EDITORS NOTE: Lesley Ann expected that only her story would be published in TVia, however the letter below which accompanied the story seemed to me to be as worthy of publication as the story. It is a set of perceptive observations about the nature and origin of our mutual experiences.

Dear Virginia and Mary,

I am enclosing a story titled "The Way Women Are” which hopefully you can use in a forthcoming issue of Transvestia.

The purpose of the story is to illustrate several of the dynamics which could cause a little boy such as Lynn to become a transvestite, pro- vided the necessary psychological or physiological (whichever theory one embraces) predisposition is present. Lynn's environment could not be called typical for a little boy (nor for a boy who is to become a tv, for that matter) but neither would it be considered peculiar since many children grow up in a family in which the father is absent and in which the child's siblings are exclusively female. Nor would such an incident as being dressed as a little girl be outside the experience of many small boys, since impersonating the opposite sex is a favorite amusement of man (proving the theory that if one can laugh at something, it becomes less of a threat).

A sidelight on impersonation just occurred to me--I would guess that, if such a thing could be determined, American men, in general, would feel more "disguised" dressed as women than costumed as gorillas. After all, an animal, such as an ape, connotes strength, aggressiveness, power, perhaps even a certain amount of admirable cruelty, in short masculinity. On the other hand a human female gives the male the impression of weakness, passiveness, and emotionalism, in short femininity, which compared to its opposite logically must be considered inferior. To a man a person who wears delicate lingerie, pretty, colorful dresses, makeup, and long hair softly styled is an object to be won, possessed, conquered sexually. Since that is the purpose of woman, and since man's ego will not even let him entertain the possibility that he could be sexually subjugated by another male, the idea that he could be that person gowned, coiffed, and perfumed is inconceivable, except in parody of that silly characteristic of half the world's population,