Here’s your word of the day: philogyny.  

Via Wikipedia:

“Philogyny is fondness, love, or admiration towards women. Its antonym is misogyny."

I’m going to argue here that philogyny is the most under-used word in the English language and I’m going to see if you agree with me by the end. Even Microsoft Word as I type this, places a forbidding squiggly line beneath it because their dictionary is too narrow to include it. How often do you see the word misogyny or misogynist in print? A quick Google search may not pass for science but it can strongly illustrate a point. As of this posting, 4-23-2014, philogyny (there goes that squiggly line again) pulls up just under 29,000 results. The first two pages include only dictionary definitions except for:

-A website about a guy named "Phil"

and

 -A forum post on a film site by this author five years ago on the subject I’m bringing up now.

Misogyny pulls up 1,250,000 results and several just written news stories about misogyny within the first few results. What does it say about our culture that misogyny is an ever-present term for hatred and disrespect towards women while simply typing its antonym: philogyny (squiggly line) in an obscure place on the internet merits google relevancy five years later. We, and I’m still looking at you Microsoft, don’t even know that the word exists.

What do you call someone who has admiration, respect, genuine love for women?

A feminist?

Maybe, but that’s a political word. It denotes advocacy. Are most self-described philogynists (I don’t know any other self-describers yet but I’m certain that they’re out there) also feminists? Probably. It’s hard to love and respect women while not wishing to advocate for their rights but we should draw a line here. Feminism carries its own cultural weight and its own responsibility. A feminist is someone who is willing to stand for, work for or vote for gender equality. When using it as a stand-in for philogyny (sq.line) we lessen its weight politically. To call yourself a feminist should clearly identify you as someone who believes strongly in achieving full equality among the genders and who would support measures that bring us closer towards that goal. You need not be a feminist to be a philogynist (s.l.) and you don't actually need to be a philogynist to consider yourself a feminist. You could just be someone who’s passionate about fairness.

Can we just say that we ‘love women’?

That expression has long been co-opted by men eager to over-proclaim their own heterosexuality (motives for doing so vary widely, and would be better discussed in another space). It’s overused so much that it could never serve our purpose. The key words in the above definition are ‘fondness’ and ‘admiration’. A true philogynist appreciates women for far more than their sexual charms. A true philogynist need not even be a man. Philogyny is simply a sincere appreciation for women.  There is no better way to say that you respect and admire women and womankind.

Did I convince anyone? If you’re with me at all, please use this word tomorrow. If you’re really with me, use it with pride. Let’s use it until Google and Microsoft take notice. Let’s use it until it starts to pop up as a counter argument in some of the daily stories about misogyny. Let’s use it until we forget that for a long time, we never used it at all.