“Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken, Unbroken.”
In a speech at the Esplanada dos Ministérios during the celebration of September 7, President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) repeated the term “imbrochable” five times, a word that is not in the dictionary, but would indicate supposed unshakable sexual potency.
It is not the first time.
“I’m sure, I’m ‘imbrochable’, I’m not going out of combat”, said, in May 2018, the then pre-candidate in a speech at the Federation of Industries of Rio Grande do Norte (Fiern).
In September 2019, already president, Bolsonaro surprised supporters at the entrance of Palácio da Alvorada with the term: “I am imbrochable”, he said, simply.
Cut to February 2020. “I’m not worried about reelection,” Bolsonaro said. “I’m not going to broach you (journalists) thinking about reelection. I’m imbrochable.”
August 2020: “With all due respect, in politics, I’m imbrochable”.
In May 2021, he went further: “Don’t worry.
On August 31, 2021, as he left the palace, Bolsonaro showed a silver medal to the cameras. Next to his photo, the phrase was read: “Bolsonaro Club – Immorrible, imbrochable and inedible”.
“My wife can’t see that, no. This medal is not just anyone who has it, no, hey,” he said.
But why does the president of the Republic who has most invested in religious and conservative rhetoric since Brazilian redemocratization insist so much on promoting himself sexually?
‘Brazilian hypocrisy’
Psychoanalyst Christian Dunker, professor at the Institute of Psychology at the University of São Paulo and winner of the 2021 Jabuti Prize, has his interpretations.
“An innovative feature of the president’s speech is that he alternately uses a rhetoric of respect for the family, morals and good manners, and a libidinal rhetoric, of foul verbiage, of private language in public space.”
Dunker says that Bolsonaro innovates by bringing to politics “a curious feature of Brazilian culture: this double morality, this publicly assumed hypocrisy”.
A saying known to most Brazilians illustrates the duplicity cited by the professor: “To friends, everything. To enemies, nothing”.
For the psychoanalyst, Bolsonaro would bet on a style of authority that appeals to this “Brazilian hypocrisy, overlapping what is public and what is private”.
‘Control of sexuality’
The USP professor also reflects on a characteristic that he points out as common among “ultraconservative regimes”: the attempt to control people’s sexuality.
“Sexuality, for people, is something seen as difficult to control. Something you don’t command, especially in the field of imagination, dreamed desire, fantasy.”
“The ‘brochada'” continues the professor, “is one of those uncontrollable elements of our sexuality. Something that man does not master”.
Dunker quotes the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957).
“For him, the fascisms of the 1930s had to do with the sexual repression of people. He thought of the worker who had a very poor sex life, restricted by pressures and impediments, and he said: ‘This is the fascist’s easy prey’ He’s going to get a lot of political messages saying that this erotic poverty is the normal condition. And that you should transfer your libido, your desiring potency, to the one who will give you protection.”
In this case: the State, the leader of the nation, religion, the Army.
Dunker cites another recurring stance by Bolsonaro: the pejorative speeches and attacks against homosexuals, transsexuals, and women.
In July of this year, at an evangelical event in Maranhão, Bolsonaro defended that “Joãozinho be Joãozinho all his life”, that “Mariazinha be Mariazinha all his life”.
He also said that the family is made up of “man, woman and offspring”.
“The idea of attacking, controlling and destroying non-hegemonic, divergent sexualities is also a way of reassuring people of control over what they cannot control. It is a way of saying: ‘We are going to offer a subjective pacification for you. the voices of other orientations, other genders and other sexual possibilities. Vote for me so we can solve the problem from the outside, not from the inside'”, explains the professor.
‘Fragile masculinity’
Dunker also points out “very unoriginal” points in Bolsonaro’s narrative.
“There’s this social perception that powerful white men are losing their place, that their place is threatened,” he says.
“This permanent availability of the ‘imbrochable’, this exaggerated phallicism, is a discourse of those who feel threatened by changes in culture and social ties. Bolsonaro’s reaction is typical of fragile masculinity: he feels attacked and responds with excess, exaggeration. .”
“This brings an effect that comes from a toast that is comical”, says the professor. “Some people actually believe it, but most have a laughable relationship with that phrase (‘I’m imbrochable’). And that laugh is very important because it’s a kind of pleasure, of satisfaction.”
“What Bolsonaro is offering is a spectacle of making people feel the pleasure of ‘being able to be macho again’. His speech sells that he will deliver what makes them grandly masculine again. And that order will return.”
This text was originally published here
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