Dear Virginia:

Your prompt reply to my request for information about TRANSVESTIA is greatly appreciated--as is your thoughtfulness in enclosing a per- sonal note. The fact that there is such an organization as yours has done wonders for my morale. Your kind words have also helped consid- erably, in that they represent the first contact of any kind I have ever had with someone who can really understand what it means to be a transvestite.

A few days after I wrote my original letter to Chevalier Publi- cations, I happened to pick up a copy of SEXOLOGY in which your art- icle was featured. Ordinarily, I don't usually bother to buy SEXOL- OGY, since whatever it prints on the subject of transvestism is us- ually either so clinical as to be unrecognizable or one of those "As I write this, I am wearing.. sort of articles which are unique the first time one reads them, but a bit dull after a couple of repetit- ions.

Your article was the first really important thing that SEXOLOGY has printed on the subject, and I congratulate both your courage (in avoiding the nom-de-plume approach) and your convictions, which were expressed in a particularly intelligent blend of science and subject- ivity. Scientists might disagree that science and subjectivity can be blended with any validity, but I feel that when one discusses the human condition, both are essential.

Being now 33 years old, I feel it's about time I learned to acc- ept myself and come to terms with my transvestic desires. Actually, I have made some progress toward that goal, although a much better adjustment is still to be sought. The one large obstacle in this kind of self-realization is loneliness, which is probably true of the majority of transvestites. Transvestism, more than any other config- uration of the human psyche, tends to isolate the individual from Society.

If he mingles with society while dressed in female attire, he can be clapped into jail. If he stays to himself, with no contact with the world, he disintegrates slowly and painfully. Homosexuals, at least, have come to be accepted by society as a concomitant evil, and very little action is taken against them, so long as they observe the same restraints as heterosexuals are expected to observe in their sexual relations.

While I am not a person who must conform in every way to society neither am I a person who enjoys isolation. I would like to have the freedom to choose the worthwhile things in society and conform to them

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