56

is socially considered masculine. Nature makes various kind of anatomical "mistakes"--she certainly would be expected to come up with various degrees of psychological maleness which would not necessarily match society's requirements

My contention that many of these distinctions between masculine and feminine are arbitrary and entirely cultural is supported by the findings of the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, who studies several different primitive cul- tures and found that conceptions of proper "masculine" be- haviour in one tribe would be entirely lacking in others and the reverse for the "feminine" qualities (always except- ing those directly connected with gestation, birth and child care)

Walker and Fletcher in "SEX AND SOCIETY", indicate that the qualities normally considered masculine are, "qualities of a dominating character, in other words, those appropriate to the ruling sex. Were our patriarchal form of society eventually to be replaced by a matriarchal form, then all traits which we now regard as being distinctive of men would be looked upon as being feminine traits and the more passive qualities which we now consider fitting to women would be assigned to men".

This statment and point of view set up a whole new ap- proach to the understanding of transvestism--namely that it is a sociological problem, not primarily a psychological one. TVs are therefore NOT "sex devates or sex variants" since sex does not enter into it. (For my purposes here the term "TV" refers to a true transvestite, one whose only non-conformist behaviour is cross-dressing and whose sex orientation is therefore heterosexual). TVs are social variants only since the problem they have within them is a psycho-social one and their solution for it is in the socio- logical realm. Why is this so? Because the catagories of masculine and feminine are arbitrary and of a social and cultural origin. When a male person becomes interested in expressing what society considers feminine traits and qual- ities (while still oriented toward the female sexually) he is merely fighting this arbitrariness and seeking to express