49.

H

of them! You ought to be frustrated! - then you are kindred to those who judge black men and Jewish men and freckled men because they are different. The leopard cannot change his spots, and I cannot alter, if I would, the basic femininity of my psyche. If there is indeed an eternal soul, then I suppose mine to be in gen- der feminine. At all events, what is certain is that from babyhood I have known--call it intuition, call it recognition--known beyond all doubt that I belonged among the women, and have longed to take my place there. It is not that a woman's life seems better; it very often isn't; it is merely a matter of belonging. Englishmen born and raised in India go home to England. So with me, always: to become a woman would be to come home. A dull home, perhaps, that of a thirty-four year old spinster, but still and always home. This would be my happiness: to wake tomorrow and find myself just such a woman. It is, you may think (especially if you are yourself such a woman), a curious sort of happiness to pursue. True; but plain water is more than champagne to one in desert lands.

The pain in my life is not merely that caused by prejudice and misunderstanding. Far more, it is the pain of conflict, the profound dichotomy of mind and body. I have perforce 'lived a lie' as man and boy, always painful, always false. Yet to dress as a woman, not being one, is equally false, as well as dangerous. What then, to do? A problem implies a solution: the solution to min. is to alter one of the elements, mind or body, to conform to the other. Putting aside the possibility of an unchangeable feminine soul, I still must say that my mind and heart--my payche--have been shaped by a thousand million longings and choices and feminine values; I could not acquire a masculine paych● without undoing all that I have been and, in very truth, ceasing to be myself. There is horror in that thought--to cease to be oneself! I cry, as you would cry: "Never!" And while I do so, any psychiatrist would ad- mit, a 'cure' is hopeless. But indeed, I utterly deny the accur- acy of the word 'cure', for it presupposes the invalidity of the feminine psyche; it implies that what the body is is right, and that the mind (or soul) is a lesser thing. This from the race of Socrates and Shakespeare hath a curious ring.

But, if mind-conforming is not the solution, there remains the alternative: changing the body to fit the mind. This, within limits, is possible; and to a people that accept false teeth and