Him/Her: discourses of masculinity in a Brazilian magazine, 1969-19721,2

Author: Marko Monteiro (markosy@uol.com.br)

(Brazil, 1997)

Introduction  

     This article seeks to explore the ways masculinity has been contructed historically and discursively in Brazil, through an analysis of the magazine Ele Ela: uma revista para ler a dois ("Him Her: a magazine to be read by the couple"). The period covered extends from the year the magazine first appeared in Brazil, 1969, through 1972. This period was chosen specifically because it was a time of many fractures in collective identities in Brazil, a sign of which, we can safely say, is the appearance of the magazine Ele Ela itself, which has been directed, as the editorials always say, at the "modern couple," to be read by both partners together.
     Throughout the article I will be trying to analyse the magazine through a critical discourse analysis (Foucault, 1979, 1990, 1993; Orlandi, 1992; Veyne, 1982; Fairclough, 1990; Coulthard, 1977), trying to associate change in the linguistic status of "the masculine" with a series of very important socio-historical changes which were taking place then, not only in Brazil but also, and foremost, in Europe and North America. I am referring to the rise of counter culture, the new social movements such as feminism and gay power, and the massive entry of women into once male-dominated fields, such as the labor market (Vaitsman, 1994; Goldberg, 1987; Faria, 1986; Alvarez, 1990; MacRae, 1990; Fry, 1982).
     I will discuss in some length how I understand the relationship between language and/or discourse and social reality (or the empirical reality), in which these discourses are located (the work of Foucault, 1979, 1990 and 1993 was of central importance). Authors such as Fairclough (1990) developed analyses based on Foucault, and although Orlandi (1992) draws not on Foucauldian concepts, but on the work of Pêcheux, she too develops a similar perspective on language, discourse, and reality, as does Coulthard (1977), though he is more preocupied with the analysis of speech and interaction.
     A discussion on the historical context in which the magazine appeared will be useful not only to contextualize the magazine historically, but to show how the discourses on masculinity (based on the theorists mentioned above) were undergoing transformations at the same time the traditional masculine identities were being challenged or even denied by new historical subjects, such as feminist women and gays, and by socio-economic processes that were enabling women to enter into once male-dominated fields.
     Discourse analysis is an extremely useful analytical tool because it enables us to establish close relationships between knowledge and power (in Foucauldian terms), or between social reality and language. In sum, as Orlandi (1992) puts it, discourse analysis has as its task to show that language is not a universal, transparent code, but is "opaque," determined by socio-historical facts implicated in the power relations and power structures within society.
 

