meaning - Is “misogyny” only applicable to men? What is the antonym of misogyny?

I came across the following sentence in New Yorker’s (February 23) article, titled “In Defense of Liz Lemon”:

“She behaves as if Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is her daddy. She doesn’t trust her own judgment, she’s bad at her job, and there’s something awfully misogynist about all this! Liz Lemon is pathetic.”

When I checked the word, misogynist on dictionaries at hand, OALD defines it as “a man who hates women.” CALD likewise defines it as “a man who hates women or believes that men are much better than women.”

But here it is used for Liz Lemon, a woman. Is misogynist used only for male as both OALD and CALD define, or for both sexes?

According to www. memidex com, misogyny derived from modern Latin, misogamia from Greek “misein” (to hate) + “gamos” (marriage). Then, what is Latin equivalent antonym to misogamy?

Answer

I'm afraid your etymology is incorrect: it comes from misein "to hate" and gunê "woman".

In your quotation, it is not Liz who's misogynist, but the story in which she figures, "all this": the script writer portrays her as a stupid woman, and the article is telling us that, by so doing, he is disparaging women in general, in an anti-feminist manner. It would have been less confusing if the writer of the article had removed the word "and" while adding a full stop after "her job": then it would have been clear that "misogynist" refers to all the preceding.

The antonym would probably be someone who likes women. That would be a philogynist (from phileô, "to like"), but I don't think that word exists. There is also a philanderer, a man who likes to court women a little too much. This word is a bit strange, since ander- comes from anêr, "man".

A man-hater would be a misandrist perhaps, or a misanderer—but I don't think those words exist either, or at least they are rarely used: it is just not an historically significant concept.