The Sins of the Cities of the Plain/Tribadism
Tribadism
Dogging the heels of sodomy walks tribadism, a vice which every man in his heart looks on with kindly eyes. This sister vice appears to have existed from all ages. It is at least as old as sodomy, and still lives, aye, flourishes amongst the supposed modest maidens of our day. In all civilized Europe it exists among single women who have been debarred from men, generally in a narrowed sense, rarely taking other form than mutual frigging. But amongst some prostitutes of the upper class, and a few matrons of educated vicious tastes, it flourishes, the Frenchwomen bearing the palm. In the latter case gamahuching comes into free play; one woman loves another as jealously as ever a man could, and we have known instances in England of great unhappiness ensuing from one tribade giving up her inamorata for another man or woman; and in one memorable instance the forlorn one taking a revenge that very nearly involved the ruin of both.
The Count de Grammont mentions an instance in his memoirs of Miss Hobart, a maid of honour at the court of Charles the Second, being forbidden the royal presence for endeavouring to violate another maid of honour.
It is not clear how she was doing it, and it certainly is a mystery why that debauched monarch should have been so severe upon her.
No one can read Juvenal without being convinced that in Martial's time tribadism flourished in Rome. His descriptions of the feasts of the Bona Dea leave no doubt of it.
If he did leave any doubt Martial clears it up by the pointedness of some of his epigrams. It flourished even to women with enlarged clitorises (hermaphrodites) having boys.
This is perfectly rational. Sodomy and tribadism go hand in hand. Where one reigns the other flourishes, and in their development they are nearly identical vices. Boys debarred from women frig themselves, frig each other, and then have each other, and are fortunate if they do not grow up to be sodomites. Girls debarred from men do the same with their own sex, and bloom into perfect tribades by a gamahuche.
This is one end of the stick; the other is as when a man, having plunged into all the possible debauchery with females, at last resorts to sodomy, or where a woman, say a prostitute of good position with many friends, gets satiated and tired when she has exhausted every letch of the male fancy; then she turns to her own sex for a new and piquant pleasure.
It is not long since we were sitting in a café in the Haymarket when a Frenchwoman of about thirty walked across the room to a young English girl and offered her ten shillings to be allowed to kiss her cunt.
The End