Discourse Analysis: the relationship between language and empirical reality
 

     The work of Foucault (1979; 1990; 1993) is essential for a better comprehension of the relationship between language and social reality, between knowledge and power. The perspective used in discourse analysis is based in the Foucauldian re-reading of the concepts of truth and power. We could say that Foucault, as a nihilist (Vattimo, 1988), attempts a relativization of the metaphysical conceptions of "truth" or "knowledge." He does that by thinking these concepts in a symbiotic relationship with power. We could read here power as social reality, as history, as social relations which constitute the so-called empirical reality. In the case of sexuality, Foucault analyses how knowledge produced socially about sex and its workings (truth-claims) acts upon and shapes sexuality in its empirical aspect, in its historical enactment by the social and historical subjects. This enactment of sexuality is a social process which necessarily involves relationships of power (Foucault, 1993).
     Foucault proposes a new way of conciering the concept of power. He denies that power is something that can be owned by one or another group, but sees it as exerted, enacted socially, in social relationships. Power, he would also say, works not only through repression or denial, but it produces knowledge, relationships. Thus he does not regard truth here as metaphysical, in the sense of something universal, immanent, validated in a sphere outside social reality, but rather as something implicated in the social dynamics of society, validated through society, in social relations.
     According to the relationship Foucault proposes, between truth and power, we must abandon the opposition between repression and freedom, between truth and concealment, between essence and ideology. Consequently we understand power as something that "works" socially, associated with truth-claims that validate it; but they are not immanent or universal. They are socially constructed in the social (power) relations which they themselves help to create.
     In another work, Foucault (1979) speaks of a politics or regimen of truth, according to which each society regulates what is "true" and "false" in discourse, thus producing power derived from truth claims. So truth (knowledge) is in this sense constituted by the rules by which we distinguish true from false, and through which we attribute specific effects of power to the "true" discourse.
     At the level of actual discourse analysis theory, the works of Eni Orlandi (1992), Norman Fairclough (1990) and Malcolm Coulthard (1977) are important because of the way in which they include in their theories the relationship Foucault tries to establish between knowledge and power. They are all concerned with the analysis of discourses present in society, and the relationship between language and history, or language and social reality. For similar discussions (which I won't detail in this work), see Borges (1994), Veyne (1982), Rago (1995), Caldas-Coulthard (1994), and Fischer (1995).
     Orlandi comes close to Foucault when she denies that language reflects reality. Accordingly language is not literal, but ideological, socially determined. She treats language as a "historical materiality," not a neutral or literal system of conventional signs (like mathematics). By "historical materiality" she means that language is a system that organizes possible and non-possible meanings (truth claims, knowledge), and maps the cognitive possibilities based upon specific social and historical contexts. Language articulates the comprehension of reality on the part of subjects who are not autonomous or free, but fit in this cognitive system on the basis of the available possibilities of comprehension. In other words, each historical period can be said to have its speakable and non-speakable contents, which are the consequences of social and historical processes that, in their dynamics, try to create and redefine the possibilities of meaning. Language is material, opaque, not transparent; historically bounded, not universal, neutral, immanent, or metaphysical. Language codes meanings that are created through social relationships and struggles, that is, through practices that are historical. It is here that power and knowledge come together: these chains of meaning are created through, and are the expression of social relations of power.
     The perspective of Fairclough (1990) is very close to Orlandi's. Concerned with critical discourse analysis, Fairclough sees very much the same relationship between society and language. He seeks to understand language as a social practice, conditioned by history and society.

 I have glossed the discourse view of language as 'language as a form of social practice'. What precisely does this imply? Firstly that language is a part of society, and not somehow external to it. Secondly, that language is a social process. And thirdly, that language is a socially conditioned process, conditioned that is by other (non-linguistic) parts of society. (Fairclough, 1990:22)

     The non-linguistic elements of society affect the way that language works and is used socially. It is a social practice, and not a code that people apply. By "social" I mean conditioned by elements of power, history and social struggles that act in society. These struggles, as suggests Foucault (1979) are over the meanings and the possibilities of meanings in society. Language is a social practice because it codes these possibilities; thus the use of language is subjected to these power struggles over what can be said or not, over what meanings and what utterances are acceptable or not.
     Coulthard (1977) also wants to analyse language and discourse as a social practice affected by non-linguistic elements present in society. He collects a number of important elements in order to construct his analysis. First, he begins with the assumption that speech (for our purposes, discourse) is not a random collection of utterances; rather, they have a particular structure, and this structuration can be identified. Second, and as a consequence of the first element, Coulthard is very much concerned with the context in which these utterances or "speech acts" occur. As context he defines a number of different levels, such as the national language, the interpretative community, the global cultural context, the local specificity of the community, the relationship between the subjects, and the purposes sought by these subjects through their discourse. Although Coulthard has a more empirical preocupation in this book, he works with a conception of language close to the ones I analyzed earlier; therefore he is of great use to understand the relationship I have been describing between language and social reality.
 

