catamitism

Noun

catamitism (uncountable)

1. The practice of keeping catamites.
   • [T]he Viſcount de Turenne…Remonſtrated to Madam de Buillon, that this Prince having us’d his firſt Wife Ill, whom he had kick’d when with Child, of which ſhe dy’d, ‛twas expoſing her Daughter to the like treatment; that he was addicted to Wine and Women, Qualities not only unworthy a Perſon of his...1686: Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras and Ferrand Spence, The Hiſtory of the Life and Actions of that Great Captain of his Age the Viſcount de Turenne, page 312
   • Exhibitionists do not like to confess their venial sins — catamitism and group sex, yes, petty avarice and pettier maliciousness, no: the latter faults do not make for salable reading.1973, Roy Temple House, Ernst Erich Noth, Books Abroad, volume 47, number 3, page 574
2. (rare) The essence of being a catamite.
   • Effeminacy…may not have been the quality that gave catamitism its meaning; rather, catamitism…may have been the normative danger that qualified effeminacy as a threat to male heterosexual rule.1994, Michael Ryan, “Foucault’s Fallacy”, in Reconstructing Foucault: Essays in the Wake of the 80s, page 175