'brick writes:
>>You didn't give us the FULL definition!

True, a chauvinist was a loyal, overly patriotic veteran of the Napoeleonic wars but he was also someone who favoured men and prejudiced against women. I can only presume that the typical chauvinist of the time engaged in the 'spoils of war'.<<

I have to admit that you've got me flummoxed on this one!
My reading of the OED (under chauvinism) relates early usage (1870s ff) to (the British) 'jingoism' exclusively. It goes on to give citations for other forms of chauvinism, with adjectival modifiers, such as male chauvinism, female chauvinism, carbon chauvinism (from Carl Sagan!), etc. All of the citations for male chauvinism are post-1970. This puts about 100 years between the original sense and the sexist sense -- and what I objected to was totally dropping the modifier; i.e., chauvinist == male chauvinist.