Transvestia

and see me as a relaxed and comfortable woman often say "why don't you live that way all the time". They are not thinking of surgery but just of living. People ask this among the questions at my lectures and in answering them I realize I am answering myself and it seems worth while to try to answer it for a lot of those who read these columns. I usually tell such questioners that if someone had offered me a magic pill five years ago that was guaranteed to rid me forever of my desire to femmedress that I would probably have impulsively taken two. But if this same panacea were offered to me today I would have nothing to do with it. Why? Be- Cause I have learned to accept and enjoy my femmelife and femme experiences BUT the years also brought me the wisdom to recognize that everything is relative.

Did you ever stop to think that there could not be an "up" if there were not a "down", a "dark" without a "light", "good" without "bad", etc? More directly there is no "feminine" without a "masculine" for com- parison. When one is "100% masculine" (horrible thought) one is very lopsided and misses so much of life---like- wise of course, for the "100% feminine". Thus as one begins to achieve some balance by letting the pendulum swing away from the 100% point one has a fuller, more interesting, more rewarding life. This comes from re- cognizing one's femmeself and giving her a little share in living. But there is an old saying about giving and inch and taking a mile. Sometimes I am afraid, the fascination of this new life gets out of hand and we lose the perspective necessary to enjoy it. When we go too far in the femme direction we are rideing up the other side of the pendulum swing.

Having recognized that my appreciation for and enjoyment of Virginia existed in the first place be- cause I was a male and therefore was attracted to fe- males, I realized that surgery would be a form of suicide not only for my masculine self but for Virginia too since it would cut the ground (as well as other- things) out from under her. Then, when Virginia had developed enough to be a personality in her own right, I was no longer under so much pressure to give her life so I was better able to look at the whole of exis- tance with perspective. When I did, I realized that

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