Philogyny in Print!
And counting down the days to the Writers Retreats!
Hello Fellow Philogynist Friends!
Philogyny in Print! Putting the word for the love and admiration for women and girls into the world!!!
As many of you know, I've been working on my newest manuscript, The Philogyny Project for the past four years and it's almost finished! I'm so grateful to my dear friend, the wonderful editor and founder of The Intentional Muse newspaper, Kayli Mylis for publishing my piece on philogyny and so thrilled to be featured in The Intentional Muse!
The full article is pasted below, if you’d like to read it!
Last summer I was so fortunate to meet the creatively talented and luminous artist & writer, Kayli Mylius when she came on my Writing The Côte d'Azur walking tour through Airbnb experiences. Since then we've stayed connected and she's founded a fabulous monthly newspaper, The Intentional Muse which has now just published my piece on Philogyny!! I'm so grateful to my dear friend, Kayli and so thrilled about her newspaper!
I often say to the people who come on my experiences that we are meant to meet at exactly that moment. And so it was with Kayli and her partner. It's this serendipity that isn't exclusive to the Côte d'Azur, or all of France (though there is some magic here) but to all of traveling when we are open and curious about what's possible.
They are currently looking for writers particularly from the Global Majority! The upcoming issues are Gather (July) and Glow (August). So if this is calling to you and you have an idea for a piece send it along her way, see below for details. The Intentional Muse is always looking for writers as well as illustrators, photographers, poets, etc. Kayli’s goal is to create a platform for various mediums, and she’s having so much fun working with other creatives! If interested in contributing, they can send an email to me at: hello@kaylimylius.com
Also if you’d love to subscribe for The Intentional Muse, they’re giving my community a code for half off their first paper! Just use code: PHILOGYNY to receive your first issue for $5.55. Subscribe using this link: https://www.theintentionalmuse.com/shop/p/theintentionalmuse
It is so powerful to not only see my words in print but also my dear brilliant friend, Artist Claudia Euzet-Hoyau gorgeous paintings published in the paper as well!
As the antonym of misogyny, I believe this word PHILOGYNY could combat the rampant intolerance and hate we bare witness to every day — reading the news, living our lives on the internet, going about our day-to-day perceived as the currently red-flagged word "women."
My sincerest wish is that you begin thinking about what it could mean to live in a society that centers women and pay attention to where you see the love and admiration for women and girls in your life.
xox,
Augustine
P.S. I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence if I didn’t also mention that there is still one fabulous private room and a shared room available at The Writers Retreat in the Côte d’Azur. The deets again: Saturday May 31-Saturday June 7. We are a phenomenal group of five wonderful and inspiring writers, everything included, all meals, massages, fabulous photo shoot, shamanic journey, and one on one time with me to focus on your brilliant work, come and don’t worry about a thing. Can you pull it together in a short amount of time? Yes, I believe people can do amazing things when they really want something.
Want to get out of the States and give yourself a break and joy and healing? There is also my fantastic retreat with Tillie Eze in Saint Paul de Vence, June 26-July 2, which is such a one of a kind retreat, honestly, I get all the recommendations from other retreats because I’m in the business now and there is seriously nothing else like what we are offering.
The best way to come on the retreats or to work together is to book your free consult with me here!
Philogyny Has a Place Here
published by The Intentional Muse
I’m waiting for Claudia above the Cannes train station, this is the pickup spot. The mural of Marilyn Monroe looks back at me. It’s the end of July and beautifully sunny and hot, but not yet the sweltering heat of August. Claudia arrives in a little rented car with a big smile on her face. We both have an affinity for red lipstick. The first thing she says to me is “Kamala” with a fist bump. We are riding high as we drive up the windy roads to the hill top of Mougins. Kamala Harris has just announced that she will run for President, there is an effervescent sense of hope that I haven’t felt for years.
Now, in January of 2025, I’m making a firm-gripped effort to hold onto that hope, remember that I had it, and that it will come again.
Claudia and I met two years ago at a talk I gave on the “Cost of Maternity” for UNESCO and Femmes Monde, a non-profit association for feminists in France. My fifteen minutes as one of the lecturers focused on the Black maternal health crisis in the United States. The statistics are dire: Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, a statistic that most of the French women in the room do not know; some are shocked, and some are not surprised at all. I pass around photo-quality images of Michelle Browder’s statues of The Mothers of Gynecology- Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy, located in Montgomery, Alabama. The statues stand fifteen feet tall and are made out of discarded metal medical objects. They represent the three enslaved women from the 1840s who endured several gynecological procedures without anesthesia, and it is only in 2015 that we begin to discover their names and honor them.
