Transvestia

the life of an ordinary boy, none of my schoolmates or neighbors thinking otherwise.

Nothing much happened from then until I was about seventeen, when I began to undergo great anxieties. Around this time, schoolboy conversation frequently tu- rned to the subject of sex, as is usual with boys develop- ing into men. Up to now I knew almost nothing about sex, either normal or abnormal, and did not associate my years in dresses with anything sexual. My feelings were merely that through peculiar circumstances I had been dressed as a girl for three years, but now I was the same as any ordinary boy. The only result of these years was that I liked seeing pretty girl's clothes, and admired pretty long hair on girls. Sometimes I imagined how I would look wearing long hair and dresses, but I was deep- ly ashamed of these thoughts, and of course never men- tioned them to anyone.

Then in furtive conversations the subject of "queers" began to arise. Sometimes boys were approached by ho- mosexuals and this became a topic of conversation. I was astonished when I heard of these people, and aghast when I learned that there were depraved individuals who dressed as women to solicit men. Also, around this time 1953, a so-called sex-change case was well publicized in the newspapers, and there was much witten on the subject in the daily press and in magazines. When I read these articles I was thrown into great confusion and dread, associating my own secret visions of myself in female dress with the subjects of these articles.

Knowing nothing of the subject of transvestism as a separate category, and with inaccurate information ga-- thered from many sources, I arrived at the following suppositions. These were that all homosexuals were ef- feminate (and that effeminate men were all homosexual), that men who dress as women, and that all these cate- gories wanted to change their sex. I found later that this is not the case, but at that time it all seemed quite logical. I became terribly worried, thinking that I would automatically become like these people. Sometimes while in London's west end with other boys we would see some obvious 'queers" with made up faces mincing along the streets, the boys snickering scornfully at these ridi-

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