Transvestia

dice! I can't possibly buy this regardless of the authority of the person making the assertion. Erec- tion is a physiological phenomenon over which a man has little positive conscious control. He can think erotic things and perhaps it will occur, but he can never be sure, much less control it. Moreover, the sexual mechanisms are quite primitive in the line of evolutionary development and are largely carried out by nerve pathways in the "old" or hind brain just as in lower animals. The newer or more Human part of the brain, the cerebrum, contributes a lot of modify- ing influences to the total sexual process, but it does not originate or mediate the instinctual patterns. Thus it is easy to see that one whose neurological maleness was impaired or modified in some way would be inadequate as a functioning male and would feel uncomfortable and ineffective. But it is nearly im- possible for me to believe that these more or less automatic responses set off by the sight and closeness of a sexually responsive female could take place if the individual was telling himself that he was really a female and the woman was a man. The whole male sexual reflex is so easily inhibited--erection is so easily destroyed or rendered impossible--that such an imagining would surely be highly inhibitory.

Well what of it, where does this lead us? It leads precisely to the statement that there are a lot of persons who state that they want surgery and who because of this statement consider themselves and are assumed to be transsexuals and therefore entitled to and justified in receiving it. I am afraid that I must take a strongly opposing position. There are two types of persons requesting surgery who should not be given it because they are not really trans- sexuals and will not solve their problems by going that route. First there are misguided homosexuals of the drag queen variety who seek it as a means of making more effective liasons with males. Such per- sons achieve the sex via surgery and acquire the gender as a by product...a matter of necessity and practicality for the accomplishment of their ends.

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