EDITORIAL EMANATIONS

I am going to devote my Editorial space this time to placing some cards on the table with you, my readers, and I hope my friends, and to show you some of the problems of being an Editor.

I should like to start out by a brief restatement of purpose and intent--older readers know these things, but newer ones may not. TRANSVESTIA was not begun and is not continuing as a commercial venture for the purpose of making money. This should be obvious from the tone of it as compared to other publications on the market. It was started as a result of my own personal heartaches and prob- lems and my awareness that there were thousands more like me. I felt then and do now that a lot of peace of mind could be provided to a lot of people by the awareness that there were others like themselves, that their desires were not perverse or debased, that they served a real purpose in the personality, and that becoming aware of these things they could rid themselves of the guilt, and loneliness that had dominated their lives. I get many letters that prove I was right in this. Such letters are the big source of satisfaction that keeps the wheels turning. Fortunately they are in the majority, but there are some letters that come in which are quite upsetting--for example:

fear

Several weeks ago we went through our cards which had not been active for a couple of issues and sent out a notice asking why we had not heard from them recently and should we keep their name s on the mailing list or what? This of course reminded a lot of people who sent in subscriptions, others whose names had gotten on our lists from other lists we had purchased and who really did not belong there wrote asking to have their name removed. Then there was the following note written by a person who had been with us for some time and who had even contributed material to past iss-

ues:

"You haven't heard from me because I detest your commercialis- tic way of handling TVism and your exploitation of TVs; your dic- tatorial, undemocratic way of doing things and your terrible treat- ment of particular TV s--especially of late. I for one, have no need for you or others like you!"

76.