Change in the linguistic status of masculinity: a first outline
 

     To translate all this theoretical discussion into actual analytical work, I will articulate the elements I have thus far talked about into my discussion of Brazilian representations of masculinity in the early 70's. That is, I will analyze the images and discourses of masculinity present in the magazine Ele Ela under the perspective of discourse analysis, which I worked out in the earlier paragraphs.
     What does that mean exactly? In my analysis, based on the conceptions I discussed above, I will try to make a connection, or understand what the relationship is, between a change in the linguistic status of masculinity as a general concept and changes occuring in Brazilian society that were a part of broader, international processes of historical change which shook up the period.
 So in discussing the discourses of masculinity which are a constant presence in the pages of the magazine, I will relate this to the historical context in which these discourses were being shaped, and make an argument about social change in Brazil in the period analyzed, from 1969 to 1972. This period, as far as my argument goes, could be extended further into the 70's and 80's (which would require further research work with the magazine), but the essence of the argument can be extracted from the magazines already anlyzed.
     But how do we associate the cultural and historical context with the shift in meaning or status I was talking about? There are three main elements that compose what I called the context of the production of discourse. First, the structural changes in capitalism, or the process of economic modernization, that brought increasing numbers of women to the labor market and to professional fields that until then were male-dominated. Second (but closely associated with the first), the so-called second wave of feminism that exploded world-wide, that questioned patriarchy and traditional male roles by questioning the inferior position of women in society; this amounts to the construction of a feminist discourse and a feminist subject position (Fairclough, 1990), with socio-linguistic consequences. Third, the explosion of gay power movements also world-wide, that questioned patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, thus also questioning traditional male identity and creating a new subject position, the gay subject.
     What do I mean when I talk of "socio-linguistic consequences"? Well, the already mentioned explosion of new subject positions, such as the feminist and the gay, both were a hard blow on the universality and legitimacy of traditional male identities. This process will lead to the shift in linguistic status I talked about, which is my hypothesis in analysing the discourse of Ele Ela. Which shift is this? It is the transition from one mode of representation, where Man was universal, generic, the universal Subject (and where woman was all of the opposite), to another model, where masculinity and feminility are equivalent categories, inserted in a system of differences. By this I mean the structuralist concepts of system and difference, derived from linguistics, where all elements stand in relation to each other and a change in one element causes a change in all the others (Lepargneur, 1972).
     How does this process happen? How do we shift from one model of representation to another? It is a historical process, and it occurred precisely because of the historical changes I mentioned, the birth of new collective subjects that question the universality of masculinity as it was defined. Once these new subjects exist, once they have structured discourses and subject positions, the once universal model ceases to be so, ceases to be legitimate in and of itself, as a matter of nature. These new discourses, which are clamoring for legitimacy, put the category "masculinity" into question as the basis of their own discourse, as the basis upon which they will build their identities. They organize their identity by questioning the traditional understanding of masculinity and heterosexuality. Thus, once masculinity becomes incresingly the object and not the sole subject of discourse, that is the moment that the linguistic shift happens. Gay and feminist movements bring the question of gender identities into the center of political concerns, and the question of masculinity is increasingly constructed as a problem that has to be dealt with.
 If earlier men were in control of institutions and of discourse, now other voices gain increasing authority and other identities and discourse come to play. As in the structuralist system, the shift caused by these changes alter all relationships in the system, because all elements only exist in relation to each other.
 

Historical context
 

     The most important aspect of the discussion over the context of the period will be without question the influences of the feminist movement and the changing roles and identities of women in Brazil and in the world. Even if the period I cover is small, and can only be a snapshot of the processes that were ocurring, through this discussion we can see what the changes in question meant socially and how those events were treated in the magazine. The "liberation of women," one of the themes most explored by the magazine, is discussed both in the register of the Sexual Revolution and in the second wave of the feminist movement. The magazine is worried with "modernity," and places itself as an option to the "modern reader"; that means, the magazine wants to consolidate its position as a forum for the discussion of the question that were influencing the times, and one such element is the question of women in society. Other elements include the apparent end of institutions such as marriage and family, the feminist movement, tendencies in fashion and society such as unisex, and the growth of the pornography industry.
     All this criticism is being done in the post 1968 period, that is, in a discussion that has in some way to deal with the protests that occurred that year, and all the cultural criticism that those protests represented. The magazine tries to be the Brazilian vehicle for those discussions, that were happening all over the world, and especially in Europe and the United States. The reader is basically middle and upper-middle class families, with high income and with ample access to information, exactly the group of people that was involved in those social processes in the country (Vaitsman, 1994; Goldberg, 1987).
     Vaitsman's book (1994) is interesting for the way it brings elements that help in the comprehension of the transformations that were taking place in the urban middle classes during that period. These people are the protagonists of the processes of social change that the magazine is discussing all the time, such as the dissolution of the traditional family, the liberation of women, the growth in drug use and pornography, and the whole counter culture movement.
     In her book she puts the question as follows: towards the end of the 60's and during the 70's, there were important social and economic changes taking place in the country, with modernization and industrialization. Associated with these processes there was the incoming of women to the work force and to fields that previously were male-dominated, such as politics, art, and industrial careers. In the middle classes there were important changes in social norms, influenced always by international tendencies. These changes affected most of all the identities of gender and the hierarchical relations in marriage and the family. Individualism was increasingly the norm among these social classes, and new forms of experiencing gender relations come into the foreground with the questioning of patriarchy. This comes to front in the discussions about free love, the end of marriage, and the feminization of men.

