The production of masculinities in the military police

foucaultian notes

Abstract

This article problematizes the construction of masculinities in the context of the Military Police institution based on the analysis of a public tender notice from the MP of Paraná, in which "masculinity" was a characteristic to be measured in the psychological evaluation. Using some Foucaultian operators, we understand the public notice as an articulating mechanism for disciplinary strategies and, thus, activating knowledge-power games, constituting speeches and subjectivities, and seeking to identify individuals in an exercise sustained by a calculated look to, if approved, be co- opted as a gear in the disciplinary power of the institution and be contributors to the maintenance of security in a strategy of governability. Specifically, the notion of privileged masculinity was that of a historically constituted and naturalized way of being and living, called hegemonic masculinity, that is, a kind of masculinity considered appropriate in a structure of gender relations that, abandoning biologisms, articulates social, cultural, economic, and subjective issues, which are contradictory experiences of male power because they are precisely the same systems that constitute privileges and empowerment for men, including in maintaining domination over women, while oppressing and brutalizing them, which may cause pain and suffering.