Machismo through the Lens of Film: Changing Perceptions on Gender and Sexuality among Mexican Migrants Living in Sydney

Abstract

ABSTRACT Machismo is a concept often associated with systemic and social patriarchy in Latin America; nonetheless, it is more pervasive than that. In a broad sense, it entails the exertion of male dominance over others, namely women and other men based on a hypermasculine and heteronormative construction of men as more or less macho/“manly,” and women as either la virgen (virtuous and conservative) or la puta (whore). These binary constructs often impede complexities to surface and thus, discourses used to describe Latin America as machista and Australia as “progressive” need to be considered in the context of the Mexican migratory experience. Through the use of filmic stimuli and a discourse-based approach to identity, the narratives shared by five Mexican migrants living in Sydney elucidate assertions of one social milieu being more liberal than the other and how these are related to perceptions on machismo.