is extremely unlikely I think) she could revert to masculinity without being a freak. By this last I mean that should the operatee decide it was a mistake and try to revert he is now in the ridiculous position of wear- ing men's clothing and looking like a man (at least to some degree) and yet be running around without male organs—an awkward and poten- tially very embarrassing situation. He would by necessity be in effect a "butch" lesbian.

So the point is that if you are a TV, if you have in the past functioned successfully with a female sexually, had a fairly decent job and were able to get along with the boys as one of them, it is very unlikely that you are really a TS. If you have been married and fathered children it is almost certain that you are not a TS-by definition. What you are is a very intense TV who wants to give up his masculinity and adopt femi- ninity as a life style. Your only trouble is that you are thinking of surgery as the only way to accomplish this. You are very wrong. If you can make all the necessary plans for change of life after surgery-domes- tically, family wise, job-wise, economically and socially-then you can do the same for a gender switch and be $5-10,000 ahead besides. Think about that!

I have talked with a number of pre and post operative "cases". What comes out so very clearly in all of them is that when they have got the bit in their teeth and the idea has really taken hold of them not only can you not reach them with logic and reason—they won't hear you because subconsciously they are afraid that you will succeed in changing their minds but every question put to them by friends and doctors is answered in such a way as to be consistent with achieving their goals. While it would be a harsh way of putting it to say that they become liars, it is no less than the truth to say that they are continuously adjusting the truth (both consciously and unconsciously) to fit into and justify their goals.

I know full well the argument that will be advanced either by some of the individuals concerned or by interested and sympathetic ob- servers. I know because I've argued with Dr. Benjamin about this several times. A person who has been a husband and a father may try to minimize the degree of his success as a male in his sexual experiences by saying something to the effect that, "I was only able to have sex with my wife by imagining myself to be a female and she to be the male". That is trying to pit his psychology against his biology and it won't work. Sex- ual arousal and response are not amenable to voluntary control. Many a functionally normal male would give a lot to be able to have an erection and no amount of "reasoning with his penis" will cause it to erect. The

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