It’s not-so-nice to know that the Andrew Tates of this world were preceded by a long legacy of women haters. Take one Joseph Swetnam (d. 1621), an Englishman who is famous for the first extant fencing manual to be written in English but also a super-popular pamphlet called “The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women,” that put down women with such contempt that it prompted at least three rebuttal pamphlets written by women, as well as a play that criticized Swetnam’s writings.
Honestly, what Swetnam wrote about women in the early 17th century had been said and printed before (eg Chaucer, intro to the Wife of Bath’s tale), and by far wittier people. But here’s a quote just to give you the flavor of it: “most of them (women) degenerate from the use they were framed (which was, according to Swetnam, to serve men) unto by leading a proud, lazy, and idle life, to the great hindrance of their poor Husbands”.
Swetnam had been married, and although we don’t know details about his wife, we feel extremely sorry for her.
The rebuttal play, whose 1620 cover is shown here, was called “Swetnam the Woman-Hater,” and, fascinatingly, may well have been written by a man. In the play, Swetnam ends up being put on trial by women for the slanderous writings he had composed about the female sex. As the play frames it, Swetnam has had to leave Britain because the public turned against his vitriolic attack on women. So he ends up in Sicily, where he gives himself the name “Misogynos,” and that was likely how the term “misogynist” entered the English language.
Sources: Https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/WesternCiv102/SwetnamArraignment1615.htm
