With each new report of femicide these weeks, the cruelty is revealed even more explicitly. It is in this scenario that the urgency emerges to face the dissolution of affections and to understand the role that male resentment plays today in the forms of emotional and sexual relationships with women. The instability of bonds, combined with the increasing politicization of femininity, accentuates the corrosion present in violent subcultures of masculinity, where gender, desire and power status become permanent grounds of conflict.
First of all, it should be noted that this is not to be approached with false moralism. On the contrary: the cult of moralism and especially the political exploitation of masculinity stifles the debate precisely because it is at the heart of a little-addressed problem. It is not possible to understand the escalation of violence against women without observing the environment and the ideological foundations which support the orbit of this male domination, often reinforced by identity-based discourses of hatred towards minorities and fueled by neoliberalism. In this sense, it is urgent to reflect on the way in which the affective and relational field becomes empty as important social achievements recede.
If on the one hand Generation Z women are less conservative and more aware of feminist policies, men in the same age group – between 18 and 30 – are significantly more conservative. And this dichotomy is not limited to Brazil. The trend of “trophy wives” on TikTok and the celebration of “feminine energy” by some influencers are signs of a discursive attempt to soften women’s authenticity so that they give in to a more acceptable patriarchal model.
The fantasy around the “male provider” who takes on financial responsibilities actually highlights a deep gender frustration. The service provider model is an old bourgeois farce: insufficient to maintain a level of social success supported by the minimum wage. And it is also a fraud because, in addition to solving nothing, it also imposes symbolic debts: what reward, after all, do we expect from the women who are trophies in these equations?
Current precariousness and externalization compromise the formation of healthy bonds and transform social spaces already severely tested by female autonomy into competition. The men are absent; women reject emotional spaces contaminated by fragile bonds and insecure attachments (sober boy). Unavailability, combined with these relational demands, functions as a huge psychological investment – and its support only deepens toxic polarizations.
We accelerate intimacy without commitment, without real involvement – and that, paradoxically, is more exciting. Impact more. It’s addictive. But the rebound is coming: by avoiding real encounters and favoring brief relationships, we also weaken our own capacity to establish relationships. A relational regressivity then appears: we return to childish forms of demands, intensifying the sexual dispute as an attempt to validate a certain feeling of independence. At this point, the controversy becomes a purely subjective statement. Everyone wants to be wanted, but almost no one actually wants to be there.
However, unavailability is not neutral. It is the product of a repression that sabotages desire, impoverishes the relational pulse and demobilizes emotional resistance – this internal force capable of maintaining connections, developing conflicts and accepting the vulnerability of others. Women, in turn, continue to do their usual psychic work: they regulate their partners’ emotional needs, manage the ups and downs of dysfunctional relationships, and receive little in return—an exchange shaped by the expectations that still weigh on them in the face of men who reproduce the conservatism inherited from their parents.
When emotional time disappears because it competes with work time, social life collapses: there is no symbolic offer of connection, only insatiable demands that compromise mental health. In this weakened field, it becomes easy to confuse or neglect legitimate feminine expectations with the masculinist ideal of the “reformed provider,” embodied in the character of the “bald Campari.” These and other subjects naturalize and explore violence as a kind of sexual cryptocurrency – whether in the repetition of everyday micro-violence or in the violent sexual act (or outside of it), understood as an attempt to restore an imagined order of domination.
A model based on the objectified assumption of female preferences, and not the intention to satisfy partners, supports much of these far-right dynamics. Countless “conquest” content is monetized for men, teaching humiliation and debasement approaches to fulfill male desire on demand. The cause of rejection is never treated as incompetence; on the contrary, the character of women who refuse the expected recognition is blamed. What they cannot see or awaken in others turns into hatred and violence. Thus, women’s consent remains unexpressed and turns into destructive male resentment when confronted.
All of this is articulated as extremist political propaganda that attempts to recover the patriarchal values rejected by new generations: authoritarian leadership, moral guardianship and control of female subjectivity. In the political scenario of the left itself, there is a silent heteronormativity that still persists in representation spaces – an impasse that we have also been trying to manage for years within progressive parties and agendas, as well as in the current parliamentary performance of women attacked by our colleagues in plenary.
This situation brings us back to the central question: what fuels the exasperation of hatred and the violation of consent in the context of far-right political propaganda? In many cases reported in recent weeks, it appears that the profile of the attackers is increasingly made up of young men – and this is no coincidence.
Violence is therefore not only cultural or symbolic: it is economic and structural. Producing inequalities between the sexes ensures the very internal functioning of capitalism. It is about preventing important social gains from being transformed into new possibilities for desire, life and freedom – and imposing limits on the exploitation of the bodies of women who have been assaulted, raped and mutilated.
The far right knows this and is betting on lasting crises, producing anti-democratic ebbs and contradictory models of female representation, as evidenced by the candidacy of Michele Bolsonaro. Despite the exceptions, women’s critical disposition toward democracy constitutes a powerful alliance – and threatens the conservative dominance of those who have historically managed contradictions at their expense.
Far-right conservatism, in turn, offers the promise not only of law, but also of the restoration of values: it seeks to reconcile the domestic sphere with traditional gender and racial roles, within the logic of inequality. In this scenario, symbolic and relational violence is no longer just a symptom: it becomes a self-managed political tool. Its effects also infiltrate intimacy, where emotional distance reappears as a self-protection mechanism in the face of empty bonds. It is neoliberal hyperindividualism that destroys gender boundaries, reactivates opposing roles and weakens historical gains in gender equality.
The challenge therefore is to recognize that the dispute over desire, the body and affectivity is not distinct from the dispute over power. Resisting this cycle of regression requires reconstituting trauma and traditional values – “God, Country and Family” – as well as the privileges that limit women; not as an aesthetic or moral exception, but as a collective political horizon of real dignity, where they do not kill us.
Taïna Machado Vargas She is a Master of Laws, lawyer, freelance columnist and writer. Article transcribed from Monde Diplomatique Brasil – https://diplomatique.org.br/
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