Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/542

, rather refined, gentle inmate, the sexual plaything of the sisterhood, complaisant to their satisfactions. Or in contrast, some highly masculine Uraniad, her body and disposition rough and man-like, is preferred for the same offices. There is much feminine pederasty as to young gilds—even children—among respectable or depraved Uraniads, just as in the masculine world of intersex; though not of as classic background.

The Uraniad, even if degenerate or vicious, is not as a class initiative in crimes of deliberation, or of audaciously "intellectual" kind. But the Uraniad now and then is met as aggressively a blackmailer. Sometimes some timid fellow-Uraniad, sometimes an Uranian, sometimes an wholly heterosexual party is attacked; into whose secrets she has been introduced. This sort of enterprise she usually conducts by letters. The feminosexual woman of high society is herself thus victimized, when her habits are suspected or her tastes noted. In all cities, such affairs occur, in higher or lower life. A great scandal of the sort came in France, several years ago. Another such affair once darkened the life of a reigning sovereign for awhile, almost with publicity. A recent example of the Uraniad as a victim of attempt at blackmail occurred in an aristocratic circle in an Austrian city. The former intimate friend and employée of a woman of rank and wealth, widowed but still youthful and beautiful, threatened to publish a romantic novel, giving a scandalous history of her victim's real "psychic" life; involving especially certain relations with a female friend of equally prominent social notoriety. The matter came to a question of whether the victim would pay the authour a handsome sum to suppress the book; or if she would refuse. The affair was brought before the criminal authorities, and the blackmailer—but not the book—was suppressed.