misogyny

From Ancient Greek μισογυνία (misogunía) and μισογύνης (misogúnēs, “woman hater”), from μισέω (miséō, “I hate”) + γυνή (gunḗ, “woman”). By surface analysis, miso- +‎ -gyny.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /mɪˈsɒd͡ʒ.ɪ.ni/
• (US) IPA^(key): /mɪˈsɑd͡ʒ.ɪ.ni/

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misogyny (usually uncountable, plural misogynies)

1. Hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women.
   • 1999, Joanne Marie Greer, David O. Moberg, Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion, →ISBN, page 29:

     Although she argues against a simplistic conflation of types of prejudice, she suggests that misogyny is typically present in both narcissistic and obsessive forms of anti-Semitic prejudice.

   • 1999, Ethel Spector Person, The Sexual Century, →ISBN, page 84:

     His misogyny, like that of his predecessors, is more than prejudice; […]

   • 2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections:

     […] a lonely straight male had no equivalently forgiving Theory of Masculinism to help him out of this bind, this key to all misogynies: […]

   • 2005, Jeff Johnson, William Inge And The Subversion Of Gender, →ISBN, page 122:

     This ontological symbiosis also explains his misogyny. By envying Sue, as the man he cannot become, he projects his self-loathing onto her, trying to diminish what he actually admires.

   • 2006, Jack Holland, Misogyny: the world's oldest prejudice, →ISBN:
   • 2014 April 12, Simon Russell Beale, “Why Shakespeare always says something new: As the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth approaches, the great Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale explains his secrets [print version: The king and I]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎, London, page R7:

     […] I have always found it hard that Hamlet, a character that I love and admire, is guilty of a puerile misogyny and, perhaps, more worryingly, of the unnecessary deaths of his old friends from university, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. When I played him, I could find reasons for the misogyny but half-ignored the murders.

• A related concept is gynophobia, the fear of women (or femininity), but not necessarily hatred of them.

• misogynism

• philogyny (love of, or fondness for, women)

• misandry (hatred of men)

• lesbophobia