My Odd TV Life

HISTORY

by Marjorie (55-R-1)

My transvestite life is of little interest as far as actual dressing is concerned, for I have had very lit- tle chance to dress as I should. But it is such a com- plete rebuttal of the theories of the so-called experts and psychiatrists of little experience, especially those who blame everything on female influences when young, that I feel it is worth relating. While there is no doubt that being dressed as a girl or being influenced in any feminine way by mother or sister would have much ef- fect on those of us who were born TV's it would be just as likely to drive others in the opposite direction.

Grandfather came from Scotland with several brot- hers. He made money as a merchant then lost most of it. So father, the only child, was brought up as a rich man's son. He was well educated in Scotland and had much mechanical ability also. But he had no social gifts at all. Older persons have described him to me as a "stick" at the parties he attended. Mother was a school teacher and she and her sister became one of the leading ladies in the large town where father lived. One boy was born, then two more who died, and I was the last in 1881. Grandfather had died before then. Father put what money was left into an elaborate house and lost it. Through friends he was offered good posi- tions, but the loss of everything seemed to break him up. He lost them all, and had to move to a small town, to live almost on the charity of his wife's rela- tions who had little use for him. He worked at what small positions there were before a heart attack carr- ied him off when I was just four. I barely remember

him.

Mother was left with the two of us and no money at all. We lived for a while in a house belonging to her aunt, and she had a small private school. I doubt if she made enough to live on, but her brother was the leading doctor and considered rich for that time and he helped. Then he set her up in a large boarding house, but for some reason it did not pay and she went back to the small school, then to teaching in the low-

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