 Beginning in the middle of the 60's, the expansion of the urban middle classes and the growth in the participation of women in the public sphere, in educational, professional, scientific, political and cultural activities, begin to corrode the bases of the modern conjugal family, which was just beginning to consolidate itself in some segments of Brazilian society. For the women born in the 50's, the participation in the public sphere would lead to the construction of identities on the basis of self-realization different from those that were typical of the middle-class house-wife of the earlier generation.3 (Vaitsman, 1994:17).

     Some statitical data (Faria, 1986) also helps us to visualize better these processes: the participation of women in the workforce went from 14.6% in 1950 to 27.2% in 1980. Between 1950 and 1980 the average growth of the total Economically Active Population (EAP) was 3.1% per year, while the average growth of the feminine EAP was 5.2%. Also between 1960 and 1980, the proportion of women in Elementary and Middle School teaching and as nurses, tipically feminine professions, came down about 10%. According to Alvarez (1990), between 1969 and 1975, the number of women in Brazilian universities grew five-fold, while the number of men merely doubled. Between 1971 and 1975, the number of women who were pursuing a Master's Degree grew about 336.8% (the number of men grew 177.8%); in the same period, the number of women that successfully completed a Ph.D. program grew 400% (and only 180% for the men).
     As we might expect, there were reactions from all sides to this very significant change in the roles played by women socially. How did the traditional male view the massive income of women in traditional male activities? In an interview to Ele Ela, Nelson Rodrigues, one of the most acclaimed playwrights of all time in Brazil and a well-known misogynist, said the following:

 One other thing: women can never have the same rights as men. For the man, the act of love is like a pic-nic, while for the woman it is a tragic vital ordeal. The destiny of women, in acordance to her nature, is the most complete submission to the man and her son.
 [...]
 I consider the intelectual woman a circus freak. The woman either is a woman or intelligent. Intelligence and women are two things that can never be mixed. (Ele Ela, September 1972).

     Despite the very explicit opinions of Nelson Rodrigues, intelectual and sexually liberated women proliferated in this period, recreating and undermining the perception of women expressed in his words. For these men, increasingly confronted with these "circus freaks," the shock was drastic. The conception of the man as provider in the home and king in the public sphere does not sustain itself when a legion of women cross the borders of traditional feminility. And the men were not static either; they too questioned their identity, becoming more feminine or just refusing to be heterossexual. The magazine has several articles on the new male professions, such as modeling, about the new worries of the modern man with appearance and cosmetics, and about homossexuals, seen as deviant and sick.
 

