the other half of mankind but because, since I was forced by duty or by taste to live like a man, to carry alone the heavy burden of life during my childhood, it would have been preferable to have had at least the privileges if not the appearances.Apart from her marriage and her often flirtatious friendships, Rachilde did engage in love affairs. She had an early affair with a man named Léo d' Orfer, to whom she dedicated Monsieur Venus. Just prior to writing Monsieur Venus, she had an fruitless passion for Catulle Mendès. Though she would later deny even a slight attraction to women, Rachilde also had a relationship with the enigmatic Gisèle d'Estoc, a bisexual woman of some notoriety at the time. It was an affair that unfolded in playful secrecy and ended with tremendous drama in 1887. It is unclear just what her thoughts were about sexual pleasure and sensual attraction. Her friend and admirer Maurice Barrès quotes her as suggesting that God erred in combining love and sensuality, that sensual pleasure is a beast which should be sacrificed: "Dieu aurait dû créer l'amour d'un côté et les sens de l'autre. L'amour véritable ne se devrait composer que d'amitié chaude. Sacrifions les sens, la bête." In her work, while she certainly portrays sexual pleasure, she also portrays sexual desire as something powerful, beyond control, and perhaps frightening. Her own sexuality and gender may have been conflicted, but she was not confused in her support of others. In the public sphere, she wrote articles in defense of homosexual love, albeit sometimes with mixed results. She counted among her friends openly lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who found her an enchanting enigma and a tender friend. She was well known at the time for her close friendships with gay men, including such prominent and notorious dandies as Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jean Lorrain, and Oscar Wilde, who brought his lover Lord Alfred Douglas to her salons. She is known to have appeared at events with Lorrain while he was wearing female disguise. She offered shelter and support to tormented poet Paul Verlaine. She may not have been settled with herself, but she did not let it make her unsettled with those she cared about. Writing The pseudonym Rachilde gave young Marguerite some initial anonymity and a measure of gender ambiguity, but it was more than that. When her identity was discovered,