As Claudia is a feminist and an artist, we instantly become friends. We are joyous as Claudia drives us to the first-ever female artists museum in Europe. FAMM, as it is appropriately called, stands for Femmes Artistes Musee Mougins. From the moment we walk in and see all the black and white photographs of women artists greeting us and the words “Always More” in neon cursive by Dame Tracy Emin, we are thrilled to be in a museum with work only done by women artists. This is a rare feeling, and one that can't be dismissed. How often are we in museums where women are the majority? Sometimes, as I've done with the LACMA museum in Los Angeles, I count how many women are represented. It's never enough.
Here, in this three-story museum, that is not a problem, we look at work by Nan Goldin, Nicole Farhi, Carrie Mae Weems, Frida Khalo, Stacey Gillian Abe, Joan Semmel, Dorothea Tanning and Elizabeth Colomba, and so many others. I discover that Monet's stepdaughter and then also later his daughter-in-law, Blanche Hoschedé Monet, was also a painter in her own right. How did I never know this? How did I never know that she also did paintings of Giverny? And that most likely, she helped her stepfather, Claude Monet, paint Grandes Décorations. Forty-two years of growing up knowing almost all of Monet’s paintings and never knowing that his stepdaughter was also a painter.
The FAMM is a private museum owned by an art collector named Christian Levitt, who owns over 500 works of art by women. Because women’s art is notoriously underpriced, it’s a good investment. We’ve just seen one hundred of these pieces, but the collection will rotate every few months so that each time we return, there is the possibility of seeing something new.
After the museum, Claudia and I walk to a charming restaurant down the street that she knows. In Mougins, Picasso’s giant head watches the town. The sculpture is taller than us, we sit at a cafe where we don’t see it. Where he doesn’t see us. Mougins is where Picasso spent the last twelve years of his life, and his influence is everywhere.
Claudia and I discuss her art, talk about our plans for the summer and the fall, enjoy the delicious meal, and I tell her of my growing impatience with my project. I’ve started screen recording videos of changing the Wikipedia entry so that I have proof of what it was and what it will hopefully become. I want to share these on social media. A dear friend whose opinion I trust has told me not to tell anyone about The Philogyny Project for fear that someone will steal my idea, and every time she says this, I feel discomfort in my bones.
“But,” I tell Claudia, “I want them to steal it, that is the whole point. By its very nature, the word philogyny suggests a sisterhood, a camaraderie, a community of those who work to instill love. I hope it becomes viral, that it becomes part of the vernacular, and that doesn't happen if you hide it away like a precious treasure or wait till the book is published. Plus, no one can do it like me, but I can’t do all of it, nor would I want to.”
“What if you make it a collective? A zoom meeting every month of women and invite them to change the Wikipedia entry with you?”
“Yes, a collective, of course! Like Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party! That is exactly the idea! That is exactly what I should do! Leave it to you to think of this.”
After this epiphany that I can’t at all take credit for, I began to have Philogyny Parties monthly on Zoom, and we began to make changes.
What is Philogyny?
Philogyny, the antonym of misogyny, means, quite simply, the love and admiration for women and girls.
I believe this word could combat the rampant intolerance that we bare witness to every day — reading the news, living our lives on the internet, going about our day-to-day in female bodies as women around the globe share the fear of death, rape, abuse, and unjust laws simply because of the body parts they came into the world with.
Being a woman is no sin. Having sex and seeking pleasure is no sin. Gossip is no sin, but it has been construed over centuries of literature, of Bibles, in so-called spiritual texts to be seen as such.
The Wikipedia entry for “misogyny” is sixty pages long. The entry for philogyny is just a few lines. After discovering this, I began hosting Philogyny Parties, where women got together and created profiles as Wikipedia editors to add to the entry of Philogyny. My idea was to mimic the entry of misogyny in order to construct the history of a word that few people know but is exemplified in the prose of Audre Lorde, bell hooks, June Jordan. A picture that society was given all the way back in Sappho’s time, the sapphic Greek poet whom we get the word “lesbian.”
So, during International Women's Month, and every day forward, I celebrate the women who have come before us. The Black poet lesbian warriors, the activists, the feminists who have profoundly changed the way we view our capacities for change and joy and grace as women.
I hope you do, too, and start by using the word philogyny. My sincerest wish is that you begin thinking about what it could mean to live in a society that centers around women and ponder where you notice the love and admiration of women in your life.
There is a multitude of proof that a society that values and respects women is a thriving society. In a society that values women, both men and women succeed economically, spiritually, and physically. The time is now to turn our focus to the positive and to pay attention to what we pay attention to. As for me, I’ll be paying attention to love.
Augustine Recs:
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar
https://augustineblaisdell.com
Super Congrats, Augie!!!!💕🙏🏼🎉✨