Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/205

 An example of homosexualism in a greatnaval milieu occurred in the summer of 1908, at Brest, France; with a grave scandal, caused by the rape of a voung sailor one night by a drunken-ship-master, in the same caserne, who also forcibly outraged (the same night) two other young sailors, in the same barracks. A series of homosexual "rivettes" (cliques) were disclosed; and matters were kept with difficulty from wider notice. The affair was made more agitating because of the confusion in it of the identity of the amorous patron-pilote responsible, between whom and a certain other officer a remarkable likeness unluckily existed; leading to a violent but rather comic rectification.

Something of the influence elemental to sailor-homosexuality is admirably expressed in the novels of "Pierre Loti", already referred to; the authour being a captain in the French marine. "My Brother Yves", for instance, is manifestly uranistic, the passional affection for young Yves on the part of the narrator going beyond mere friendship; a strong note of sexual relationship at times sounded in the tale.

The army-environment does not so shut in the soldier from general external influences, and from contact with women. Yet the soldier, whether a general or of the file, in numberless examples is instinctively indifferent toward feminine beauty. Day-by-day comradeship, the night-life of an army-corps, in peace or war, are pervaded with a vague similisexual ambient. It would seem that, being himself so robustly male, there is no place in a soldier's heart, or sexual impulse, for anything not vehemently manly. Here advances the theory of the Uranian as a super-virile, not sub-virile, sex.