Cercle Hermaphroditos

There, male sex workers would solicit men under an effeminate persona.

[citation needed] In a time when cross dressing was socially unacceptable and a punishable crime, places like Paresis Hall provided a place where self-described "instinctive female-impersonators," androgynes, queens, fairies, or Uranians could gather and feel more free to express themselves and socialize with similar people.

[2][3] These were Victorian era and Edwardian era words – with their own nuances of meaning – for people who were born male, felt they were at least partly women in mind or spirit, and preferred having sex with men; people who today might call themselves transgender women, non-binary people, or feminine gay men, in the language of today's LGBT communities.

[4][5][6] The nature of Paresis Hall during this period is known to historians today from a variety of sources.

[7] However, the Cercle Hermaphroditos is more apocryphal, known chiefly from the autobiography of an "instinctive female-impersonator," Jennie June, who provides the main surviving description of it.