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Introduction!

Misogamy is a word of Greek origin, comprising misos and gamos. Miso translates to hate, which is negative, and gamos translates to matrimony, which is supposed to be positive. Misogamy denotes hatred towards matrimony. It is pertinent to mention that the marital relationship is neither an individualistic experience nor an isolated relationship between husband and wife, but rather a broader social institution sustaining essential cultural functions.

Misogamy suggests both the denial of matrimony by people who do not marry—as do the celibates—and actions specifically designed to withhold women from matrimony. Such actions represent a concrete effort undertaken with the purpose of boycotting the female gender and her most significant and consequential life experience.

Frustrating the female’s almost involuntary need to couple, given men’s lesser need to have a formal recognition of proximity, means denying women a fundamental condition in the balance of a life that, especially for them, depends particularly on the couple’s formalization.

Misogamy is the result of a process that considers marriage as the “natural” condition towards which the female is thrust by virtue of her femininity and is therefore compelled by existence. The marital condition in the woman, considered “natural” by determinism, has deep cultural and anthropological roots, having been expressed, in the course of history, through the social, psychological, and sexual repression of females. With the evolving conquest of the liberation of the female gender and her more frequent formal recognition, it has been claimed that women who prefer other types of lifestyles, pursuing interests or careers in ways similar to men, explicitly state their declared choice.

Significant changes in mentality have led to the progressive acceptance of women even in the version of “celebrity = bachelor,” disentangling them from the stereotype of the rejected and therefore frigid female. However, women who make other non-traditional personal choices are not regarded at all as marginal.

Nonetheless, society has never viewed the male form of the refusal to marry as peculiar to celibates, and even today, it appears unable to appreciate the wealth and variety of the female choice of matrimonial status, supporting and respecting the choice, considered as decidedly unequivocal, of representing a persistent minority.

The psycho-social gap between man and woman close to wedlock is wide and just as deep, often rekindled by contemporary myths and ideals, by media and stereotypes about the love of women with reference to weddings and newlyweds.

Historical Perspectives on Misogamy

It has long been known that humans can become passionately attached to just about anything that has the power to enhance one’s sense of mastery, autonomy, or social relatedness, filling the emptiness of an otherwise dull or fragmented existence. Entire literatures have grown up around people’s attachments to their homes, cars, and even their guns.

Much less studied, however, are the deep affective attachments that male collectivities throughout history have developed toward the feminine ideal while, at the same time, creating social conditions that are profoundly disabling for the majority of real women. In its most extreme form, this attraction to the female ideal has gone beyond its usual objectification and aestheticization to become a virulent hatred of real women. We call this hatred “misogamy” and argue that, although extreme, its roots are to be found in pathways of normal human social development.

It is a rare man who has not felt at some point his heart race as he beholds an attractive woman. Down through the ages, men have grappled with this experience and the deep yearning it often unleashes in the male soul.

How many ages, how many places, the human being has risen up to oppose what is organized, according to his own norms, as the contradiction between being human and being a woman. This is not an opposition that belongs to a particular moment in time; it is an opposition that, in a philosophical and rhetorical sense, has been repeated many times over thousands of years.

And with this contradiction, women have been oppressed, humiliated, held in slavery, violated, raped, alienated, annulled, and discarded, just like the female bearers of female attributes. We have long known that men can wage war over access to women, but we have spent much less time exploring the potentially integral role that women’s aesthetic and intrinsic value may play in men’s construction of the male social self.

Defining Misogamy

The term misogamy has a variety of meanings, stemming from the myth that some authors reject misogamy, much as do theologians within the Christian tradition. This rejection is explained in terms of the alleged etymology of ‘misogamy’ as ‘hatred of marriage’.

This etymology was itself a folk etymology based on the presumed literary commonplaces that (a) the prefix ‘mis’ in ‘misogamos’ meant ‘hatred’ and (b) ‘gamos’ meant ‘marriage’. Subsequent lexicographers usually rejected both these derivations, but they contributed to a variety of renderings of ‘misogamy’. Genitive inflections stress the real meaning of ‘misogamy’ as ‘unfit’ for marriage, rather than as ‘hatred’ for marriage.

In any case, the onomasticon is of no help in revealing the original meaning of ‘misogamy’. A new explanation suggested that ‘gamos’ instead of signifying ‘marriage’ stood for ‘special rights’, so that ‘misogamos’ meant ‘person who lacks such rights’.

According to this explanation, ‘misogamos’ was applied to a person, whether man or woman, who was unable to enjoy what might be called the standard benefits of marriage. The opposite of ‘misogamos’ was ‘polygamos’, which was applied primarily to women who enjoyed excessive privileges.

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