no less a "masked" murderer, robber or rapist. just that he "has not gotten around to it" yet.

It is

Of more recent years, another complication has enter- ed the field. Although by no means the first individua to undergo a complete de-sexifying operation, Christine (formerly George) Jorgenson was assuredly the best pub- licized case of this sort in medical annals. Her story awakened the frustrated ambitions of a great many other would be "Christines" all over the world, who have clam- ored for the "Christine" operation. The investigation of many of these individuals, as reported by Harry Ben- jamin (4) reveals that they are neither homosexuals in the usual sense of the word, nor Eonists (transvestites). They are persons who regard themselves as "women" who are, unfortunately, forced to live their female lives in male bodies. They claim to have the "soul" of a woman, to "feel" as a woman, and the greatest ambition of their lives is to "be" a woman. Since this state of "being" a woman principally revolves around the genitals, as far as these persons are concerned, it is their great desire to have the male organs removed and plastic sur- gery done to construct a "vagina" and then to be allowed to go through the rest of their lives as "women" and to be accepted by society as such.

The presence of these three types among us, namely the admitted homosexuals, the transvestites, and the third type, for which Benjamin has used the term TRANS- SEXUAL, leads to a great deal of confusion in termin- ology and in the understanding of the etiology, treat- ment and prognosis of individual cases. Unfortunately, since all three types of individuals may have one thing in common, namely the desire to wear feminine attire, it has been the fasion to proceed on the theory that "all IS gold that glitters," and class them all under the same head. (The author is referring here, of course, only to those homosexuals who do cross-dress, while realizing that by far the greatest number of homosex- ual individuals have no desires of this type at all and may actually be repulsed by the idea. This paper, therefore, does not concern itself with the problems of the origin of the homosexual desires in what may be called the "masculine" type of homosexual individual.)

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