Many transvestites, like many homosexuals, often possess a superior intelligence, and may show some art- istic aspirations and abilities. These sometimes may provide some of them with a vicarious outlet for their transvestite cravings.
The More Active Form of Transvestism:
Here the longing for cross-dressing may amount to an irresistable urge, resembling an obsessive-compul- sive neurosis. Then "It is a drive, or a need, easily as strong, as any organic drive, and must be yielded to, if the victim is to avoid unbearable tension (59)
The transvestites of this type are more active, and often "take up the fight against society" (Hamburger) Yet they would never ask for, nor agree to, the anatomic- al "change" of their actual sex. They want to play the part of a member of the opposite sex merely by assuming the dress, the manners and some ways of behavior, which they regard as characteristic of this sex. However, what such ah individual creates is not a representation of a woman, but a poor imitation, or even a caricature, of her. To "be a woman" simply means for him "to wear beau- tiful dresses and high heeled shoes, to use make-up" and " to attract glances of admiration." Such patients often assume a female given name and want to be addressed as "she".
(((ED.NOTE: It is a rather gratuitous assumption that transvestites of this "type" do not "create a representation" but rather a caricature. Either the author has not personally known many TVs or those he has known have been the pretty mixed-up types who usually become "patients" and who do not at all represent TVs as a class. I have known a num- ber of TVs, myself included, who can and do do about everything a woman does and go wherever a woman can go and whose "representation" is by no means a car- icature" since it is quite adequate to satisfy the eyes of sales girls, policemen, dressing room clerks, maids, taxi drivers and what have you. It is redic- ulous and unfair too in a survey of the subject, not
55.