Ameinian
For a long time, I've always found some kind of linguistic injustice towards men, specially referring to homosexual men and women.
You see, the word commonly used to denominate an homosexual woman is the word lesbian which I personally think it’s a beautiful word, it just sounds beautiful but also has this cool etymological background, the word comes for the inhabitants of the island of lesbos in Greece where the most famous homoerotic poetess lived thousands of years ago (now this sounds great for us occidentals... not sure how the people over at lesbos in Greece right now feel about it). Meanwhile men are stuck with the word Gay which, not only lacks the thousands of years in history, it is also used on girls.
The word lesbian is never used to refer to guy relationships is it? So I've been searching for a while looking for a word that would match the equivalent of "lesbian" unfortunately poets who wrote male to male relationships in ancient Greece are guys like Theognis and Anacreon who self-identify are pederasts... so taking their names would not really help the ameinian community, since pedophilia is even further away from being socially accepted.
However other more famous poet touched the subject, Homer in the Iliad mentions the myth of Ganymede (god I love that name) The young boy who was kidnapped by Zeus to make him his servant (because he was so darn beautiful) yet again... old Zeus and a young boy do give some remembrance of pederasty again. So I kept searching... along the way, I remembered narcissus that was in love with himself... now of course we couldn't call ameinian men narcissistic of course. Yet however reviewing the myth, there is this little known part.
Many were those who fell in love with the beautiful lad. Even when he was a baby his nurses swooned over him, and by his sixteenth year every man and woman in town pined for him. None of them however were good enough for him, he felt. One day his neighbor, Ameinias, could stand it no longer, and told Narcissus how much he longed for him, and asked him to be his lover. Narcissus said nothing, but merely sent a servant to deliver a dagger in response. Ameinias understood the meaning of the ' gift,' and with that dagger took his own life, calling down the wrath of the gods upon Narcissus, and cursing him to ever meet in love the same disdain that he had for others.
While most of the myth centers on the conflict of narcissus an echo, Ameinias seemed to have been somehow obscured. Ameinias' tragedy is... well... really ameinian... maybe even corny. BUT it really says much more than the word generic word: Gay... Ameinias could be the perfect word. Except for the similarity with the word Anemia which is a disease, however its use on people would not be Amienic but Ameinian - if there wasn't an already established structure for the English language that probably regulates this stuff -.
So yes... I spent my day today trying to make up a word. Imagine what I can do tomorrow…
(8 days late)
