femophobia

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noun

Fear or disavowal of one's own feminine qualities.

Scrabble 22

Meanings

nounfemophobia (uncountable)
  1. uncountableFear or disavowal of one's own feminine qualities.

    As Stephen Ducat explains, homophobia has its roots in femophobia, or men's fear of their own femininity.

    2012, Jackson Katz, Leading Men: Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood, →ISBN
    3 more examples

    In truth, my client couldn't afford to pay for their dinner at the fancy restaurant his date had suggested, but in his attempt to overcome his own "femophobia," he ended up paying for them both, feeling put out, and not seeing the guy again.

    2008, Keith W. Swain, Dynamic Duos

    In contrast, pro-feminist politics is built on a male alliance with women in addressing misogyny, sexism, homophobia and femophobia, with the additional requirement for men to engage in some reflexivity about their complicity in an oppressive gender order.

    2008, B. Lingard, W. Martino, M. Mills, Boys and Schooling: Beyond Structural Reform, →ISBN, page 3

    Such misinterpretation may inadvertently condone homophobia, xenophobia, and/or femophobia by implying that there is a prescribed set of attitudes, behaviors, emotions, and actions that belong to normal (ie aggressive) boys.

    2011, K Sciurba, Reading and seeing themselves: Boys of color and textual (non-) connection
  2. uncountableFear or avoidance of meaningful relationships with women.

    Their foremost expressions of love were for young boys and prostitutes (Hunt, 1959:27). There was a transitoriness in the Greek male's relationships with women, one that has been called femophobia (Whitehurst, 1971:3).

    1980, Robert N. Whitehurst, Gerald V. Booth, The Sexes: Changing Relationships in a Pluralistic Society, page 4
    2 more examples

    Since Freud's 1910 book on Leonardo da Vinci's sexuality, art history has not let up on artists' homosexual proclivities, as if art making was a form of parturition and birth-giving, the artist not just inspired (impregnated) by the studio muse but incorporating her femininity to the degree that every man is feminine but some more so than others. There may never be an end to Van Gogh's severed ear lobe handed to a prostitute, to Cezanne's femophobia, or to Picasso's venereal infection.

    2002, Wayne Andersen, Picasso's Brothel, page 145

    We likely find repulsive such saints as St. Louis of Gonzaga, whose search for purity was indistinguishable from a pathological femophobia, and Mary Margaret Alacoque, whose spirit of adoration for God became a swooning incompetence; and we likely find attractive St. Francis, St. Paul, George Fox, and Walt Whitman.

    2009, Stuart Rosenbaum, Pragmatism and the Reflective Life, →ISBN, page 89
Cite this entry
APA

femophobia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/femophobia

MLA

“femophobia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/femophobia. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “femophobia,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/femophobia.

Source: femophobia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.