•   WOMEN’S LIFE : day to day and the imaginary sphere

      “To those who became women unraveling life” MASSI / 92

Livro em inglês : mestrado

Marina Massi's proposal of researching and "portraying the imaginary sphere in the daily life of middle class women from Sao Paulo" comes at the right time. This type of information is not usually available and it is fundamental for studying what influences the construction of this imagery, the forces that make it spread, the relevance it has on rational decisions, and specially in the history of women's submission.

Over the last three decades, the feminist movement went through two different phases and is now at a third moment, which is called by many post-feminist. The first moment was characterized by the fight for equal rights, which abroad, in the sixties, led to a confrontation with the man as an enemy. In Brazil, in the seventies, that struggle did not go beyond inspiring some issues of the tabloid "O Pasquim" ( an acclaimed and influential newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, very popular during the years of dictatorship), where the feminists were referred to as "unloved women" and "dikes", reflecting the pejorative tone associated with feminism in Brazil for many years. Another angle, less remembered and pointed out by the anthropologist Ruth Cardoso was that the "paraphernalia" created by "O Pasquim" disconnected the feminist movement from its political link with the concurrent social movements going on in the country. The specific features of the Brazilian feminist movement, its close relationship with the political activity, mainly with popular movements, was therefore lost. However, if on the one hand, to be feminist became a burden, the feminists did not suffer the military repression aimed at other left wing movements.

This first moment of feminism, probably fruit of the introjected patriarchal ideology and of an identification with the oppressor, tried to prove that women could be equal to men, discarded the feminine, seen as devalued, and experienced the masculine as the superiority to be aimed at and copied.

The second moment, in the late seventies and early eighties, already focusing on the conquest of the specificity of the feminine, generated a great amount of research and a protest against the ideology of what it is to be a man or a woman. While the first feminists searched for their emancipation by burning their bras, confusing the universal with the masculine, the next phase was a search for the "feminine" rather than its devaluation. This attempt even involved reconstructing the history of women like Camille Claudel and others. Women did not want, nor needed to be equal to men, and saw this difference as enriching to society. According to Rosiska Darcy de Oliveira (1991), "in adopting this posture of affirming new values, the feminist movement starts to develop the role of what Serge Moscovici would call active minority. Active minorities are groups that challenge the common sense, with the capacity to provoke transformation of norms and social relationships, through firmness and viability of their positions. ...