Valencian

Mig-home

The Spanish translation of the Valencian expression mig-home is half a man, a way to call lesbians that comes from the yokel psycho-biological determinism, through which this relationship is established “if she likes women is that she is like a man”, and even more, “if she does things of men is that he likes women”. This expression is found in a text of the Father Gadea of 1891 in which he speaks about one mig-home girl who lived in Balones (Alicante) in 1850, in the following terms:

“Una chicota homenenca, que de la afisió tan gran que sempre ha tengut a fer totes les faenes dels homens li tragueren mich-home” “li digué a sa mare: Mare, fásam uns sarahuells”

Which translated into the English language would be:

“A manly girl, that due the fond of to do all the tasks of men she was called half a man” “He said to his mother: Mother, make me a trousers”

In addition, and as Gadea says, the mig-home and her sisters feel aversion towards men, and they declared it thus:

“May s ́ham volgut casar en nengún perro de home, per més que mos haveren vengut cagant dobletes d’or, perque tots son un hato de gosos malfaeners”.

That we could translate as:

“We have never wanted to marry any dog man, even if they had been shitting gold doubloons because they are all a bunch of bad-working bums”.

We do not know the true story of the Balones sisters, from their words we can only understand a negative experience in relation to men, which is not strange at the time as they treated women. If the protagonist was in charge of the “masculine” works, it was perhaps due to the absence of the father, however, she will go down in history as the lesbian mig-home of Balones.

To insult gay people or any man, in Valencian there is the analogous expression “ mitjanena “which translated into the English language is” half a girl “.