The footballers are a sad and revolting portrait of how machismo is part of Brazilian society and has turned toxic masculinity into our new export product. A footballer is accused in Switzerland of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. What happens to him? After spending a month in prison, the athlete returns to Brazil and continues his successful career. His sentence is canceled and he continues his life for over 30 years, pretending nothing happened.
I’m talking about Cuca, who became a source of scandal and revolt when he became coach of Corinthians and who, after much popular pressure, resigned last week.
Cuca and two other football players were sentenced in 1989 to 15 months’ imprisonment for indecent assault with the use of violence, which had occurred two years earlier. Nothing happened. And only after more than 30 years does the coach suffer the consequences of his act. This is because the world has evolved a lot and women (and many men too) are no longer willing to “pass the cloth” to those convicted of abuse.
But despite so much evolution, many things (and men) remain the same. Proof of this is that Cuca’s defense, which denies the allegations, claims that he is the victim of a “lynching for something that happened 34 years ago”. In his latest statement on the case, he said he was “trying to figure out what was going on.” I mean, in all this time, he still hasn’t figured out that he’s been convicted of a crime. And that, if anyone is a victim, it’s the woman who was just 13 at the time.
Trend among footballers
Cuca isn’t the only sportsman who lives in denial and spreads toxic masculinity.
In recent years, soccer players convicted of violence against women in European countries have become almost a trend.
In January, Daniel Alves, star of the Brazilian national team, was arrested in Spain. He was sentenced to preventive detention after being accused of raping a woman in a nightclub. In his testimonies, the player has repeatedly contradicted himself. In a stomach-turning sentence, he said, in his defense of him, as if he were proving it wasn’t rape, that “the woman was oiled.” Disgust defines.
While Daniel spends his days in a Spanish prison, another player lives as a “refugee” in Brazil and will be arrested if he enters Europe. This is Robinho, sentenced by the Italian court to nine years in prison for having participated in the gang rape of a woman in 2013.
In the audio messages exchanged with his accomplices, Robinho showed he was sure of his impunity and felt no empathy for the woman. According to the details of the trial revealed in 2020, the player would have said: “I laugh because I don’t care, the woman was completely drunk, she doesn’t even know what happened”.
export product
Cuca, Robinho and Alves are not only proof that football is a sexist environment, but a sad and revolting portrait of how machismo is part of Brazilian society. In the country where a rape is recorded every eight minutes, many men still think that women are “things” they use at parties and that the next day they become jokes between friends, who laugh because “they don’t care”.
The players, as they say in league seasons, represent millions of Brazilians. In this case, in the worst sense.
The difference is that these international career players travel the world spreading the toxic masculinity so common in Brazil. In many cases they go unpunished. In others they find justice that is far from perfect, but one that understands better than the Brazilian that violence against women is no joke. And also women who are more aware of their rights and who are not afraid to speak up.
In Brazil, many are still silent, which is understandable. After all, many complaints go unanswered and the victims end up being blamed. Everything is more difficult in the case of rich and famous men.
We must also demand that abusers in Brazil be punished, regardless of bank account or fame. And of course, remember every day that this is only because Brazilian society is extremely sexist.
Until that changes, abusers will remain free in Brazil and gamers will continue to spread toxic masculinity around the world, our new export product.
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Nina Lemos is a journalist and writer. She has been writing about feminism and behavior since the 2000s, when she launched the group “02 Neuronio” with two friends. You have already been a columnist for Folha de S.Paulo and UOL. She is one of the creators of TPM magazine. In 2015 she moved to Berlin, a city she is madly in love with. Since then she lives between news from Brazil and German lessons.
Text reflects the author’s opinion, not necessarily DW’s.
Source: Terra
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