Wisdom

...

Moderation

by Virginia

...

Perspective

Having been through a great deal of pain, fear, guilt, lone- liness and frustration in my life I wanted to help others avoid or conquer these feelings. My tool for doing this has been TRANSVES- TIA. Daily I have the satisfaction of knowing from the letters we receive that my efforts, and of recent months Barbara's efforts too, are accomplishing these purposes. Each mail brings letters in which several of you clearly indicate that since you discovered this magazine a new world has opened up for you and you now have a better, cleaner and finer view of yourself and of our mutual joy, femmedressing. For this I am glad. A vast amount of work goes in- to the activities of Chevalier Publications most of it unseen and not obvious to those of you who just see the finished product. But all of this is worthwhile when we get letters indicating that we have accomplished our purpose and have freed some of you from the bonds of guilt, shame and loneliness and helped you toward more self understanding and self acceptance. However, we now begin to a new problem in some of the letters crossing our desks and it is with this problem that this column is concerned.

sense

According to Webster; Wisdom is "the ability to judge soundly, or to perceive the best ends and the best means", Moderation means "keeping within bounds, observing reasonable limits, and not going to extremes, " Perspective is the "capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance". Consider these terms in relation to our field of interest. Before discovering TRANSVESTIA one of us expresses only behind locked doors, feels very guilty after each occasion of dressing, lives in fear of being discovered and "shamed", thinks of the act of femme dressing as being dirty or degrading--something that should not be done by any self respecting male, and usually thinks he is one of a very few with this desire. Then in one way or another the magazine gets into his hands. He reads that there are many many others like himself...he finds their feelings about themselves were like his own. ..he reads their his- tories and in many ways it is like reading his own autobiography. As one recent letter put it.."I read and re-read my own thoughts and feelings over and over but now they come from the minds of others.

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He studies the Cover Girls (who are particularly selected for their authentic appearance and the impression of our field that they will make on the non-FP reader) and feels a desire to be as attractive as they are. He reads of the experiences of some of the more ad-

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