19th century up until the second half of the 20th, with regard to the configuration of the masculine and feminine character, each one with its proper attributes, knowledge, social abilities and professional qualifications, and its potential spheres of action clearly delimited and differentiated.
1 For more information on the history of the concep of “gender”, see GARCÍA-MINA FREIRE, Ana (2003): Desarrollo del género en la feminidad y la masculinidad, Madrid, Narcea. |
