Chauvinists

History

While the first variation of the English term chauvinism, "literary chauvinism", appeared in 1888, the growing popularity of variations is attributed to the American Communist Party that stressed the "white chauvinism" and "male chauvinism" in the early 1930s ("white chauvinism" dates back to the "Resolution on the Negro Question" of 1930). At this time the brief term "chauvinism" frequently was used to designate the white chauvinism. The term "male sex chauvinism" appeared in The New York Times in 1934, while the form "male chauvinism" is first documented in the 1935 Clifford Odets play Till the Day I Die to reflect a pattern of patronizingly claiming the superiority of males, "You and your male chauvinism!". Outside the Communist party, the term was very rarely used for the next 30 years (about one mention in NYT every three years). At the same time, the "male chauvinism" term was regularly used in the Communist press in the US, where the "chauvinism" now standing for both white chauvinism and male chauvinism. The party sanctions against male chauvinists were employed, but were less severe than the ones against white chauvinists.