Violent Crimes:
Uraniads
of Degraded
Lives.
In the lower levels of uraniadism, the thief, the highwayman in petticoats, even the female apache is encountered. A small group of such amazonian prostitutes, all of the cult of Sappho, quite tolerably "terrorized" a whole street in one of the eccentric quarters of Paris, not long ago. They knocked down men and women at night; they plundered, stabbed, used revolvers, undertook burglaries, and committed homicidal attacks of serious consequences. In the lower levels of uraniadism, outbreaks of jealousy or of revenge elicit such assaults and murders. In the demi-mondaine atmosphere these affairs come to notice. A few days before these lines are written, a Parisian prostitute, not at all "amazonian" or unfeminine in any external, stabbed another of her class in the brothel where they lived, dangerously wounding her victim. Interrogated by the police-judge, she answered with angry pride—"I wanted to kill her. I was not going to allow her to belong to any other girl! She was mine—I found her a traitress to our love!" The would-be murderess added intimate details of a physical and psychological clarity. A few months ago a similar crime had the same sexual motive. A boulevard cocotte of much beauty and elegance of dress, walked up to a "rival" in the street, and threw the classic vitriol into her face, disfiguring it forever. "She was my wife", was the excuse to the police. "I won't have her running around all the time with other women." A prostitute put a knife into the back of another of the same profession … "She said she was tired of men for good and all. I found she lied to me … I loved her … She had a man with her this morning … She was better than any man—she could make love a lot better." As a rule, however, the uraniad does not object to the "relations" of her intersexual partner when they are with men. It is only in proportion to their, occurring with "other women," with other
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