Every time our group goes out to clubs in Buenos Aires, we always seem to run into the
same problem, without fail. We will all
be having a good time, dancing and buzzing nicely from the couple of drinks we
knocked back earlier. Then they come.
Who? The rude, pushy Argentine men, that’s who. They start harassing the girls in our group,
and they don’t take no for an answer unless we prove to them that the girl in
question already has a boyfriend. This
means, usually, that we guys have to come in and “save” our girls. It’s annoying, but it’s a job that has to be
done. It disrupts the fun of everyone in
the group. It’s rare when we go twenty
minutes in a club without this happening.
Their approach to women doesn’t make sense to me at
all. What I have seen as the best
approach to women is to always respect them and to make them feel comfortable,
and to let them come to you. So I wonder
what has made this approach to women the norm in Argentina.
One theory comes to mind, from the last readings on tango
and Argentine culture. In Tango as a
Spectacle of Race, Class, and Gender, the author makes the point that
porteños relate to tango music that has sad, desolate, yearning lyrics
complemented by the sad-sounding bandoneon.
That personality, coupled with the fierce male-male competitiveness,
creates men who display supermachismo and inferiority complexes. I think this is the personality our girls
encounter in the clubs: a pushy male who is trying to get a hook-up and a story
to brag to his friends about. All he’s
doing is expressing the deep-set inferiority complex that most porteños have
and giving weight to the stereotype of the rude, overly aggressive Argentine.
