Lunch With

Virginia

BY: Sheila

·

30- B-2- FPE

The weekly luncheon meeting of the Optimist's Club of one of the Los Angeles suburbs was finished with business, and ready for the speaker. Replete with pot- roast, coffee, ice-cream and half-baked jokes, we sat back as the Chairman rose. (And I do mean we since I was passing beautifully as "Mr. Niles", an out-of-town visitor there for quite vague reasons. Optimists, it seems are polite and not very curious about visitors. Since I happened to be visiting California and was very interested in hearing and reporting on one of Virginia's public ap- pearances, I had managed to arrange to be present.

With a courtly flourish, he introduced the speaker, Dr. Virginia Bruce (the name Virginia uses for her pub- lic lectures), and announced her topic as Gender and Sex in our Society". Only three of us in the room knew that the attractive lady in her forties who rose to speak was not all she seemed! The rest, including the town doctor, two school principals and the Chief of Police, were puffing happily away on their cigars and listening with appropriate interest as she led off with a mild story about the universal interest in sex and then spoke with considerable force of the Artificial nature of the divi- sion of the human race into two highly opposite genders.

Sex, she pointed out, is an anatomical fact con- nected with reproduction and is shared by all animals from bacteria through humans; but gender includes all

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