There are archaeologists and anthropologists that argue that the oldest European prehistoric cultures were matriarchal and that at some point around the Neolithic were replaced by tribes of nomadic shepherds that introduced a social organization of the patriarchal type. It would be then that the supreme goddesses were replaced in religious and mythological pantheons by male gods. Perhaps there we would have to place the origin of misogynist behavior, rejection or aversion for women, or the consideration that women are lower than intellectual and morally men, prejudice strongly rooted in societies over the centuries.
The words that designate that attitude in European modern languages are very subsequent. All of them come from the Hellenistic Greek Misogynía μισογυνία (from miso– μīσο- ‘hate’ + Gyné γυνή ‘woman’ + -ia). The term will translate into Latin in the Renaissance. The Italian misogyny It is documented since the end of the 16th century (in 1598). He Oxford English Dictionary Data Misogyny In 1656 and the Nouveau Petit Robert Misogynie In 1812. In German it is registered at least since 1789.
In Spanish the first document that gives an account of this voice is the National Dictionary or Great Classic Dictionary of the Spanish Language by RJ Domínguez, published in 1846, who defines it as “aversion to women.”
The Academy will not incorporate the article misogyny to his dictionary until the 1936 edition (“aversion or hate to women”), almost a century after Dominguez.
The respective adjectives usually advance dating (in addition, the texts that document its use are more numerous than those of the abstract noun, as was already happening in ancient Greek). For example, French Misogyne It is documented in 1559 (although it is uncommon before 1757) and English Misogynistin 1620. However, the Spanish misogynist It is much after the equivalent in those languages and even misogyny In Spanish, it was dated in 1882-83, in The throbbing questionby Emilia Pardo Bazán:
“Like ancient athletes, Zola makes a cleansing and honesty profession of customs, and boasts, like Flaubert, friendship to love, declaring himself somewhat misogynist or abhorrer of the beautiful sex, and disdaining Sainte-Beuve by attached to the skirts too much.”
For his part, Dominguez will not include the adjective misogynist In his dictionary (remember, 1846), but Zerolo will do it in his, in 1895, although exclusively in the male form, as well as other dictionaries of the nineteenth century. The Academy will proceed in the same way until the 1984 edition, in which it will incorporate the feminine form of the adjective, and indicate the preferential use of the male noun against the adjective. This grammatical observation aims to reflect the social reality that hatred towards women is essentially men’s thing.
Outside lexicography, the word misogyny begins to appear in the press in Spanish at the end of the 19th century, as can be read in Advertising (1883), in the New critical theater (1892), the monthly cultural magazine that the Countess of Pardo Bazán, and in other magazines. And the same goes for adjective misogynistwhose first testimony we have already seen that it is in The throbbing question (1882-83) by the same author.
In ancient Greek eths so much of misogyny as of misogynist They originally had a comic intention (they were used by Aristophanes to ridicule Euripides); They also had a sexual connotation (they referred to the men who rejected conventional sexual pleasures, that is, they did not want to maintain relationships with women because they preferred to maintain them with young people of the same sex). These values have been lost, because currently the same misogyny that misogynist They appear in basically sociological contexts or in social content texts, although until a few years ago it was possible to find some occasional example in which traces of that sexual connotation were left:
“The curiosity for true women made the generation before ours, which had only the literary topic about women, believed that the people of our time were largely misogyn; From the last return of the road. Memoirs).
#Words #history #Misoginia