Representing masculinity
 

     Now to tackle more specifically the question of how masculinity is represented in the magazine, and to describe the shift I mentioned in representation, I must describe the two models I outlined earlier: the model where masculine/feminine are associated with the subject/object dichotomy, and the one where masculine and feminine are more or less equivalent categories, arranged in a system. We could associate the first model with sexism and patriarchy, a system where man dominates discourse and is the only legitimate subject of discourse, and where woman is dominated. And the second model can be associated with a shift in that situation, already described in the discussions earlier, where women gain a more priviledged position in society and where alternative discourses (gay and feminist), by elaborating discourses about themselves and their gender identities, increasingly turn masculinity into the object of discourse and question the inequality of their position against this "masculinity," which is no longer universal or generic.
     But the moment I analyze cannot be said to be one of gender equality. Women are still the subject of discourse and are still subordinate in society as a whole. What we can say is that the old model does not hold, cannot have further legitimacy when faced with the questioning coming from social movements and with the change in the roles of men and women. But we are necessarily in a transition, where man, if not universal, is still considered superior in every respect to women. The title of the magazine, Ele Ela, "Him Her," is the expression of a project of gender equality that is not fulfilled. "A magazine to be read by the couple," the modern, egalitarian couple that rises with the sexual revolution, the liberation of women and with "modernity" in general as conceived at the time, is an expression of the project that the magazine has, but it is here an incomplete project.
     What we can say is that a transition occurs - masculinity loses its status of being universal and generic - but that does not have as a consequence a necessarily equal position of the sexes. Masculine and feminine are not equivalent, although we could say that the model points in that direction. Hence I will address, first, how that shift occurs, and second, reaffirming that inequalities persist in discourse - and as a consequence and related to that, in society.
     To understand the first model, we must understand how the dichotomy between subject and object relates to gender, for the purposes of our work. Many texts have analyzed this relationship (Doty, 1993; Karatheodoris & Doty, 1995; Bordo, 1986; Braidotti, 1986; Phillips, 1992; Mulvey, 1975; De Lauretis, 1990), showing how the ways in which we perceive reality are associated with a dichotomy of gender, of masculine and feminine, and with an inequality between the two parts.
     Karatheodoris and Doty (1995) discuss how, in Renaissance painting, a certain way of seeing was associated with humanism and with gender. That is, in the Renaissance, a new way of perceiving reality, based on the dichotomy subject/object, developed itself, associated with humanism as a social and intellectual movement, and with the dichotomy of gender, where the masculine was associated with the position of the subject, a position of power over the object.
     The authors discuss linear perspective, which developed during the Renaissance as a way of representing reality (a visual discourse), as an optical apparatus, creating the opposition between he who sees (subject) and he who is seen (object). The subject is associated with the humanist individual, centered, self-reflective, rational, free. This "subject" dominates simbolically the "object," that is represented, object of discourse, passive, impotent. Like many feminist writers, the authors will associate this relationship between subject and object with gender:

 We use masculine pronouns and the term man when speaking of the self reflective speaker in deference to Luce Irigaray's contention that "any theory of the 'subject' [that emanates from humanism] has always been appropriated by the 'masculine'" (...). Thus the subject of humanism and the self reflective speaker who emerges as the hero of the Renaissance is certainly Man in the fullest sense of this word. We place woman in opposition to the 'Assent of Man', paraphrasing Bronkowski's Ascent of Man, because the subject position in discourse, representation, and desire is always appropriated by the masculine, which at once seeks to be called the whole and to exclude woman. Just as the grammars or the technological machines of a society may appear genderless, so the western humanist subject and the patriarchal domination and control of ways of seeing, as well as the assumption that humankind has spoken when males had their say, easily came to replace more diffuse, less structured, more 'feminine' modes of perceiving and speaking. (Karatheodoris & Doty, 1995:62).

