"VIRGIN VIEWS"

- by VIRGINIA

After Acceptance What??

In past articles I have discussed causes, statistics, acceptance by one's self and others, etc. I have tried to help those of you still in the "locked door" stage to come forth and those of you who have come forth to shed your guilt and shame and accept yourself without fight- ing it. This is not to imply that all those who have made these two steps have done so because of my efforts. Certainly not, many have arrived at this point on their own and some few have gone to the next step. So this article is not addressed to them, but to those who are making progress with the help and encouragement of TRANSVESTIA, the Femme Mirror and more advanced friends.

You know, Femme Personation is a rather contradictory condition. I don't suppose that there are many of us who, having gone through all the fears, shame, guilt, etc. that most of us have, would inten- tionally introduce a non- TV into the practice. Moreover, I'll wager that, if we were honest, most of us would have to agree that life would have been easier on us if we had never got started on this path in the first place. Yet in the same breath the great majority of us would not....I guess I had better say could not. give up our femme selves at this point. Odd isn't it to have a pattern so emotionally expensive and frustrating on the one hand that we would just as soon never have had it and yet so emotionally satisfying having once got- ten it under control and seen it in the proper light that we have no desire to give it up! So having come to grips with it and learned to accept ourselves, where do we go from here?

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It seems to me that we can go on to a sort of quiet pride in our- selves, in our ability to express our femininity and our victory our own guilts and fears. The idea of pride in an activity that society regards as an abnormalcy will sound completely ridiculous to many.. certainly to most professional people. But I don't mean pride in the sense of something to brag about, I mean an inner sort of pride, per- haps it might be called an inner peace that settles over one when he stops fighting, recognizes certain things as real and decides to live with them. Pride in the sense of being the opposite of shame.

When we reach this stage, it is no longer a vital matter if some- one learns that we are FPs. (I might point out that this is the stage

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