them

Transvestia

you can't really talk to them. That is you

can't reach into their real selves. Their minds are so made up that the most persuasive logic falls on deaf ears, enumeration of problems and complications is a waste of breath. They are beyond reach. A11 thinking and rationalization and planning is aimed at achieving surgery with a bland if child-like cer- tainty that all present problems will automatically disappear. Wishful thinking and divorce from some of the aspects of reality is characteristic. The same self-protective rationalizations that prevent the operated individual from admitting that perhaps it was a mistake, as Susanna points out, work to protect him in the pre-operative state from possibly being talked out of it beforehand. It is self de- lusion to begin with and continues the same way after surgery.

I can just hear the screams of anguished irrita- tion from some readers now. But one only screams when one is hurt and when the truth hurts, is when someone gets to ones inner true self with the truth. It does hurt and it brings forth screams. "Just who the hell does Virginia think she is putting us down in this high handed way? Does she think she knows everything about everybody?" Of course I don't, but I've done an awful lot of observing, talking to peo- ple and thinking about this whole field and I am convinced firmly that only about 20% of those people asking for surgery are really TSS and should have it. The rest have been led by circumstances, wishful thinking and desperation down a lonely path towards a mirage that seems to offer fulfillment but actual- ly only provides a whole new bag of problems unimag- ined from this side. Susanna's observations about not having had a girlhood and a growing into the role and a total feeling and about being "outgirled" by the GGs is so true.

What then is the answer? subtracting what can you do? cult...you "add by adding".

If you can't add by Well it's not so diffi- That is you start with