     Susan Bordo (1986) also deals with this question, in her discussion of the birth of Cartesian thought in the west as a "masculinization of thought," something that is also the question for Rosi Braidotti (1986) and Anne Phillips (1992). Bordo will try to show how Descartes, when he developed his epistemology of rational and cientific thought, broke away from medieval forms of thought, which were more "feminine".
     But how is this expressed in the pages of the magazine? It becomes very clear and explicit at the moment we look at the magazine, with a profusion of pictures of naked and semi-naked women, ilustrating every article. There are very few pictures of men, and those only appear personified in actual historical figures, such as a president or an artist. Women appear all the time as illustration simply, hundreds of anonymous faces that are in every cover, in publicity, and in most articles as a visual aid. The position of women is clear, not only visually, but in the texts, which are mostly written by men about women. The articles deal with problems such as health, the home, infidelity, always centering on the woman and her intimate problems. In seeing the lack of articles directed at men and their intimacy, their feelings, we expect the male reader to be reading mostly articles about politics and art, culture. That is, reproducing the dichotomy we have been talking about so far, where women are restricted to the private sphere, and are the priviledged object of visual and written discourse, while the men are the subject of discourses, and are always associated with the public sphere. That is what we mean when we talk abou a masculinity that is generic: it is a category that is invisible, that permeates everything, that produces discourse, but is invisible as object of discourses.
     This argument is developed by feminist authors such as Laura Mulvey (1975) and Teresa de Lauretis (1990), who discuss women as the foremost object of representation in our society. Woman, object of an excess of representation through all kinds of media discourses, actually becomes invisible in her specificity, becomes mute because all discourse is produced by males. Woman is scrutinized, her intimacy exposed, her body controlled, but she doesn't produce discourse, she becomes a sign, an object of visual and written discourses (as in the case of Ele Ela) produced by men, that themselves are not made visible. Laura Mulvey, film theorist, has exerted an enormous influence on feminist film studies with exactly this perspective. In the case of film, very much analogous with the discussion of the magazine, Mulvey theorizes the look as masculine, and woman as the most common object of the objectifying gaze of the camera. That means that this relationship is inscribed in the very structure of how we perceive reality visually, as in a film or in looking at a visual object such as a magazine, packed with images of women. In another work with film theory, we can see the same orientation:

 Both in cinema and in the wider patriarcal culture of which cinema and sport are both a part, a sustained and frequently erotic attention to the male body is, it seems, allowable only in terms of the demonstration of its qualities of skill and endurance. Only in this way can the suggestion of a feminizing passivity, consequent of being the object of the look rather than the bearer of it, be refuted. (Kirkham & Thumin, 1993:13).

     So what happens when men are the object of visual and written discourse? What happens when masculinity itself is problematized, when men are analysed in their intimacy and when men are not any more the bearer of the look, the subject of discourse? This is what increasingly happens in the pages of Ele Ela, due to a number of factors. As I have mentioned, there is the question of the feminist and gay movements, but also the unisex vogue, and the rearrangements in the labor market, with women coming in large numbers into traditionally male-only professions, and men in small, but increasing numbers also taking on traditionally feminine professions, such as modelling.
 So men are increasingly scrutinized in the pages of the magazine, and this is the major change we can detect. Articles on male vainty, on new cosmetics for men, on male homosexualism, on the male body and on the feelings of men, become more and more common. Men begin to be more visuallized, a process of objectifying the male through the gaze of the camera begins. More pictures of male models, not just of famous/important male personalities, appear as ilustrations in articles and publicity.
 In my hypothesis, this process is  responsible for the changes in the representation of masculinity or in the linguistic status of masculinity. Masculinity is not generic and universal anymore, it becomes also an object of discourse. It becomes a difference, along with feminity as difference, both is a system. When masculinity loses its status as generic, feminity ceases to be alone as difference, as "the other" in relation to masculinity. When "the other" is increasingly visible and masculinity is increasingly objectified, the relationship between the two changes. This is the structuralist concept of difference, derived from linguistics (Lepargneur, 1972) I mean here, where a difference is a significant sign (has meaning), and is only significant when inserted into a system with other differences. There is no absolute meaning, no immanent significations outside the system.
     So my reading of the transformations that occurred is the following: If before masculinity was seen or perceived in an absolutist manner - invisible, generic and universal, and the feminine was seen as the other, constantly visualized and objectified - gradually masculinity loses this condition and becomes a difference, in a system with other differences such as feminility.
 But the process does not materialize itself historically in the clean and logical manner that I describe. What I have outlined are ideal types, theoretical constructions useful to understand the directions which the process is taking and the possibilities that these processes create. One important thing to remember and that needs to be emphasized is that the change in masculinity and its increasing objectification did not mean an end to patriarchy and to male dominance in discourse and society. We can at best say that the sexist and patriarchal ways of perceiving reality adapted itself to the new model of representation, and if masculinity is not universal and generic, it is the dominant pole in a system of diferences or a dichotomy between masculine and feminine. Two examples from the magazine can be used to visualize this a little better. The first comes from an article entitled "Man, with pride":

 Beginning some ten years ago, being a man is synonymous with being rude, old-fashioned and overcome. The minorities sum up and are a whole when it comes to bringing down the real man. Against these prejudices it is important that something be done. And fast - before the minorities destroy him and reduce him to a marginal in history and life.4 (Ele Ela, September 1971).

