A vibrant homosocial sub-culture with its own language, customs, and codes already existed before the intervention of the medical-legal discourse in the 1920s and 1930s. Such discourse ignored the intricacies of this culture and considered homosexuality as biologically determined and clinically curable. However, there was a dynamic tension between the notions of self assumed by those who occupied the public urban spaces discussed in chapters one and two and the doctors and criminologists who attempted to control and cure those they viewed as diseased members of Brazilian society.