Transvestia

But as we grow older by age and older in trans- vestic experience this aspect of the pattern grown less important. Since femmepersonation can and does go on into advanced age--we have several members in their 80s--when erotic expression is no longer strong and perhaps impossible, it follows that there are other motivations beside the erotic.

One, of course, is the symbolic union with a woman. In a normal relationship, between a male and a female the attraction a female exerts on a male is more than sexual. In the lower animals the instinct for copulation and reproduction of the species is the motivating at- traction force bringing the two sexes together. In man- kind, however, this strictly biological drive has been overlain, complicated and diversified greatly by all manner of psychological and sociological factors. This accounts for the variety of ways in which perverse erotic satisfaction can be obtained such as the various fetishs, sado-masochism, the sexual thrill of starting fires, etc. So there are psychic factors involved in the attraction of the female for the male. These exist simultaneously with the physical and they can exist separately from it. Doubtless they are involved in the attraction for feminine clothing since it is claimed by some that they have simply been offset or displaced from a living person to those things that represent and symbolize her in our culture, such as clothing, adornment, cosmetics, hairdos and mannerisms.

But isn't there something even more than this? In our two valued culture which has practically no neuterism in it, that which is not masculine is feminine, and that which is not feminine is masculine. This is not to say that there are not all manner of things be- longing to or expressed equally by both males and fe- males, but belonging to both is not the same as be-

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