     This excerpt is explicitly sexist, at least for our postfeminist eyes, but the author is clearly having to deal with one question - the so called minorities (I cite gays and feminists), that are questioning traditional masculinity. Here masculinity is the problem in question, is the object of discourse. but he still speaks of the "real man," and speaks of the social movements as "destroying" this man, like he was a defenseless victim. And the tone of the author is clearly in the direction of saving the "real man" from the minorities, who cannot be victorious in their objectives. He wants to maintain traditional masculinity as is. But we can say that that is not possible anymore, because the minorities are there questioning him. If he doesn't lose his supremacy, he at least is not alone as subject.
 The second article is called "Man and woman: fight or integration":

 It was necessary to end with an old inferiority complex: the domination of woman by man. For that they thought about making the war of love to conquer the power and "give the orders". But is that the real path for feminine liberation? Competing with the man will not mean losing a companion? Being alone? Maybe the best solution is another: peaceful coexistence, integration.
 [...]
 Worst than submission to male powers will be loneliness. 5 (Ele Ela, March 1972).

     So here patriarchy has become an "inferiority complex", unrelated to the social reality of men and women. And the magazine suggests that submission to the male is better than being alone without him! So, while on the one hand, the magazine has to deal with the feminist movement and the feminist discourse of male domination and female liberation, but on the other this does not mean that the magazine agrees with them; it is still more important to have a companion than to be liberated from patriarchy. The same happens with the gay movement: they are still seen as deviant and in general sick, but the magazine associates this with the rise in pornography and the overall sexual liberalization of society as a sign of some kind of decadence, where "sins" and "deviant behaviour" are accepted. But it is still deviant, and that is the difference from accepting it as normal or as valid human behavior.
     We can say that the magazine is an expression of the period of transition in which it existed, where these discussions were just being formulated and the concepts and categories, such as gay, feminist, sexism, patriarchy, were being formulated and had not yet consolidated themselves. Our perception today has already incorporated these discussions, and they are much more commonplace. The important thing is to understand the shift and the changes that were happening, but in relation to the continuing inequality both in discourse and in society.    

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MAGAZINE ISSUES CONSULTED

- ELE ELA: uma revista para ler a dois.
("Him Her: a magazine to be read by the couple")
 

Ano 1, número 2, junho de 1969;
Ano 1, número 4, agosto de 1969;
Ano 1, número 5, setembro de 1969;
Ano 1, número 7, novembro de 1969;
Ano 1, número 8, dezembro de 1969;
Ano 1, número 10, fevereiro de 1970;
Ano 2, número 20, dezembro de 1970;
Ano 2, número 21, janeiro de 1971;
Ano 2, número 23, março de 1971;
Ano 2, número 25, maio de 1971;
Ano 3, número 26, junho de 1971;
Ano 3, número 28, agosto de 1971;
Ano 3, número 29, setembro de 1971;
Ano 3, número 30, outubro de 1971;
Ano 3, número 31, novembro de 1971;
Ano 3, número 32, dezembro de 1971;
Ano 3, número 35, março de 1972;
Ano 3, número 36, abril de 1972;
Ano 4, número 37, maio de 1972;
Ano 4, número 38, junho de 1972;
Ano 4, número 40, agosto de 1972;
Ano 4, número 41, setembro de 1972;
Ano 4, número 42, outubro de 1972.
 

1 This article is part of an undergraduate graduate level research with the magazine Ele Ela, funded by FAPESP (The State of São Paulo's Research Support Fund).[back]
2 My special thanks to the following persons, whose criticism and suggestions much contributed to the final version of this article: My advisor Margareth Rago (Department of History, State University of Campinas, UNICAMP, Brazil), Inês Signorini (Applied Linguistics, UNICAMP); Ângela Kleinman (Applied Linguistics, UNICAMP); and William G. Doty (Religious Studies, University of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA). [back]
3 Translated by the author. [back]
4 Translated by the author. [back]
5 Translated by the author. [back]