also Petit Jésus (little Jesus) if the person is younger. At the beginning of the 19th century, the use of these expressions is recorded to name young men who practice male prostitution and/or robbery, attracting men of good standing with their charms, to pick them clean or take them to a trap where their Tantes or Chanteurs (pimps) did the rest.
We have also found some authors who define it simply as young effeminate or young man with a sugar daddy. Towards the end of the century and in prison jargon, Jésus became synonymous with passive (bottom) homosexual, but it began to disappear throughout the 20th century.
The sacrilegious use of the name of the “son of god” is evident. In this respect, we find allusions that could have popularized these expressions in the atheist environment of the French Revolution and since the end of the 18th century (Sade, Denis Diderot). They related to the “inconvenient” relationship between Jesus and Saint John or some apostle.
This popular and cantankerous use would have to do with the image of the newborn, kind, gentle, beautiful, innocent and tender “Jesus child” of the churches. That was the image that those newborns in the life of the street had to embody to fulfill their criminal purposes.
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