Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/455

 rivalries, ruptures and reconcilements. "Tout comme dies nous!" might the female concurrence exclaim. Women-prostitutes well understand what a rivalry in the profession the masculine concurrent has set up, to lessen receipts and patronage; low street-walker, prosperous woman-prostitute, or high-class kept-woman, she hates her male competitor as a mystery and abnormality, a sexual insult as well as a commercial rival. Both sexes of the underclass nevertheless are met in alliance; tolerating each other, even living together, for common profit. Many of these partnerships—immediately, dangerously criminal—are prolific in incidents where the Uranian is a helpless victim. The police of all large cities know well the disorders and crimes by this armed truce between the two prostitutions.

There is a large technical vocabalary [sic] for the different kinds, ages and methods of masculine prostitution, just as for the heterosexual sort. What is more this "dictionary of the trade" has become curiously international; many terms being much the same in all tongues, like the idiom of the sporting-world. However homosexual terminology, its slang included, inclines to follow French vocables. Thus an elderly male prostitute, or homosexual lover, is known as a "tante", especially if he act as the protector and agent for younger and more active catamites than himself. A handsome young man who is available is classed as a "jésus",—long a classic term: while a young boy is "un petit jésus". The German-spealdng countries much employ the general term "Pousserant" for such homosexuals. The present writer will not undertake to transcribe even a small fraction of the enormous lexicon of the slang of homosexualism: for even in an assortment, it would take many pages. The old Roman and Greek argot for every type and pratique was not larger nor more descriptive—which is saying much. In Carlier's valuable study "Les Deux