(56.)
Gynophobia is "the fear of or contempt for women." THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 562 (4th Edition, 2000).
This definition, along with the various other conceptions of the Maenad (the mother as its other half and the feminization of men) embodies Carlyle's gynophobia in its comprehensiveness.
In his allusion to the Amazon, he is also subscribing to classical gynophobia, since this group of female warriors threatened patriarchy.
In addition, the entire perception of the angel held so many disturbing implications for the males that gynophobia existed in Victorian England, which Carlyle manifests in his terminology.
In his "Outlaws: Gay Men in Feminism," Craig Owens argues that "the myth of homosexual gynophobia remains perhaps the most powerful obstacle to a political alliance of feminists and gay men" (219).
Given the role of male narcissism in the contemporary cultural construction of gay sexuality, and the efforts by some gay men to banish "effeminacy" from the construction of gay identity, as well as the way Strictly Ballroom and Muriel's Wedding both feature men with a narcissistic interest in their athletic bodies, there is an increased likelihood that some gay spectators will over-identify with these men, both of whom express a certain gynophobia in their initial responses to the lead female characters.
One strategy for accomplishing this is to renounce sexuality entirely, a project facilitated by a carefully cultivated
gynophobia with its negative obsessive focus on the female body and its reproductive functions.
gynophobia. Exercising the license given ekphrasis to do what it will
Iconophobia and
gynophobia converge in Stuart love tragedies that undergo analysis in terms of a chiasmic interchange between the figuring of beautiful idols as women and beautiful women as idols.
When women are treated in these ways we call it
gynophobia and we resist it.