Transvestia

autobiography has proved quite leaky under close scrutiny.

One point, emphasized by repitition on pages 122 and 173, which seems very unusual is her statement that she NEVER cross-dressed, or wanted to, until after the first step of the three-part operation. She even waited until her legal status was established by the US State Department revising her passport! While many TSs have explained that dressing is of little importance to them except as practice for the future, this insistence on complete dissociation from the TVs seems a little exaggerated. However, it

would be childish of me to object to such strong support for our viewpoint that TV and TS are separ- ate phenomena, just because the tone is a little less than friendly.

The book covers quite adequately her life prior to and during the operation, but its major interest lies in her subsequent career. The coverage of her tribulations with the press is well told. While she cannot help but be bitter about some aspects of that, she does accept the fact that her naivety caused things to be worse, and can now laugh at many of the episodes that must have been very hurtful at the time. As Dr. Benjamin says in the introduction, we all owe her a debt of gratitude for "extending our medical horizons". Though she disclaims any credit for "carrying banners into battle", she DID take the brunt of public intolerance, and turn it aside. One might even postulate that without her precedent, our magazine would have had to break much more ice and might never have won the approval of the Post Office and the Library of Congress.

Of the many incidents in the book, the most striking illustration of the confused public atti- tude might well be the edict by an inspector from the Morals Squad that Christine must not use women's public toilets while in Washington, D.C. She was too dumbfounded to make an appropriate response but I

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