[This term is derived from the legendary Nicolas…]

Scan page 4

This term is derived from the legendary Nicolas Chauvin, Napoleonic soldier of obsessive patriotism and devotion to his general.

Marxists use the word to describe support, particularly by Sexism Insistence on maintaining rigid stereotype views of the role of either women or men in society-leading to discrimination, inequality, or anti-gay propaganda.

The sexist attitude towards women brands them as inevitably a 'wife' ', a 'mother' , a 'home-maker' and a sex-object, whereas men are pressured to conform to the bourgeois notions of masculinity-aggressiveness, dominance, virility and unquestioned heterosexuality.

Particular victims of such views-which are promoted on every side by the press, the media, the arts and the education system as well as by the existing social system-are women and gay men, Sexism and male chauvinism are particularly rife within the bureaucratic leaders of the workers' movement for the war efforts by imperialism, or for nationalist economic policies pursued by a section of capitalists at the expense of "foreign" competition (e.g. import chauvinism In the sense of "support for the oppressor", chauvinism has also been extended to the arena of the struggle for women's rights, where "male chauvinism" describes support for the continued oppressive role of men in relation to women.

Unfortunately in the hands of the women's liberation movement the term has been so slackly, and frequently incorrectly, used that its real content is often obscured.