In these unions, according to the descriptions of Lombroso, very remarkable phenomena occur. A particular jargon arises with tender designations for this or that bodily beauty; a violent jealousy develops, and a newly united pair keep together as much as possible for fear of losing one another’s affection; the “friends” tread always in one another’s footsteps. This author rightly points out that the very numerous romances describing relations of this kind prove the diffusion of this vice in “high life.” Novels of this class are referred to by Mantegazza in his book, “Woman as Criminal and Prostitute.” He mentions: Diderot, “La Religieuse;” Balzac, “La Fille aux Yeux d’Or;” Gautier, “Mademoiselle de Maupin;” Feydeau, “Le Comtesse de Cholis;” Flaubert, “Salammbô;” Bélot, “Mademoiselle Giraud ma Femme;” Willbraud, “Fridolins Heimliche Ehe;” Graf Stadion, “Brick and Brack;” Sacher-Masoch, “Venus im Pelz.” Zola, also, in “Nana” and “La Curée,” and Butti in “L’Antona,” make some reference to this matter.
Sauval relates of the dissolute life at the court of the French king, Francis I, that the women learned also to play the part of men; a princess had a hermaphrodite maid-of-honor, and the court and all Paris gossiped about the Lesbian-loving ladies, whose husbands were delighted, since they were thus quite freed from jealousy, and prized their wives above all on this account. Such a mode of life was so pleasing to many ladies that they refused to marry, and refused also to allow their “friends” to marry.
Tribadism is very common among prostitutes. According to Parent-Duchatelet, tribadism begins only after prostitution has long been practised, between the twenty-fifth and the thirtieth year of life; generally there is a notable difference in age and also in beauty between the two women forming a tribadistic alliance, and as a rule the younger and prettier of the pair is the more passionately sensitive and the more constant. Parent-Duchatelet endeavours to explain the origin of tribadism by referring to the manner in which in brothels and reformatories the women are closely packed together, to the enforced abstinence from normal sexual intercourse (in prisons and reformatories), to the loathing for men sometimes felt by prostitutes, and to the opportunities for mutual observation of the most intimate nudities. Even women who at first object to it most vehemently, commonly give way to this vice after eighteen or twenty months.
Among 103 prostitutes examined by Lombroso, he found tribadism to be practiced by five. He considers the principal cause of tribadism to be in the lascivious search for new and unnatural pleasures, and quotes in illustration the characteristic remark of Catharine II, herself a tribadist, “Why did not nature endow us with a sixth sense?” Female criminals who seduce others to the practice of tribadism have usually themselves acquired the vice during a long term of imprisonment—it is, in fact, the long-sentence criminals, women with a congenital inclination toward crime, that incline also to unnatural vice. The influence of environment is, according to Lombroso, indicated by the fact that the most confirmed criminals, in prisons for women, corrupt in this manner so many of the inmates who are merely “criminaloids,” and corrupt even the wardresses. Further, he is led to conclude, the confinement in close association of so many extremely sensual and prostituted women, leads to the origin of a kind of ferment of new lascivious desires, and causes an increase of one form of degeneracy by means of another. Prostitutes often see one another naked, sleep two or three together in the same bed; similar things occur in boarding-schools. In asylums also we may observe that the admission of a tribadist will result in the infection of all the inmates with this vice.
According to Moll’s estimate, 25 per cent. of the prostitutes of Berlin practice tribadism. According to the experience of this author, in cases in which tribadists live in concubinage, one of them is always a prostitute; the active and the passive rôle are always played by the same respective members of the alliance; the active member is called “papa” or “uncle,” is usually a prostitute, and, like the man in the married state, possesses great comparative freedom in sexual matters, whilst the passive member, the “mother,” is not allowed to form any sexual relations outside the concubinage.
According to Ricardi, many frigid prostitutes practice with pleasure clitoris-masturbation, cunnilictio, and, especially, sapphism, preferring these perversions to the normal sexual act. Moreover, among prostitutes and female criminals there is no lack of lovers of martyrization, of flagellation, even to the drawing of blood, of tyrannical treatment, and of the initiation of children into the mysteries of sex.
[For a detailed account of Sadism and Masochism, see von Krafft-Ebing’s “Psychopathia Sexualis.” These particular perversions, common in men, are rare in women; hence but passing allusion is made to them in the present work.]
Lombroso records on account of its rarity a case of masochism observed by him in a woman thirty-five years of age, who liked being whipped.
Moraglia reports a remarkable instance of sexual perversion in a girl of eighteen, who preferred to coitus, masturbation associated with the stimulating influence of the odor of male urine; this peculiar form of irritability was so powerful as to drive the girl to masturbation in public urinals, notwithstanding the risk of arrest, which indeed often occurred.
According to Carlier, there are four or five brothels in Paris which are not infrequently visited by rich ladies in search of tribadistic enjoyments, and ladies of “high life” assemble there for communal orgies; it is noteworthy that prostitutes surrender themselves for such purposes to these women who are outside their own circle with great reluctance, and only for a very high fee.